"Let’s Get it On! Performance Theory and Black Pentecostalism Religion and Culture"

This paper utilizes Judith Butler’s notion of performativity to ground the subsequent reading of a sermon titled “Lets Get It On” by Bishop Iona Locke of Detroit, Michigan and the congregation’s response to it1. Judith Butler’s definitive book, Gender Trouble set the groundwork for the discourse of performativity subsequently in both feminist and queer theory undertakings2. Performance theorists will augment Butlerian notions of performativity in helpful and instructive ways. This paper attempts to explicate how gender and sexuality are experienced within a Black Pentecostal context through language and actions that sexualize, normalize and rupture heteronormativity.