Blood and Fire strives to be an ethnographic account of a neo-Pentecostal congregation that models a form of “godly love” that relationally connects Spirit-filled middle class ministry volunteers with spiritually transformed lower class clients. Essentially, the book charts the attempt by a religious leader to lead ministry structures to actualize an idealistic vision without the painful, administrative, and social burdens inherent to all social structures. The result is a convoluted tale of failed charismatic leadership, the limits of organizational structures, and a messy attempt by the authors to connect an assortment of social scientific concepts with scattered observations at all levels of analysis.

The core narrative of the book documents a two-year period when the Sunday services of Blood and Fire (abbreviated as “BnF”) were suspended, and David, the leader of the congregation, changed the ministry's focus from a weekly religious gathering to the cultivation of ongoing, family-like relationships between dedicated BnF members and Atlanta's poor and homeless through a variety of compassionate services. The transition appeared successful initially, but as service programs grew and donations swelled, board members demanded closer financial accountability and a clearer strategic direction. The rapid growth called for forms of institutionalized thinking that David could not (or simply would not) do. Because David wanted a fluid, permeable, and highly affective community, he refused to create an accountable corporate structure that would routinize the management of each ministry. Overall, David desired a multifaceted congregational ministry while ignoring the very real aspects of organizational structures.

In pursuing his realization of the Kingdom of God, David generated numerous problems. In the process, the authors fail to find evidence that BnF genuinely “transformed” the lives of the poor and homeless. Instead, lower class beneficiaries of the ministry embraced only the practical food and shelter available without connecting to the grander, purposive values of the ministry. Sadly for the authors of the study, they find that “the poor were the means by which David mediated his beloved vision of the Kingdom to his closer family members and to benefactors who financially supported him” (145). The congregational philosophy enacted by leaders therefore created highly stratified relationships among white middle-class members who then had client-like relationships with African American lower class participants. A tri-level structure emerged between upper-class benefactors, middle-class service providers, and lower-class recipients. Any surface appearance of radical egalitarianism through a religiously tinged, family-oriented discourse in BnF actually (and not surprisingly) revealed layers of stratified relationships. Over and over again, the authors point out the structural limits of intimacy, especially in how David would accentuate favored “sons” and “daughters” who would shift in and out of his attention. The BnF culture ends up being a religiously based middle-class culture that fooled itself into believing that the “family” they created was equally and meaningfully shared with their lower-class clients. Not only did BnF fail to foster true relational community between lower-class clients and middle-class ministry workers, but the compassionate ministry of the church created a mixture of new and enduring forms of stratification that reproduced a racialized hierarchy. The church was “composed largely of white Christians ministering to African American homeless who identify with BnF's practical mission but not its vision” (45). The entire ministry soon imploded through an internal schism that ousted David as the leader and effectively shut down every existing compassion-oriented ministry.

The continual analysis of failed charismatic leadership and revelation of the racialized social structure of this “egalitarian” religious community are the strongest aspects of the book. Yet, these fascinating findings are marred by the awkward presentation of the analysis. In presenting successive aspects of this uniquely religious failure, the authors attempt to integrate far too many disjointed ideas. Curious and interesting notions introduced at various points are awkwardly and inconsistently developed. One example is how Randall Collins's “interaction rituals” is mentioned several times but never explained, leaving “IR” to come off as jargon instead of a potentially powerful means to explain religious phenomena. And the many sections drawing on the work of Pitrim Sorokin that filter the richness of ethnographic observation through a clunky appropriation of concepts on “love” leave the frequent discussions on “godly love” to be among the weakest of the book. I speculate that much of what might have been a more fruitful analysis was short-circuited in the discovery that the dynamics of “love” did not conform to a more hopeful set of results. After all, who wants to emphasize the “divine-human” dynamics of “godly love” in an analysis that falls so short of anyone's altruistic ideals?

Ignoring these unnecessary spurts of analysis, what stands out in the narrative is David's (and so many other contemporary Christians') attempt to remove the unnecessary “stuff” of religion that provokes a grand ambition and inspires visionary language in an attempt to foster more “simple” and “authentic” ministries. David's desire to live out his love-oriented ideals by following haphazard prophetic revelations end up creating unanticipated forms of power and stratification that unknowingly exploit the affections of his faithful ministry “partners” and ultimately leave the poor of Atlanta right where he found them. The intriguing story gleaned from the book, then, is not so much a failed prophecy, but a failed religious vision, ambiguously conceived and incompetently organized. Thus, the ghost of Max Weber and the necessary routinization of charismatic authority haunt the narrative. Consequently, rather than telling a story of transformation and success, the book is an analysis of how powerful, yet naive, charismatic leadership can be consumed with ironies and fatally implode in the face of practical administrative matters necessary to keep any modern organization sustainable.