Prophecy and the Performance of Metaphor

Author(s): Thomas J. Csordas

Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 99, No. 2 (Jun., 1997), pp. 321-332
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
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THOMASJ. CSORDAS / CASEWESTERN
RESERVE
UNIVERSITY
Prophecyand the
Performanee
Metaphor
The Religions of all Nations are derived from each Nation's
different reception of the Poetic Genius which is eveIy
where called the Spirit of Prophecy.
WiSliamBlake, All Religions Are CAne
THEMOVEMENT KNOWNas the Catholic Charismatic
Renewal, beginning in the United States in 1967,
claimed to offer a uniquespiritualexperience to Roman
Catholics. It promised dramaticrenewal of church life
based on a spirituality of personal relationship"with
Jesus and direct access to divine power and inspiration
through a series of aspiritualgifts," or Ucharisms"The
movement attracted a strong following among rela-
tively well-educated, middle-class suburban Catholics,
and since its inception it has spread throughout the
world.l Division into covenant communities"andparo-
chial Uprayergroups"is the most evident feature of in-
ternal diversityamong charismatics.By far the majority
of active participants are involved in prayer groups,
whose members assemble weekly for collective prayer
but do not maintain intensive commitments to their
group and sometimes participate in several groups si-
multaneouslyor serially.At the opposite pole are the in-
tensely committed and hierarchically structured
communities based on a solemn written agreement or
acovenant."By the mid-1980sseveral distinct networks
of covenant communitieshad emerged,and their efforts
at evangelization were directed as much at their less-
committed charismaticbrethrenas at the unconverted.
A symbolic event of critical import to the move-
ment's course was the decision in 1975 to stage the an-
nual charismatic conference, until then hosted on the
campus of Notre Dame Universityin Indiana,at the cen-
ter of the Catholic world in Rome. During the confer-
THOMAS J. CSORDAS is a professorinthe Department
of Anthropology,
CaseWesternReserveUniversity, Cleveland,OH44106, anda visiting
scholarat the RussellSage Foundation, NewYork,NY10021.
AmericanAnthropologist99(2):321-332. CopyrightO 1997, AmericanAnthropological
ol
ence the pope formallyaddressed the movement. Char-
ismatic liturgy including prayer in tongues was con-
ducted in St. Peter's basilica, and in this symbolically
charged setting, Uprophecy"was uttered. The prophe-
cies delivered at St. Peter's were uttered principallyby
prophets from The Wordof God community,the largest
and most highly organized of charismatic covenant
communities. Understood as messages from the deity
spoken through a divinely granted charism, they
warned of impending times of difficulty and trials for
the church. They stated that God's church and people
would be different, and cautioned, Buildings that are
now standing will not be standing. Supports that are
there for my people now will not be there." They de-
clared that those who heard this divine word would be
prepared by the deity for a "time of darkness coming
upon the world" but also for a time of glory for the
church and people of God."An inclination to take these
words literally and with urgency was reinforced by the
charismatic delegation from Lebanon, whose country
hadjust entered the throes of its enduringcivil war and
where indeed buildings that had been standing were al-
ready no longer standing. Membersof the Beirut com-
munitytraveled to the United States with the AnnArbor
delegation and developed an ongoing affiliation with
The Wordof God. The immediacy of their plight lent a
sense of urgency to continued prophecies in the late
1970s.
Until the Rome conference, prophecy had been un-
derstood by charismatics as utterance intended for the
edification of their own groups or of individualswithin
the groups. Now for the first time, reinforced by the
powerful symbolic setting of their utterance, these
words were deemed to be a direct message from God to
the public at large. The URomeprophecies,"as they be-
came known, were widely disseminated through the
movement's magazine New Covenant and widely dis-
cussed in charismatic gatherings and conferences.
Association.
322 * VOL. 99, NO. 2 * JUNE 1997
AMERICANANTHROPOLOGIST
Charismaticsbegan to see fulElllmentof the prophecies
in the fuel shortages of the late 1970s, in disastrous
mudslides in California, in the blizzards of 1977 and
1978in the Northeast, in the perceived moral decline of
American society, and in the Lebanese civil war. Be-
yond these signs, however, the prophecies were con-
strued to indicate that the CatholicChurchwas in peril.
There were not only the long-observed decline in reli-
gious vocations and the perceived retreat of Catholi-
cism before Protestantism in the third world but also a
compromise with secular values and a consequent de-
cline in moral authority that made the church ill-
equipped for the coming ahardtimes."These concerns
appearedto be referents of the Rome prophecies' warn-
ing that Usupportsthat are there for my people now will
not be there."
Whilesome movement leaders had from the outset
in the late 1960s expressed the goal of renewing the en-
tire church, the logic of the prophecies appeared to be
that the role of CharismaticRenewal was actually to
protect the church. Thus it was not only an ideal for
Catholics to become charismaticbut also for charismat-
ics to band together into covenant communities, for
these were thought to be structuresin which the faithful
could best gird themselves for the impending battle
with the forces of darkness. This formulation marked
the years between 1975and 1980as a phase that was the
closest the Catholic CharismaticRenewal has been to a
position of apocalyptic millennialism. Even prior to
these developments, several leading groups had made
plans to forlaalize ties among covenant communities.
The principle was that, just as in a single community
each memberis thought to be granteda spiritualgift, or
charism, which contributes to the collective life of the
community as a abodyt or a apeople,"so each commu-
nity has a particulargift or mission. Togetherthey could
form a community of communities,"a divinely consti-
tuted people" building the kingdomof God. The Rome
prophecies increased the urgency of this plan. As we
shall see, the prominent metaphor articulated in sub-
sequent prophetic utterance was that of the alliance as
a Ubulwark" for the church against the apocalyptic on-
slaught of the forces of darkness.
Charismatic Ritual Language
Catholic charismatic ritual language is composed
of a system of genres and a vocabulary of motives.
