Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. These congregations structured worship, congregational culture, and church outreach to target "those who had never established a relationship with Christ and the Church, and those trying to reconnect" (Lester Ruth, "Lex Agendi, Lex Orandi: Toward an Understanding of Seeker Services as a New Kind of Liturgy," Worship 70, no. EIN: 95-2844062. I have in mind the period in American conservative and fundamentalist evangelicalism inaugurated by Richard Nixon's conjuring of the ", 1990 coincides roughly with the emergence of what would become the, Within southern gospel, "CCM" designates nearly all other forms of commercial Christian music deemed insufficiently pious or overly commercialized (marketed in ways different from southern gospel). She is divorced and has been for some time, but the date of her divorce is not listed. In short, whiteness remains strongly associated with southern gospel performance and fan culture.10Ibid., 203, especially note 53. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_10', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_10').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Front cover of Crowning Day (Dayton, VA: Ruebush-Kieffer, 1900). Sometimes this includes, Sales of "Christian/Gospel" (which consists overwhelmingly of CCM and black gospel music, but also includes some southern gospel) reached a high point in 1998, totaling $836 million; in 2012, total sales in the same category were $24.2 million. So we sang next day on the video [Precious Memories], "He Leadeth Me" . "I've many thoughts about the show tonight," she tweeted, "most of which are probably better left inside my head. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_60', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_60').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); What emerges in The Martins's interview echoes Anthony Harkins's observations about constructed hillbilly rusticity: "Middle-class white Americans [can] see these people [hillbillies] as a fascinating and exotic 'other' akin to Native Americans or Blacks, while at the same time sympathize with them as poorer and less modern versions of themselves. Explored through the Martins, how do non-musical categories of knowledge, patterns of affiliation, and cultural valuessuch as sense of placehelp clarify, sustain, or revalue religious music traditions, identities, subject positions, and the ideological commitments those traditions encompass? Who is martin p joyce? Winter's Bone. Arkansas/Arkansaw: How Bear Hunters, Hillbillies, and Good Ole Boys Defined a State. "Fundamentalism" indicates evangelicals for whom militancy in resistance to liberalism is the defining feature of lived religion.22George Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 15. "61Anthony Harkins, Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 7. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_61', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_61').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Yet many of the white, conservative, and fundamentalist Christian consumers who are the target audience for this kind of Christian entertainment merchandise may well see something quite different. Although southern gospel is undoubtedly white, not all white gospel is southern, and not all gospel of the US South is white.11Following Harry Eskew's lead in the Grove Music entry for Gospel Music, Stephen Shearon uses "northern urban" gospel to designate commercial Christian music of and for primarily white Protestants that emerged in the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century revivalism in urban areas outside the South. Judy Martin is married to Jake Hess, Jr., the son of the legendary southern gospel lead singer Jake Hess. The. It's a new day for Southern Gospel. When Gaither says, "You can take them anywhere," he seems to mean that in his role as producer and impresario he can rely on The Martins to stand and deliver whatever the show demands. Joyce is married to Paul Sanders, a singer/songwriting musician, currently a member of the country band, Shenandoah where he plays bass and sings harmony. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_18', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_18').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); I explore the Arkansas imaginary through the state's most famous southern gospel sibling trio, The Martins, their music, and their reception since approximately 1990.191990 coincides roughly with the emergence of what would become the Bill and Gloria Gaither Homecoming Friends video (later concert) series. Join the. Taylor's development of the social imaginary builds on (but also departs from) Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 2006). tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_17', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_17').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Such an approach asks how southern gospel artists (most from beyond the state) use Arkansas's status as an imaginative resource to make sense of themselves and their music in late twentieth and early twenty-first century fundamentalist Protestantism.18I have in mind the period in American conservative and fundamentalist evangelicalism inaugurated by Richard Nixon's conjuring of the "silent majority" of cultural traditionalists who opposed the advance of liberal policies and social practices in the US. This transformation left untouched only the Ozarks and Ouachita to the north and west. Do you know any background info about this artist? Though the publication of "He Leadeth Me" predates the popularization of the term of "gospel hymns" (which is most commonly sourced to Philip P. Bliss's Gospel Songs [1874] and Bliss and Ira D. Sankey's Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs [1875]), the song's style anticipates the dominant features of the gospel hymn and is customarily treated by gospel singers and fans as part of the corpus of gospel hymns that remain popular in southern gospel. