Less than a generation ago, there were no scholarly books on the genre of southern gospel music. While there is no flood of academic treatises flowing forth today, the appearance of Douglas Harrison's Then Sings My Soul concretely illustrates that the genre is no longer ignored. Harrison's work will not please everyone, but it is easily the most provocative book to appear yet on this topic and, as such, promises to promote further inquiry and analysis.

The author, an English professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, is a self-proclaimed fan of southern gospel; he is also openly gay and ventures into the previously unexplored world of the “gay-gospel paradox” as it relates to this primarily conservative evangelical form of gospel music entertainment. Then Sings My Soul is intriguing—a unique blend of academic inquiry and musical enchantment, of evangelical critique within the context of queer theory.

Overall, Harrison argues for an interpretation of “southern gospel as a means of negotiating evangelicalism's tensions by reimagining them” (8). Along the way, he manages to challenge a couple of interpretive matters—one with more cogency than the other. He argues persuasively for the importance of Aldine Kieffer as the pivotal figure in the development of the style of music that morphed over time into the southern gospel multi-part harmony music industry. Kieffer's role in shaping the musical genre is insightfully linked to the southern struggle to create meaning out of the post-Civil War era. He sees Kieffer's decision to restart grandfather Joseph Funk's music industry alongside northern friend and brother-in-law Ephraim Ruebush as critical in the emergence of a modern-thinking South—one that embraced new technology ironically to preserve the values of the pastoral past. As a songwriter, music publisher-educator, and ardent proponent of shaped notes, Kieffer's influence was unparalleled in the South and Harrison makes a strong case that he deserves more recognition than he has heretofore received.

In advancing Kieffer, Harrison also seeks to diminish the status of James D. Vaughan, who established most of the mechanics of the southern gospel music industry in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, in the early years of the twentieth century. Reacting against what he terms “Vaughanism,” Harrison suggests an almost sinister attempt on the part of the southern gospel industry to elevate Vaughan as a Christian businessman “guided by prayer, not profit” (105). Though the concept is tempting given the Singing News magazine's compulsion to install a “founder” early in the 1990s, the evidence for intrigue, much less conspiracy, falls short. Well aware of the industry's background in shape-note music, the magazine editors would have been easily persuaded to proclaim Kieffer, or his celebrated student Anthony Showalter, as founder had evidence surfaced of paid, traveling quartet singers. Harrison's own chronology of events weakens his passionate charge of Vaughanism. Noting that the Singing News began featuring the Lawrenceburg music publisher on its masthead in 1993, he links that to a research trip I made with editor Jerry Kirksey and the subsequent discovery of an undertaker's report that noted “huge calluses” on Vaughan's knees from frequent prayer. The problem is that the research trip took place in 1998, five years after the magazine's decision to proclaim Vaughan as industry founder. Regardless of the merits of Vaughan's proclaimed status within the industry, it is unlikely that he was chosen because of his usefulness “as a model of patriarchal piety” (104).

By far the best chapter in Then Sings My Soul is the analysis of the impact of the Gaither Homecoming franchise in revitalizing southern gospel by recreating the participatory nature of early singing conventions. Ironically, Harrison notes that the industry has been in steady decline since about 2003—a fact demonstrated by a drop in product sales and in magazine subscriptions for the Singing News. The decline actually followed a marked increase in subscription numbers as well as product and concert sales in the previous decade. It may be that those numbers rose in part because of the ascendency of the Gaither gatherings but, as Harrison suggests, the decline may also now signal an overall decline in the popularity and relative impact of the music.

Harrison's last chapter, “Southern Gospel in the Key of Queer,” speculates on the attraction that gay males have for southern gospel, though it is difficult to know exactly how widespread such affection is. Academics and most fans will be surprised (some will be shocked) to learn of the annual Pink Party, a gathering of gay southern gospel professionals to parody gospel performances “by queer—though not always gay—writers or singers” (139). The author focuses much of his attention and criticism of antigay attitudes within southern gospel on the outing of singer Kirk Talley in 2003, arguing that Talley's influence in the industry faded instantly due to widespread homophobia. Though he explains that the singer went through a major “rehabilitation program,” it is unclear exactly how Talley (still an active performer) was treated differently from southern gospel singers implicated for “heterosexual sin.” It is likely that there are specific differences in how evangelical followers and industry insiders have treated such scandals but Harrison does not quantify those differences—even though he acknowledges Bill Gaither's role in helping rehabilitate heterosexual “prodigal sons” like Michael English and Mylon LeFevre. It is unclear whether any such attempts have been made with singers similarly punished for “homosexual sin.” Either way, many readers will remain unconvinced that a gospel music industry built on the support of conservative evangelicals would or should adapt itself to accepting either extramarital heterosexual or homosexual conduct within the ranks of its performers. Though Harrison seems convinced that the future of evangelicalism lies in “figuring out how to validate unorthodox experience” (165), one wonders how this might be accomplished without a complete theological and hermeneutical overhaul.