There are four major genres of charismatic ritual lan-
guage: prophecy, teaching, prayer, and sharing. These
genres are named, formalized speech varieties used
with regularityin ritualsettings andfrequentlyregarded
as verbal manifestations of the sacred. Teachtng clari-
fies some spiritualtruth and thus enables its hearers to
lead better Christianlives. Prayer to the deity is of four
basic types: worship, petition or intercession on behalf
of another, aseeking the Lord"for divine guidance, and
taking authority"in the form of a command for evil to
depart from a person or situation. Sharing is similarto
everyday conversation or narrationexcept that it must
have some spiritualvalue or edifying effect. Prophecyis
a first-personutterance in which the I" is God;the hu-
man speaker is merely the deity's mouthpiece.
Our focus here is on prophecy, which for charis-
matics is a kind of divine revelation, a means of access
to the mind of God.Understood to be the literal word of
God, prophecy is the most overtly sacred genre of
Catholiccharismaticrituallanguage.This status is high-
lighted in performance by distinctive features of pros-
ody and by the imposition of formal constraints on dic-
tion. Prophecies are typically uttered in a strong, clear
voice and in a tone that can be declamatory, authorita-
tive, or imperative.Prophecies are usually prefaced by
an opening formula, most often UMychildren"or UMy
people." There is a characteristic intonation pattern
within each line of prophecy:the voice rises in the mid-
dle and falls again at the end of the line, producing a
singsong effect. Prophecy is usually recited in couplets,
a technique common in both oral and written traditional
poetry.2 In contrast to the less-formalized genres of
charismatic ritual language, the measured cadences of
parallel structure add to the solemnity and sacrality of
prophetic utterance.
The second component of charismatic ritual lan-
guage is its specialized vocabulary of motives (Mills
1940).C. WrightMillsunderstooda motive as a complex
of meaning which orients action. More precisely, he
said, UMotivesare words.... They do not denote ele-
ments 'in' individuals. They stand for anticipated situ-
ational consequences of questioned conduct.... Mo-
tives are names for consequential situations, and
surrogatesfor actions leadingto them"(1940:905).A vo-
cabularyof motives is not a randomlist but a self-refer-
encing system of terms that orient action. Charismatic
motives include positive terms such as covenant, com-
mitment, power, love, and brotherhood, and negative
ones such as world, flesh, and devil. Across ritual
events, discrete acts of utterance constantly circulate
motives, constituting the basis for a speciElckind of in-
tertextualitywithin and across genres.
We can best understandthis by invoking Roy Rap-
paport's (1979) observation that ritual performance
communicates two kinds of messages to participants.
First are messages encoded in the ritual canon that cor-
respond to enduring aspects of the social and cosmo-
logical order. Second are messages carried by vari-
ations in performance that index current states of
participants in relation to the invariant order encoded
by the canon. AlthoughRappaportis concerned primar-
 PROPHECYAND PERFORMANCE
ily with the fixed, invariantrituals of a liturgical order,
the distinction is relevant to charismaticritual commu-
nication. To be precise, the charismatic motives are
terms common in many other Christian forms of reli-
gious discourse, derived directly from and refexTingdi-
rectly to the scriptures (Burke 1970). Thus on the one
hand, the vocabularyof motives constitutes the charis-
matic canonical language.Onthe other hand, as the mo-
tives are circulated in performance,each genre endows
them with a characteristic rhetorical function, indexi-
cal in that it addresses and reflects the immediate state
of participants. In prophecy, motives are promulgated:
UMypeople, you are part of my plan."In prayer,they are
invoked: uLord,help me serve your purpose and your
plan." In teaching, they are expounded: It is part of
God's plan that we should build strong Christiancom-
munities-"In sharing, they are negotiated: UWhenI did
that, I felt I was helping to bring about a small part of
God's plan." Thus performance circulates motives by
formulating them into generically recognizable utter-
ances, giving them the specificity to redirect attention
and instigate to action.
The Bulwark Prophecies
Much charismatic prophecy is highly redundant
and, as it were, spirituallyquotidian.But there are occa-
sionally prophecies such as the Rome prophecies that
have significant impact on subsequent events and dis-
course. In the wake of the Rome prophecies came a less
widely known series of prophecies critical to sub-
sequent relations within and among charismatic com-
munities. Informally referred to as the Ubulwark
prophecies,"these texts constitute an exhortation and a
call for unity in service to a collective goal of protecting
the church against the onslaught of evil in the world.
They emphasize the difficulty of achievingthis goal and
enumerate a variety of possible pitfalls along the way.
Communitymembers saw in them the articulation of a
vision and a mission. As ritualperformancethat is at the
same time a manifestation of the sacred, the utterance
of these prophecies created the bulwarkas an objectifi-
cation of the collective self.
The first two texts were uttered by experienced
prophets at a 1975 conference convened to establish a
federation of communities.The thirdwas spoken a little
over a year later at the anniversary gathering of The
Wordof God. I transcribedthem from audiotapeseveral
years after they were uttered. At that time I was unable
to determine the identities of the prophets. But it is
probably safe to assume that they were among a select
group of prophetically gifted members of The Wordof
God.3
OF METAPHOR/ THOMASJ. CSORDAS 323
Prophecy 1, Summer 1975
1 This gatheringis a great hope
This meeting is both a hope and a promise.
I am raising up courageous, strong, gifted men and
women who will join themselves to you.
As you hold fast to one another, others will come and
be joined to you.
5 Together you will labor with me to stem the tide of evil
that is sweeping the earth.
I have broughtyou together for this purpose;go on with
confidence, courage, and determination.
I will be with you, and in the days to come I will raise
up men in communities
Whowill bind themselves fast to you in my service.
Let yourselves be joined together;
10 Hold on to one another in faith and hope and see what
I will do.
Prophecy 2, Summer 1975
I am doing a new work of unity;
I am stirringyou up to new dedication and new zeal in
my service.
Those of you who have never seen one another will be
drawn into unity
As you recognize your common bond of commitmentto
me and to my purpose.
15 I will stir you up;
I will rally you to new effectiveness in my seIvice:
For I am forming a people to proclaim my Wordanew.
