ABSTRACT
The title of this book plays suggestively with the layers of ambiguity with which evangelical Christians shroud the shaping of call and response. The very concept of laity implies that not all are necessarily lay; but is any distinction between the laity and the rest one of status, even caste, or is it simply one of function? And if it is one of function, can that distinction always be quite as utilitarian as it sounds? When might the qualities needed for that function become special rather than particular? Such questions are sharpened by the concept of call, which implies response, by the context of social class, which entails distinction, and by the training, which gives effect to the call, conditions the responses and slips so easily into the expectations of social class.