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_38', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_38').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Certainly this is true of southern gospel. : Gaither Music, 2011. Updated: June 20, 2015 Biography ID: 102744141 Joyce Martin is married to Paul Michael Sanders, who has had periodic jobs as a southern gospel singer. Though the publication of "He Leadeth Me" predates the popularization of the term of "gospel hymns" (which is most commonly sourced to Philip P. Bliss's, While David Fillingim argues that "home" as a concept in southern gospel allows its participants to imagine and explore a flight from material hardship and social marginalization in this world (in favor of an eternal home of magnificence in heaven), my research suggests that in southern gospel "home" serves to give concrete, graspable shape to abstract theological concepts and spiritual experiences for ordinary Christians in the here and now. "30Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 67, 211. This movement was popular among (though not exclusive to) non-denominational evangelical megachurches. Following the rapture is Tribulation, a seven-year period during which Anti-Christ reigns on earth, Millennium (during which time Satan is bound), and ultimately the establishment and eternal reign of Christ's kingdom. The Martins are a Christian music vocal trio composed of three siblings: Joyce Martin Sanders, Jonathan Martin, and Judy Martin Hess. The Arkansas imaginary explored here is not a totalizing way of understanding the vernacular music of white fundamentalists. In the broadest sense, The Martins here evince how "the interaction of lyrics, music, and religious experience in southern gospel functions as a way for evangelicals to cultivate the social tools and emotional intelligence necessary for modern living." Joyce Martin Sanders Overview Tracks Albums Photos Similar Artists Events Biography More Biography We don't have a wiki for this artist. Arkansas ranks forty-fifth in median income in the United States and, by official self-description since the 1970s, is culturally "the natural state." tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_19', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_19').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); The emergence of The Martins as a national touring group relied strategically on their Arkansas roots. This dynamic was captured in the 2014 Grammys. Sign up for updates about Better Together on TBN. See also Other Works | Publicity Listings | Official Sites View agent, publicist, legal and company contact details on IMDbPro Getting Started | Contributor Zone Contribute to This Page Edit page Personal Details These longstanding conflicts precede the twentieth century. Again: Continuing the Debate between Donald Dayton and George Marsden," in The Continued Relevance of Wesleyan Theology: Essays in Honor of Laurence Wood, ed. Southern gospel's cultural sustainability turns out to be an urgent matter of concern, even if southern gospel people themselves do not tend to speak about it that way. However, a 1993 appearance on the Gaither Homecoming series helped transform The Martins from an avocational regional trio into a professional act with a national following in fundamentalist Christian entertainment. Black gospel draws heavily on southern lifeways, many of its biggest stars have been from the South, and it has always found a good portion of its audience there. The siblings all lived most of their formative years in Arkansas, where they learned to sing and with which their comments in public indicate a strong identification. The Martins appear to possess an unadorned, God-given popularity that abides in their embodiment of white tradition and progress. Geography and biography merge in the Arkansas imaginary to redefine and authenticate The Martins's musical personae and southern gospel as a mode of fundamentalist and conservative evangelical experience. [5] Jonathan Martin (b. And I've never been more sure of the path I've chosen." "Gospel," as Heilbut has noted, is "the favored term for what working-class black congregations [do,] often to the exclusion to white traditions." John F. Mooney, review of The Best of The Martins, directed by Bill Gaither, Amazon.com, July 29, 2013, accessed October 15, 2013, http://www.amazon.com/review/R399G8O3TFUQHH/. Pamela Fox has noted that "while academia has for the most part abandoned the authentic as any kind of meaningful analytic category," the vernacular music of southern, white, rustic life and experience has "tended to preserve it. Similarly, Gerald Wolfe, also originally a pianist for the Cathedral Quartet and subsequently the owner and emcee of his own professional trio, Greater Vision, was famously plucked from obscurity (or so the story went onstage in his early years as a performer) while singing with the Dumplin' Valley Boys.49References to Bennett's birthplace in Strawberry, Arkansas, were staples of Cathedrals concerts, several of which I attended, in the 1980s and 1990s. Today it designates right-leaning North American Protestantism defined in large part by its opposition to cultural, theological, and political liberalism. It is difficult to lend much credence to this account unless Gloria Gaither's opinion and judgment plays a much more determinative role in the Gaither image and Homecoming productions than is generally allowed or assumed. They live in Columbus, Georgia, and have five children. Actress. Christ's return coincides with the rapture of living Christians and the raising of the righteous dead to heaven. 