The day is at hand when my Wordwill be proclaimed
with new power.
Whenthose who have never heard it before,
20 Whose ears have been closed, will begin to hear.
I have brought you here to the beginningof something
very importantin my Church;
I have broughtyou together here to join you together
And to give you a vision of what is to come:
I will make you a bulwark to defend against the on-
slaught of the Enemy.
25 Those of you who are not prepared,
Those of you who are not ready,
I will not have them swept away because they are not
ready;
But I will protect them behind the bulwarkthat I form
out of you.
I want you to be ready to join yourselves with others
30 And to stand together with them in the battle against
the onslaught that's coming:
To defend the weak
And to defend those who are confused;
To protect those who are not prepared
Until I am able to fulElllmy entire plan.
35 I tell you, you are a part and not the whole;
You are a part and not the whole.
There are many other things I am doing in this world
today
And there are many other ways that I am at work to
raise up my people in strength and in glory.
I want you, though, to take your part seriously,
324 AMERICAN * VOL. 99, NO. 2 * JUNE1997
ANTHROPOLOGIST

40 And to lay your lives down for it. You are to go to those outlying sprouts and call them
But I want you to understandthat only I see the entire in.

plan; It is for you to see that they receive my Word,that they

Only I see every front of the battle. are gently uprooted and transplanted,
I will raise you up with others, 80 That they too may flourish and add strength to my
And bind you together to make a bulwark. bulwark that I am raising up.
45 But that is not all there is to be, because when you have And you are to be open to sending parts of that hedge
stemmed the onslaught of the Enemy out,
Then I will reveal to you greater things. To seeing it transplantedto extend the bulwarkacross
In the unity you have with one another there is a prefig- the face of the earth.
urementand foreshadowingof somethingmuch greater But are you ready;
that I intend to do; Are you ready to believe in your hearts that you are that
Something greater, much more vast, much more glori- bulwark?
ous, I will unveil at that time. 85 Do you have the conviction
You are a foreshadowing and a prefigurement Do you have the courage
50 You are a bulwarkI have set up to stem the onslaught To say to the world
of the Enemy. To say to others,
You are a part and not the whole; UWeare that bulwark,
You are my servants and my people. 90 We are God's work: Come stand with us"?
Lay down your lives now for the things I have revealed I tell you this,
That unless you have come to me
to you;
And become utterly destitute,
Commityourselves to them, so that in the day of battle
You will not have the courage to speak that truth.
you can stand fast and prove victorious with me.
95 If you say, I am God's plan, we are God's bulwark"
Prophecy 3, November21, 1976 And you cling to anythingfrom the world,
You will not speak the truth, you cannot be believed.
55 I have spoken to you of a bulwark;
Youcannot be believed unless you are utterlydestitute.
I have told you that I am raising a bulwarkagainst the
If you say to me,
coming tide of darkness, 100 aIhave received your truth,"
A bulwarkto protect my people
And yet you have protected a corner of your heart to
And protect my Church.
cling to the things of the world,
And because your mind of man cannot comprehendthe I cannot believe you.
mind of God, If you say to yourself,
60 I've spoken to you in figures. I believe God's Word,"
You might envision the bulwarkas a wall of rock: 105 And yet you treasure things of the world,
I speak to you now of that bulwark in the figure of an You cannot believe yourselves.
impenetrablehedge. If you say to the world,
Yes, I have scattered my seed of truthwidely across the We are God's bulwark, we know God's truth, we are
surface of the earth; God's plan for man,"
And some of that seed has sprouted and begun to grow And the world sees that you treasurethings that belong
into the impenetrablehedge that will be my bulwark. to them,
65 Yes, see how just four seeds have landed in your midst 110 They will not believe you.
and sprung up; Only if you are utterly destitute,
And other seeds have been cartied by the wind of my Only if you give up all that you have
Spirit, And come to me with empty hands,
Otherseeds have been windbrokeat that first sprouting Can you be believed.
of the hedge, 115 The truth is too great, the truth is too profound
And there they too have germinatedand taken root and To be compromisedby any attachmentto things of this
grown up, world.
And the hedge has grown, Yes, you are free to receive from me a greatabundance,
70 And more seeds have been broughtto it by the wind of But you are not free to take it for your own purposes;
my Spirit. You can receive from me riches and power, lands and
It continues to flourish, to rise in strength; cities,
And I prune it vigorously. 120 But you cannot use them for your own pleasure.
Yet look about and see that other seeds have germi- All that you have must be turned to my service,
nated away from the hedge; And when you speak my word of truth
They stand by themselves-they grow unpruned. The world will be convicted,
75 I say to you, you are the bulwark And the world will believe.
You are the hedge, 125 Know this,
And you are to see that the bulwarkgrows in strength: That no one who has given all to me,
 PROPHECY
ANDPERFORMANCE
No one who has entrusted himself completely to me,
Has ever penshed.
Those who give themselves to me
130 Are they who endure and taste everlastingvictory.
Motive and Metaphor
For the analysis of ritual language, Stanley Tam-
biah (1979) has proposed a distinction between the illo-
cutionary frame that establishes the force of an utter-
ance and the predicative frame in which qualities are
attributedand transferredamong persons and entities.
In charismatic ritual language, the articulation of mo-
tives contributes to both the illocutionaryand predica-
tive frames. First,motives reinforcethe illocutionaryef-
fect by serving as aids in composition. Such elementary
constituents of verbal formulas are, as Albert Lord
(1960) has shown, an essential part of the linguistic rep-
ertoire of individualsfluent in spontaneous oral compo-
sition. The ability to generate poetic formulasfrom the
vocabulary of motives not only helps a speaker utter
prophecies likely to be Udiscerned"as appropriatebut
also abets the spontaneity of composition experienced
as powerful inspirationfrom a divine source outside the
individual. Motives also guide the predication of quali-
ties, both in the manner in which they are elaborated
and in that they suggest or Umotivate" appropriatemeta-
phors. The repeated use of these motives and repeated
judgments about the appropriateness of their use en-
sure that prophetic utterance expresses a consistent at-
titude toward the social world. Theirprominence in the
bulwarktexts is evident, and I will list them only briefly
in order of the frequencyof their occurrence:world (9),
word (5), service (5), people (4), plan (4), enemy (3),
darkness/evil (2), commitment (2), power (2), battle
(2), promise (1), and freedom (1).
