ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the question of what it means to listen' in modernity, drawing on sociological and anthropological theories of embodiment and ethnographic fieldwork at St John's. Theorists of modernity have often argued that at least since the Enlightenment, vision has been the privileged means of knowing the world, with listening subordinated to seeing. The chapter begins by considering the place of listening' in modernity, drawing on the work of Michel de Certeau and Charles Hirschkind. It then describes the means through which conservative evangelicals seek to become listeners'. British conservative evangelicals have garnered increased public visibility in recent years due to their arguments that Christians are being marginalized and campaigns against gay marriage, abortion and the ordination of women and gay clergy, yet studies of their everyday religious lives are rare. This constructs an aesthetic boundary distinguishing authentic' Christianity as Word-based from other Christian traditions placing greater emphasis on ritual or emotion.