436 (1997): 169188. And I've never been more sure of the path I've chosen." The Martins grew up in Northeast Louisiana, where their parents encouraged them to make a joyful noise. See David Fillingim, "A Flight From Liminality: 'Home' in Country and Gospel Music," Studies in Popular Culture 20, no. Comparatively little has been published about The Martins's biography beyond birth, marriages, and professional accomplishments.41The basic details provided here derive largely from The Martins's disclosures on stage, press coverage, conservations I have had with industry professionals, and my experience. As one of three sibling members of the gospel group The Martins, she travels all over the place getting to do the thing she loves. 1 (1997): 7582; and Harrison, "Grace To Catch a Falling Soul." Copyright 2023 TBN - Trinity Broadcasting Network. The Martins. Finally, I'm grateful to The Martins and so many other southern gospel performers for making music that has held me in thrall and demanded to be taken seriously. The history and role of bluegrass, old-time, and mountain musics, particularly songs with pietistic lyrics that have found a home in southern gospel, is understudied. Sometimes this includes black gospel, particularly the performers who take inspiration from the mainstream music industry (pop, rock, R&B, and hip-hop). Fox's work on rusticity and identity suggests that any crisis of authenticity in popular music from the South will register across a range of cultural texts and products. Home; Labels; News; Engage. Singing and songwriting is what Joyce does. In this case, we can buy coal protein shakes for weight loss from Russia in keto diet Joyce Martin Sanders: "My Childhood Christmas Miracle" Joyce Martin Sanders: "My Childhood Christmas Miracle"https://www.youtube.com watchhttps://www.youtube.com watch Randall Balmer, My Eyes of Have Seen the Glory: A Journey Into the Evangelical Subculture in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); and Donald Dayton and Robert Johnson, eds., The Variety of Evangelicalism, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001). Joyce Martin Sanders is an American singer who, along with her siblings Jonathan Martin and Judy Martin Hess, is best known as a member of the Christian country trio The Martins. Following the rapture is Tribulation, a seven-year period during which Anti-Christ reigns on earth, Millennium (during which time Satan is bound), and ultimately the establishment and eternal reign of Christ's kingdom. Christ's return coincides with the rapture of living Christians and the raising of the righteous dead to heaven. At the same time, the group evinces no interest in stylistic purity or generic fealty to a specific tradition, even as the album titleincluding the florid and flowing cover typographyframes their music as a filiopietistic missive from the old home place that is a staple of the southern gospel imagination.46While David Fillingim argues that "home" as a concept in southern gospel allows its participants to imagine and explore a flight from material hardship and social marginalization in this world (in favor of an eternal home of magnificence in heaven), my research suggests that in southern gospel "home" serves to give concrete, graspable shape to abstract theological concepts and spiritual experiences for ordinary Christians in the here and now. The interviews are actually excerpts taken from long conversations filmed in a homey setting in which The Martins sit side-by-side on a large couch facing the camera and Bill Gaither sits in an overstuffed armchair to the right of the frame. See ". These were "places so divorced from the frenzied modernization of twentieth-century America" that they presented an easily caricatured type from which to generalize about the state as a whole.59Ibid., 516, 67. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_59', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_59').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); The conflation of The Martins's southern Arkansas bayou background with upstate Ozark hillbillyism emerges through the rhetoric of Bill Gaither as host and interlocutor. Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 5. Key figures include. Lower compositional sophistication, more uneven production quality, and rougher cuts by commercial standardsall defining features of the southern gospel sound of the past twenty yearscan function for many evangelicals and fundamentalists as indices of a more real music and catalysts for a more authentic experience of the religious self. But professional southern gospel has always been strongly grounded its history and identity in the male quartet. From Arkansas With Love. But I'll say this: I've never been more honored to sing about Jesus and for Jesus. At first, this meant reclaiming (or sonically imitating) mainly rock 'n' roll, but ultimately it came to encompass almost any kind of popular mainstream American music heard on commercial radio, especially among teen and youth audiences. Mud, set in the Arkansas Mississippi River Delta, powerfully evokes the fluidity of class, ethnicity, and geography as defining features of identity in a region where the flux of life is so heavily dependent on, shaped by, and intertwined with the flow of the river. Just as significantly, while From Kentucky With Love, or From the Smoky Mountains With Love, would probably be received with the same warmth and enthusiasm that greeted The Martins's music, the precise structure of a Kentucky imaginary or a Smoky Mountain imaginary would be located in the meaning-making of those places. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_55', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_55').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); That legacy of subsistence and pervasive poverty persists. May 19, 1970) lives in Clive, Iowa with his wife Dara Makohoniuk-Martin and their youngest three of six children, including twin boys, one of which has cerebral palsy. The songs are structurally derivative and lyrically conventional, but this music is interesting for what it suggests about The Martins's cultural temperament and expressive style, best described in these early years as one of rustic post-teen southern evangelical angsty spiritual wonderment. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_30', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_30').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Indeed, the style of four-part male harmony for which professional southern gospel is most well-known has been historically linked to the practice of piety and lived religious devotion in the premillennial dispensationalist tradition.31Premillennial dispensationalism has been the dominant theological paradigm for fundamentalist evangelicals in the United States since the mid-nineteenth century. Absence of biographical detail about The Martins clears space for the Arkansas imaginary to operate. See Shearon, email to H-Southern Music Network mailing list, March 27, 2009. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_12', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_12').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Of course, race is never far from any discussion of southern cultures, but it is also true that, in southern gospel, "overmuch emphasis on black-white polarities diminishes our understanding of cultural dynamics submerged beneath the surface of the music. Premillenialists espouse a literalist interpretation of scripture that foresees the imminent return of Christ to earth. Religion Dispatches. Yet it is a mistake to treat southern gospel as wholly synonymous with white gospel. The Martins hail from Hamburg near the Louisiana border in Ashley County, in the southeast quadrant of the state, where the west Gulf coastal plain meets the Mississippi Delta. [South Barrington, IL: Willow Creek Association, 2007]). Averyfineline.com, September 24, 2012, accessed October 1, 2013, http://averyfineline.com/2012/09/24/slouching-toward-pigeon-forge/. Cine d'aventuras. Courtesy of Douglas Harrison. This period was followed by the mobilization of right-leaning Protestants (and many conservative Catholics) into a political base for the Republican Party in the Reagan Era and a power base for evangelical leaders (including Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, Pat Robertson'sand later Ralph Reed'sChristian Coalition, and, more recently, Donald Wildmon's American Family Association, and Tony Perkins's Family Research Council); and the not-entirely unrelated realignments within conservative and fundamentalist Protestantism wrought by the rise of non-denominational evangelical mega-churches and the Tea Party. Joyce Martin was married to Alton G. Martin on October 1, 1983 in Rockwall County, Texas. "17On "lived religion," see David D. Hall, Lived Religion: Toward a History of Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 321. Menu. Claiming a home in southern gospel grounds The Martins in an imagined identity that they in turn hold out for fans seeking models of stability and reassurance in an extended moment of great cultural change and instability for white evangelical fundamentalist religious culture. Rather than denoting a style or sound of vernacular sacred musicmaking, "southern gospel" as a term and a set of at-best partially unexamined social practices and religious beliefs "indicate the music and culture of those people who choose to associate themselves with this tradition. For "homecoming" as a practice and concept in southern fundamentalism, see Jeff Todd Titon, Powerhouse for God: Speech, Chant, and Song in Appalachian Baptist Church (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988). In commercial Christian music, this transformation foregrounded oft-blurred distinctions between "evangelicals" and "fundamentalists." Except [we didn't] know where to go, all the rooms were locked, too much going on in the auditorium, so Mark suggests we go into the bathroom. Still, the cultivation and creation of twentieth-century commercial black gospel's golden age (19451960) was largely rooted in Chicago, Philadelphia, and other urban centers in the Midwest and Northeast where many black southerners moved during the Great Migration. Evangelicals and fundamentalists have never agreed on how best to live out the scriptural directive that Christians be in the world, but not of it. Bill Gaither sighs contentedly, then adopts an avuncular, lightheartedly admonishing tone, commenting that The Martins had only sung the first verse and indicating, as if unplanned, that the trio should "finish it" on the couch at that moment. Structural Info