Although it appears only once at the beginning of
the series of prophecies, the divine Upromise" is the key
motive elaborated and fulEllledby the creation of the
metaphoricalbulwark.It is also of interest because for
speech-act theory, in which illocutionaryforce typically
is found to inhere in Uperformativeverbs,"promising is
the protoptypcial Ucommissive"illocution.4 I suggest
that the use of Upromise"(line 2) as a motive in its noun
form in fact fuses the predicative and illocutionary
frames. First, both hope and promise are predicated
onto the meeting, lending a particularqualitzzto what
otherwise would be a typical case of a charismaticritual
gathering. Second, I would argue that, while in formal
linguistic terms the illocutionaryact of promisingis not
performed (I promise that . . ."), to consider the utter-
ance in the illocutionary frame suggests that it does in-
deed have the force of a promise ("Thismeeting is a
promise"),especially since the speaking subject is God.
OF METAPHOR
/ THOMAS
J. CSORDAS 325
The argumentof the bulwarkprophecies follows a
rhetorical trajectory from the opening statement that
the meeting is a hope and a promise to the concluding
statement, which specifies that to give and entrust the
self to the divinity corresponds to an ultimate promise
of imperishability and everlasting victory. That these
prophecies conclude with such an emphasis should re-
mind us of Michelle Rosaldo's analysis of the cultural
implications of the promise as a prominent and even
privileged speech act in Euro-Americansociety:
To think of promising is, I would claim, to focus on the
sincerity and integrity of the one who speaks.... It is a
public testimony to commitments we sincerely undertake,
born of a genuine human need to contract" social bonds,
an altruismthat makes us want to publicize our plans. Thus
the promise leads us to think of meaningas a thing derived
from inner life. A world of promises appears as one where
privacy, not community, is what gives rise to talk.
[1982:211]
For Rosaldo, the possibility andperhaps even the neces-
sity of the promise presumes a prior lack of connection
among discrete, private selves that have inner lives
characterizedby capacities for orientationto the world
such as sincerity and commitment. In contrast, she
posed the example of the Ilongots. In the Ilongot world,
the self is not at all an inner" one, continuous through
time, such that its actions can be judged in terms of sin-
cerity, integrity,and commitment.Because Ilongots do
not see their inmost 'hearts' as constant causes, inde-
pendent of their acts, they have no reason to 'commit'
themselves to future deeds" (1982:218). Rosaldo here
distinguishes a self culturally constituted as constant
and interiorized from one constituted in the conse-
quences of acts for relationships in a community. We
will shortly have occasion to warn against drawingsuch
a distinction too sharply. Nevertheless, Rosaldo's ob-
servation contributes to our understandingof the rhe-
torical cqnditions underwhich the sacred self struggles
to come into being. That is, as the condition of possibil-
ity for promise and commitment, the individuated self
characteristic of both the deity and his followers is at
the same time that which makes community problem-
atic. We thus begin to understandthe internal connec-
tion among motives such as promise, commitment, and
community.
Let us now consider the transformationof motive
into metaphor. Recall that the setting for the first two
bulwarkprophecies was a conference convened to form
an alliance among covenant communities. The per-
ceived need for this alliance evolved throughthe elabo-
ration of motives including community, commitment,
and the negativities of world, flesh, and devil. Given its
pivotal role in grouplife and culminatingwith the words
spoken at the Rome conference, prophecy was a princi-
326 AMERICAN
ANTHROPOLOGIST
* VOL. 99, NO. 2 * JUNE1997
pal medium for articulating these motives. In the bul-
wark prophecies, the alliance came to embody the mo-
tive of promise in the sense that it was the deity's an-
swer to the sense of urgency of the Rome prophecies.
The alliance was taken up into this body of discourse
not in terms of motives as a acommunityof communi-
ties," however, but as a metaphorical Ubulwark,"the
purpose of which is to stem the onslaught of evil and
protect the church.The establishment of the alliance as
a sacred reality is achieved by the creation of the bul-
wark through performance of a complex illocution-
predication by God, the ultimate speaker in prophetic
utterance. We can examine the bulwarkimage in the il-
locutionary frame by turning to the use of verb tense
and in the predicative frame throughits relation to mo-
tives, to Uinchoatepronouns"(Fernandez 1974), and to
itself as it is transformedin discourse.
In line 24 the divine speaker first says, I will make
you a bulwark,"and continues to describe the function
of the bulwarkin his plan. Againin lines 43-46 the deity
states this promise/intention, adding that there will be
more to come afterward.The critical act occurs in line
50: the tense changes to simple present, and God says,
You are a bulwarkthat I have set up."In John Searle's
(1979) terminologyof speech acts, the Ucommissive"act
marked by the future tense is replaced by a declara-
tion"in the present tense. In the act of utterance the bul-
wark has been created, and this creation is rhetorically
effected by a simple change in verb tense from futureto
present. Thereis yet more, however, for the tense imme-
diately changes again to the present perfect Uhaveset
up." This enhances illocutionary force by, in John
Austin's (1975) terms, referringto the bulwarkin a con-
stative or simply descriptive mode, thus marking the
creation of the bulwarkas alreadya fait accompli.
Culturalrealityis not created once and for all, how-
ever; to be sustained it must be continually re-created.
Thus we find that more than a year later, in prophecy 3,
the creative act is repeated. In line 56 it is stated, uIhave
told you that I am raising a bulwark,"but by line 75 this
has become I say to you, you are the bulwark."The tem-
poral continuity between the prophecies is evident not
only in the affirmationby repetition of the performative
act but also in the difference in choice of verb tenses.
