DOES YOUR PREACHER PREACH LIKE THIS

It was the time to "whoop."

To whoop or not whoop? Rev. E. Dewey Smith may have sounded like he was screaming. But those who grew up in the African-American church know better. He was whooping. He was practicing a art form that's divided the black church since slavery.
Whooping is a celebratory style of black preaching that pastors typically use to close a sermon. Some church scholars compare it to opera; it's that moment the sermon segues into song.
Whooping pastors use chanting, melody and call-and-response preaching to reach parishioners in a place where abstract preaching cannot penetrate, scholars say.
Whooping preachers aim "to wreck" a congregation by making people feel the sermon, not just hear it, says the Rev. Henry Mitchell, a scholar who identified the link between whooping and African oral traditions.
I guess I can deal with this better than Eddie Long ministering young boys.

-AL