ABSTRACT
The Moral Majority and, more generally, the current political activism among fundamentalists are evidence of a deeper movement within American fundamentalism to abandon its historic separatism from "the world". Fundamental Baptist witnessing is not just a monologue that constitutes its speaker as a culturally specific person; it is also a dialogue that reconstitutes its listeners. Numerous poetic and performance features teem on the surface of Reverend Cantrell's speech. Reverend Cantrell at one point in this initial speech and at several points later on quite overtly identified me with his narrative listeners. The hell-fire-and-damnation speaker getting down on Cantrell's case shortly became the spirit of God convicting him about his place in life—that he was lost and had not yet given his whole life over to Christ. Reverend Cantrell spelled out the moment of salvation elliptically in his own conversion narrative, and he elaborated it in his disquisition on Holy Spirit.