The later prophecy acknowledges the prior creation of
the bulwark by initiating the performative sequence
with the present perfect (I am raising) rather than the
future (I will raise).5The illocutionaryforce of the act is
emphasized by inclusion of the formula I say to you,"
leaving no doubt that the utterance is declarative and
not constative. Again, however, the continuity of pro-
phetic discourse over time suggests that the declaration
is not only a re-creationof the bulwark.It maintainsa lo-
cutionary or constative element insofar as it is a re-
minder of an act alreadyperformed,a description of an
already extant state of affairs. It can also be construed
to have the force of an assertive insofar as it can be read
as taking for grantedthat God is in fact creatingthe bul-
wark and then asserting that the listeners aarethat bul-
wark."In either case, once more the bulwarkappearsas
a fait accompli.
From this analysis we can see that the efficacy of
the bulwarkmetaphoris dependent on a genre conven-
tion in the performanceof prophecy.This convention is
the use of performativespeech acts, the force of which
derives from their combination in a performative se-
quence intratextually within each utterance and in-
tertextually across a temporallycontinuous body of ut-
terances. This sequence can be summarized as
progressing from commissive to declarative to consta-
tive (assertive) speech acts. To the extent that pro-
phetic utterance is heard as the definitive word of the
deity and to the extent that the deity is omnipotent, the
conditions for its effect on the audience is self-
contained in the utterance. Prophecy encodes what we
might call a Upresumptiveperlocution" and therefore
carries its own guarantee" of performativefelicity and
predicative success.6
Let us be more precise regardingthis claim about
presumptive perlocution. Searle (1975) points out that
in both commissive and directive utterances, which
form the bulk of these texts, the relation of aworld"and
UwordXis that the world Ufits"the words. I promise
things will be a certain way and that state of affairsis ex-
pected to come to pass. Onthe other hand, the assertive
or constative presupposes the inverse, that the words fit
the world:such and such is the case, and I am saying so.
As the middleterm, a declarativeact achieves its media-
tion by means of what Searle understandsas a very pe-
culiar relation"between world and words that the per-
formance of a declaration brings about by its very
successful performance"(1975:18).To explain how this
is possible, he appeals to the necessity of an uextra-
linguistic institution"that determines constitutive rules
in addition to those of language, and within which the
speaker and hearer must occupy specific places. Among
charismatics these conditions are met, respectively, in
the constitutive rules that define prophecy as a genre
and in the organizationof the covenant community.
Searle carries us even further,however, in observ-
ing that the only two exceptions to the requirementthat
an extralinguistic institution underlie every declaration
are statements that concern languageitself and super-
natural"declarations. Thus when God says, ULetthere
be light,"that is a declaration. The remarkablestate of
affairs is that in prophecy the constitution of the extra-
linguistic institution erases the requirementof its own
existence as assurance of a declaration'sefficacy. Inso-
far as the declarationmust be understoodto be made by
God in orderto count as prophecy, we can say there is a
 PROPHECYAND PERFORMANCE
presumptiveperlocution alreadyembeddedin the utter-
ance.
Metaphorssuch as that of the bulwarkconstitute a
critical link between prophecy as an arbiter of social
practice (intersubjectivity) and as an ongoing body of
discourse (intertextuality). Withregardto intersubjec-
tivity, the metaphor supplies a concrete identity to an
inchoate weX that is in search of a new pattern of rela-
tionships motivated by religiously prescribed goals
(Fernandez 1986). Indeed, the texts give explicit in-
structions on how to use the pronounwe. Withregardto
intertextuality,the metaphor contributes to the tempo-
ral continuity, coherence, and creativityof discourse as
it is repeated in successive utterances and applied in
new situations (Rosaldo 1975). This pivotal role of
metaphor goes beyond the possibility for repetition of
the constitutive act documented above, in which the
bulwark is created and re-created in prophetic utter-
ance. Once it has entered into ritualdiscourse, the meta-
phor can be transformed or amplified,as occurs in the
third prophecy.
In lines 60-62 the deity specifically acknowledges
speaking in figures, and the figure introduced to trans-
form the bulwarkis that of a hedge, as opposed to a wall
of solid rock. The semantic transformationis from inor-
ganic to organic and from monolithicunity to the plural
unity of intertwining shoots. This allows an amplifica-
tion of meaningthroughthe incorporationof aspects of
group life into the web of sacred discourse. Thusthe ref-
erence to the Ufourseeds" from which the hedge has
grown is simultaneously an allusion to the four found-
ers of the community and to the good seed" of Mat-
thew's gospel, a doubling that not incidentally contrib-
utes to the mythologization of the founders' role. The
image of separate shoots intertwiningto formthe hedge
is an idealization of interpersonalrelationships among
members of the community.Thenotion of Upruning" the
hedge refers both to the loss of members who cannot
maintaintheir commitmentto the groupand to the com-
plex of self-discipline and group authorityby means of
which individualsare disburdenedof their aworldlyXat-
tachments. Incorporating wayward shoots into the
hedge refers to the necessity of recruiting new mem-
bers, and transplantingparts of the hedge refers to the
community'splan to send out small groups of members
who would establish outposts in other localities.
Thatthe performanceof the bulwarkmetaphorwas
indeed compelling for its listeners is affirmedin the re-
sponse of two people present during the prophecy in
which the bulwarkwas transformedinto the hedge. One
man recalled that he pictured the big square hedge
along with other hedges and got the feeling of runners
going out to attach them together. The Ubig,squareX
shape of the hedge is probablya formalfeature retained
from its precursorthe bulwark,suggesting that the pro-
OF METAPHOR/ THOMASJ. CSORDAS 327
cess we are observing is indeed a transformation of
metaphorinstead of a substitution of one metaphorfor
another. Whereas the text describes transplanting
sprouts that germinatefrom separate seeds into the bul-
wark and transplantingparts of the hedge to extend the
bulwark, the hearer's image elaborates, speciEles,and
interprets by evoking a scene that includes multiple
hedges linked by runners.