Filmography Known for movies Saved! In its resurgence, one hears from the gospel stage and in other acts of self-representation an intensification of emphasis on social resentment and cultural grievance. Arkansas, writes Brooks Blevins, "has become in many ways indistinguishable from concurrent stereotypes of backwoods southerners or of southern mountaineers and hillbillies," despite the geographical, cultural, and social differences between the Ozark and Ouachita hill country to the north of the state, the Mississippi River alluvial region to the east, and the "primeval swampland" in the state's southern half. In this context, gospel music functions as a style of vernacular religious entertainment and a form of evangelical cultural experience transcending denominations or confessional traditions. "43Harrison, Then Sings My Soul, 124. Researched in the 1990s and published in 2002, Close Harmony traces the music's development from the nineteenth century. Edit. See Shearon, email to H-Southern Music Network mailing list, March 27, 2009. "Gospel," as Heilbut has noted, is "the favored term for what working-class black congregations [do,] often to the exclusion to white traditions." tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_35', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_35').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); The National Quartet Convention, southern gospel's annual flagship event that at its height in the mid-1990s drew crowds approaching 25,000 for four or five nights in a row, no longer attracts audiences or interest to warrant multiyear leases with the Kentucky Fair and Expo Center in Louisville. Anthony Heilbut, "Black Urban Hymnody," on, Stephen Shearon, Harry Eskew, James C. Downey, and Robert Darden, "Gospel Music,". Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009. Southern gospel's negotiation of them has often manifested in overt racism or a way of thinking, talking, and singing that renders whiteness falsely normative. See Jones, Faith and Meaning in the Southern Uplands (UrbanaChampaign: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 9. Martin Jarvis; Randy Edelman; David Jason; Michael Hordern; Oliver Williams; Community. Gaither Gospel Series DVD cover. The Martins Wiki: Salary, Married, Wedding, Spouse, Family For the film starring Lee Evans, see The Martins (film)The Martins are a Christian music vocal trio composed of three siblings: Joyce Martin Sanders, Jonathan Martin, and Judy Martin Hess. The only subgenre of white Christian music that remains relatively strong is Praise and Worship music, whose fortunes have been buoyed by the demand for choruses in non-denominational evangelical churches. (Jennifer Jones, "Natalie Grant Responds after Leaving Grammys Early," Christianitytoday.com, January 29, 2014, accessed January 31, 2014, http://www.christiantoday.com/article/mass.wedding.at. For more on links between country and gospel, see Douglas Harrison, "Grace to Catch a Falling Soul: Country, Gospel, and Evangelical Populism in the Music of Dottie Rambo," in Walking the Line: Country Music Lyricists and the American Culture, edited by Roxanne Harde and Thomas Alan Holmes (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013), 7796. See Shearon et al., "Gospel Music," and Heilbut, The Gospel Sound: Good News in Bad Times (Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard, 2001 [1979]) and Harrison, "Why Southern Gospel Music Matters," Religion and American Culture 18, no. "62 Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 5. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_62', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_62').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); The gestalt of Arkansas rusticity associated with The Martins serves to understand their sophisticated harmonies. October 14, 1928 in San. Instead, CCM performers and fans came together around a common commitment to reclaim the devil's music for God. Between highlights, Bill Gaither interviews Joyce, Judy, and Jonathan,54The interviews are actually excerpts taken from long conversations filmed in a homey setting in which The Martins sit side-by-side on a large couch facing the camera and Bill Gaither sits in an overstuffed armchair to the right of the frame. Joyce: So we went into the bathroom. More deeply, the decline in market share and cultural capital has eroded southern gospel's self-concept and induced a crisis of authenticity. That finally holds who You are. My sources include celebrity interviews of performers, DVD bonus features, album covers, and online press coverage. His interview enacts a modern gospel version of the venerable Arkansas Traveler colloquy in which a high-born southerner (the Traveler) engages an Arkansas Squatter in a dialogue about the differences of class and geography.60Bill Clinton's presidential campaign used the Traveler name and image as a way to strengthen his populist appeal running against a Washington insider. [4] Judy Martin Hess (b. Such work is as welcome as it is needed. Siblings, Joyce, Jonathan and Judy, collectively known as The Martins, have enjoyed count- less radio hits and performances at concert halls, arenas, auditoriums and churches worldwide. She has two children. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2009. The videos still air regularly on many local-access religious television channels, but sales today are largely driven through merchandizing at concerts, the Gaither Homecoming Magazine, syndicated radio shows on terrestrial and satellite radio, and not least of all through the Gaither online store.