Another participant stated that the image of the
bulwark in prophecy brought to mind aall the other
things the Lordhas told us about our mission as a com-
munity," thereby confirming Turner's (1974) insight
that key symbols are multivocal and polysemic. This
woman described her original notion of the bulwarkas
a kind of seawall. The seawall represented an idea she
could understand,"but the transformedhedge made it
much clearerfor her "sincethe hedge is both penetrable
and impenetrable."Herinterpretationappearsto recon-
cile a felt contradiction between the broader under-
standings of the communityas an inclusive space of in-
timacy and as an exclusive barrierto aggression.
Textualityand Intentionality
I have shown how prophetic utterance created and
transformed a metaphorical bulwark but have not yet
fully accounted for how that performancebecame com-
pelling. The best place to begin this part of the argument
is with pronouns. Pronouns are simultaneously rhetori-
cal and indexical, both asserting a claim about relation-
ships and demonstratingthose relationships in speech.
Thus they may also belong to both the illocutionaryand
predicative frames. The classic paper by Roger Brown
and A. Gilman(1960) showed how the use of formaland
familiar pronouns of address determines relations of
power and solidarity." More recently, Milton Singer
(1984, 1989)has elaborated CharlesSandersPeirce's I-
It-Thou"triad in a semiotics of self. In the present in-
stance, we must consider the aI"of charismatic proph-
ecy both in its pragmatic relation to the person who
utters the prophecy (an I-Irelation) and in its discourse-
internal relation to the audience addressed by the
prophecy (an I-yourelation).
At stake in the I-I relation is the authoritativeness
and self-evidence of the speech, as well as the speaker's
responsibility and control over that speech. Two
authors have recently proposed schemes by means of
which linguistic analysis can identify a continuum of
possible relations between speaker and speech in this
sense. The continuumoutlined by GregUrban(1989:43)
refers speciElcallyto the first-personpronoun and runs
from everydayspeech in which the uI"indexes an every-
day self to speech characteristic of trance in which the
I" projects a nonordinaryself. The continuum outlined
328 * VOL. 99, NO. 2 * JUNE 1997
AMERICANANTHROPOLOGIST
by John Du Bois (1986:328)refers to degree of speaker
control and runs from sovereign speech ultimately con-
trolled by the ego to speech in trance and beyond ego
control. Both emphasize increasing reliance on formal
features and contextual metapragmaticcues to distin-
guish stages of distance from everydayself or sovereign
ego. The linchpin of both systems, however, is the role
of indirect speech, or Ureportedspeech"in the sense de-
rived fromV. Voloshinov (1973) and taken up in current
linguistic anthropology (Hill and Irvine 1993; Lucy
1993). In this view, although the IX of direct quotation
typically refers to a thirdperson, as speech moves along
the continuum toward mimicry or the role-playing of
theater the speaking first person (in Du Bois's terms,
the proximate speaker who produces the utterance)
disappears,leaving an aIXin the form of an alter ego (the
prime speaker to whom the speech is attributed) that
can ultimately, in trance behavior, take on the autono-
mous characterof an ancestor or a deity.
The critical difference between the two accounts is
that for Du Bois the end of the continuumwith the least
ego control suggests the possibility of apersonal, inten-
tionless speech, while for Urban the continuum is
folded back on itself in a way that suggests the possibil-
ity of a dual I." For charismatics,the UItof prophecy is
subjectively and formally distinguishedfrom the self of
the proximate speaker, but within the text it functions
as an indexical referentialself in its own right,that is, as
God. Thus charismatic prophecy is typically not re-
ported speech. Whereas reported speech is quoted or
paraphrased from what has previously been said, by
convention prophecy is the deity speaking directly
throughthe prophet in the present moment. The typical
opening of a prophecy in group settings is a term of di-
rect address, such as My childrent or uMypeople." In
the bulwarkprophecies even this formalityis dispensed
with, and God begins to speak straightawayin his own
voice.
Furthermore, given the performative convention
that the deity may speak continuously regardless of his
mouthpiece, there is no opening formula in the second
bulwarkprophecy. Indeed, the convention is so power-
ful that the first word of the second utterance is the pro-
noun aI,"with no apparentneed to preface this with any
speciElcationthat the UItis God and not the proximate
human speaker. This tightly articulated transition
merges the predicative and illocutionary frames, predi-
cating intimacy between speakers insofar as they are
participating in the same inspiration and bearing the
force of authorityinsofar as it is recognized that the de-
ity can choose his mouthpieces at will. Moreover,it is a
concrete embodiment of the point (made explicitly in
the third prophecy) that the divine plan is larger than
any individualor even any community:you are a part
and not the wholeX(lines 35-36, 51). The performative
result is the virtual absence of an uintertextual gapX
(Briggs and Bauman 1992)between the first and second
utterance.
The only significant reportedspeech in these texts
occurs in lines 55-60, and quite remarkablythis passage
consists of the deity reportinghis own previous speech
(I have spoken to you," I have told you," UI'vespoken
to you"). Much more than a simple reminder, this is
once again a rhetorical strategy for reducing the in-
tertextual gap between utterances separated in time by
more than a year. Thus, following these prefatory re-
marks the very next line shifts into the present with I
speak to you now" (line 62). These strategies of in-
tertextuality that render prophecy independent of indi-
vidual speakers and continuous across time are critical
contributions to its authority.Taken together with the
circulation of motives that we identified above as an-
other strategy of intertextuality and the strategy of in-
scription in which prophecies are transcribed and kept
as a communityarchive, these oral performativestrate-
gies implicitly seek to minimize the intertextual gaps
between prophecy and sacred scripture. If scripture is
the word of God, prophecy is its direct extension in the
present: the living word of God among his people.
Another strategy of pronoun use occurs in lines
89-90, 95, 100, 104, and 108, in the form of what we can
call hypothetical reportedspeech (for example, line 95:
If you say, 'Iam God'splan, we are God'sbulwark't). In
these instances the divine speaker formulates possible
articulations of collective identity that might be made
by those listening to the prophecy. In a curiously hyper-
reflexive way, the I" in these lines could be the indexi-
cal referential aI"of the prophet as well as that of any
other participant,here as it were twice removed by be-
ing embedded as a hypotheticalin divine speech, which
is in turn embedded in the utterance of the prophet.
Whatis particularlystriking is that these hypotheticals
are the only places in which the first-personplural Uwe"
occurs: only four times in 130 lines and only within
quotes in order to instruct community members how
they should articulate the relationships among them-
selves (lines 89, 90, 95, and 108). Thus the we," the pro-
noun of intimacy, indexes participants'collective iden-
tity but not the relation between the divine speaker and
the assembled audience.
That this usage is not only indexical but also bears
rhetorical force is brought home by the avoidance of
Uwe"even where its use mightbe presumed obvious: in
line 5, when God says, UTogetheryou will labor with
me,"instead of Together we will labor."In sharp con-
trast, a relation of authority is asserted by the occur-
rence in 22 lines of the sequence I/you and in 11 lines of
the inverse sequence youlI-me-my. The former se-
quence typically frames a statement of what God will do
with or for his followers, while the latter frames a state-

ANDPERFORMANCE
PROPHECY
ment of reciprocal commitment and obligation to the
deity and his plan. The separation of divinity and hu-
manity is further emphasizedby the occurrence of pro-
nouns of address (you-your-yourselves) alone in 36
lines and of pronouns of self-reference (I-me-my)alone
in 16 lines.
This discussion suggests that we pursue the issue
of intentionality, a key issue in the critique of speech-
act theory in the philosophy of language (Lepore and
Van Gulick 1991; Searle 1983). For the most part, an-
thropologists have taken up the problem of intentional-
ity with respect to the relations among intention, re-
sponsibility, and control in speech.7 The critique
mounted by these authors has been an important cor-
rective to accounts that place the intention of individual
speakers universally at the center of the meaning-mak-
ing process in language. Despite its powerful contribu-
tion, however, in its strongest version this antiperson-
alist critiqueX of meaning and the elaboration of
intentionless meaning"could easily be interpreted to
draw an irreconcilable distinctionbetween the Western
speaker characterized by subjective intention and the
non-Westernspeaker characterizedby collective deter-
mination.Indeed, the linguistic argumentclosely paral-
lels the distinction drawn in psychological anthropol-
ogy between an entified Westernegocentric self and a
permeable non-Westernsociocentric self, an implicitly
orientalist distinction that has recently come increas-
ingly to be modified and attenuated (Csordas
1994b:33S337).
Some of these authors grantspeech-act theory and
the speaker's intention a degree of value, rejecting only
its universalclaims (Du Bois 1993:69;Duranti1993a:44).
Durantiin particularcalls for a balanced approach,not
denyingthat there may be occasions in Samoawhere in-
dividual intention can be invoked in understanding
meaning. Du Bois acknowledges the advances made by
speech-act theory even in pointing to the occurrence of
intentionless meaning in Euro-American societies.
Charismaticprophecy and charismatic ritual language
in general add a vivid ethnographicexample of the inter-
subjective constitution of meaningin a Euro-American
setting, but one that at the same time remains perme-
ated with intention. As in Samoa,there is a much more
obvious concern on the partof hearersof prophecywith
the public, displayed,performativeaspect of language"
than with the actors' alleged subjective states"
(Duranti 1993a:44).Yet prophecy is far from the inten-
tionless meaning in the version of the critique formu-
lated by Du Bois, for it displays control, responsibility,
and intention at the same time as spontaneity, collectiv-
ity, and intersubjectivity.
Ourcorrective to the antipersonalistcorrective re-
quires recognition of two points: the kind of genre typi-
cally presented as an example and the kind of assump-
OF METAPHOR
J. CSORDAS 329
/ THOMAS
tion typically made about subjective states of speakers.
The kind of genre is often one characterizedby substan-
tial structureand rigidity,allowing for diminishedspon-
taneity in the enactment of more or less fixed texts.
Duranti's(1993a) example of Samoan political oratory
offers the most flexibility in allowing the speaker to
strategicallyswitch between a dramatispersona repre-
senting a group and a personal identity. But his version
of the critique is based more on the coconstruction of
meaningby performerand audience. Du Bois, however,
argues that the need in ritual languagefor self-evidence
and authoritynot subject to critical scrutiny dictates a
fixed source of meaning "which stands outside the
chain of human fallibility" (1986:333). He makes the
strongest case for this position with respect to the ex-
treme example of the highly overdetermined language
of divination(1993). Even in traditionalnarrativegenres
such as the Shokleng origin myth (IJrban1989) or the
Weyewa words of the ancestors (Kuipers 1990, 1993),
the vector of intentionalityis in the direction of approxi-
mating a timeless and fixed mythic account. By con-
trast, in prophecy the vector of intentionality is re-
versed, and utterance is an elaboration rather than an
approximation of the timeless word of God fixed in
scripture. This is the case for both the proximate and
prime speakers. The intentionality in prophecy is to-
ward the mind of God, ultimately toward the revelation
of the divine plan. The intentional horizon is defined by
the extent to which that plan is perceived already to
have been revealed. The intentionality of the prophet
becomes concordantwith divine intentionalityas an act
of forthtelling" in the way a surfer catches a wave.
The subjective state that corresponds in an ideal
typical way to the speech of intentionless meaning is
trance, which is placed at the opposite end of the con-
tinuum from the wide-awake awareness of everyday
speech (Du Bois 1986; Urban 1989). Implicit in such
continuais that the everydayself is modeled on the sov-
ereign, egocentric Western self while the nonordinary
self is modeled on the trance-prone sociocentric non-
Westernself. I think Urbanbecomes snared in this dis-
tinction while at the same time offering a way out. He of-
fers the intriguing suggestion that the far right of the
continuumis connected back up with the left, such that
projective uI"merges with the indexical referential I"
of everyday speech (1989:42, 47). In Urban's account,
the projective UI"operates just like an everyday I" and
constitutes an alternate self. If there is truly a merging,
however, then the alternate self does not supplant the
everydayself but is superimposed on it. This appearsto
create the paradox that there must be both an ordinary
and nonordinary self present, both sovereign speech
and trance at the same time. Moreover,if the projective
I" is really behaving like the referential indexical I" of
everydayspeech, then it wtll not be speaking in a Elxed
330 * VOL. 99, NO. 2 * JUNE 1997
AMERICANANTHROPOLOGIST
or rigid text as the model of trance speech would pre-
dict. Indeed, this is where Urban becomes entangled,
stating at one point that the projective I" tells an emer-
gent story with no script or story accessible to the audi-
ence apart from its manifestation in present speech
(1989:42)and later stating that, where the projective I"
is involved, texts display an extreme rigidity(1989:47).
The ethnographic example of charismatic proph-
ecy offers a way to get beyond this theoretical impasse,
while at the same time Urban's analysis offers addi-
tional insight into how prophecy contributes to the
creation of a sacred self. Urbansuggests that it is the in-
terplay between the imaginaryUI"and the everyday aIt
in discourse that makes possible a truly cultural self.
More importantly, he suggests that metapragmatic
awareness of this interplay is the motor of cultural
change in the discourse constitution of self"insofaras it
creates the ground for apprehension of possible dis-
crepancy between superego and id, self and ideal, cul-
tural constraint and creativity, and consequently for
representable internal affective processes that might
otherwise never exist" (1989:50).Charismaticprophecy
is neither a fixed-text genre like the origin myth narra-
tive nor a genre that presupposes an everyday self sup-
planted in trance by a nonordinaryself. Insteadit is one
characterizedby a remarkabledegree of metapragmatic
awareness. The prophet is keenly aware of the need to
Udiscern"whether the words welling up within are in-
deed divinely inspired or are motivated by either per-
sonal emotion or demonic iniluence. Thus the I" of dis-
course is intentionallyand subjectively doubled insofar
as the speaker is aware that I am speaking responsibly,
but the 'I'of my speech is not me.t There is in additiona
second doubling for the hearers of prophecy because
God is speaking to us but may have a special message
for me."Finally, these doubled subjectivities carryout
the constitution of meaning in the intersubjective dia-
logue of ritualperformance.
These relationships result in the metapragmatic
structure of intentionalityand subjectivitypresented in
Figure 1. The double doubling is the condition for the
coexistence of intentional and intentionless meaningin
the sense adopted by the antipersonalist critics (but
note that their term apersonal could easily be replaced
by transpersonal). At the same time, in another sense
each pole is riddled with intention. The speaker's con-
scious act of prophecy includes not just the intentionto
speak but the recognition of inspiration and frequently
its pragmatic content (compare Du Bois 1993:67),the
deity's authoritative expression of intention is often
cast in the form of performative speech acts, and the
hearers'decision to understandthe utterance as proph-
ecy remains subject to a further act of judgment and
testing. This structure is also incorporatedwithin each
participant.Every hearer can in theory assume the pro-
Performer Audience
Apersonal I\ us
' > <
/ \ |
me
Personal I
Figure 1
Structureof intentionalityand subjectivityin charismaticprophecy.
phetic role and continue the open-endeddiscourse, and
every prophet can say that ainsofaras God is speaking
to the group of which I am a part, he is speaking to me
through me."
Charismaticprophecy offers an ethnographic ex-
ample that allows us to decenter the authority of the
sovereign intentional ego in precisely the way insisted
upon by the anthropological critics. To the extent that
the speaker is absorbed in the utterance, language
speaks itself and the rhetorical dynamic of discourse
reigns autonomous. To the extent that the speaker re-
tains metapragmaticawareness of the dual I" of dis-
course, there is a self-process defined by the possibility
for internaldialogical creativity.Likewise,to the extent
that the utterance is granted ultimate authority as sa-
cred discourse by the audience, it is the unassailable
voice of divine will. To the extent that it is dialogically
constituted by the way it Uspeaksto" or is taken up by
every hearer, there is necessarily space for multiplicity
and creativity in meaning. Such speech Uconcentrates
within it the accumulatedsymbolic capital of the group"
(Bourdieu 1991:109)and thereby Uprovideswords with
'connotations' that are tied to a particularcontext, in-
troducing into discourse that surplus of meaning that
gives it its 'illocutionaryforce' "(Bourdieu 1991:107).
Conclusion
The paradoxical genre criterion of charismatic
prophecy is that the speaker is not Ureally"speaking yet
bears responsibility for what she or he says. All pro-
phetic utterance is attributed to the same Ureal"
speaker, God, while every individualcan serve as a font
of discourse. This decentering of intentionalityin ritual
speech exposes the semiautonomyof languagefrom its
speakers. It raises the possibility of a speakerless dis-
course, of language Uspeakingitself."This essential oth-
erness of language and its consequences for moving
people by means of establishing the presence of the sa-
cred and the manifestationof divinepower has been ob-
 PROPHECYAND PERFORMANCE
served by anthropologistssuch as Tambiah,who has re-
markedthat languageis in a deep sense both outside us
and within us (1968:184).In a rhapsodicpassage in lthe
Dtscourse on Language (1972), Michel Foucault ex-
pressed the desire to be enveloped in words, enmeshed
in a timeless and nameless voice, and borne beyond all
possible beginnings. He suggested that a good many
people harbor a similar desire to be caught up in a
speakerless discourse without havingto stand outside it
and observed that institutions reply to this desire ironi-
cally by solemnizing beginnings with the imposition
upon them of ritual forms. If it is true that a good many
people harborthe desire for submergencein discourse,
then it is true that some Catholic chaxismatics have
gone quite a distance toward realizing this desire. If
prophecy, as we might extrapolate from Foucault, can
be seen as a model or miniatureof discourse in general,
one can consider the possibility that all discourse has a
sacred substrate:that in its otherness languageis essen-
tially a religious forrnof action and structureor at least
that language can be approached via its metaphysical
implications. This in turn opens the category of perfor-
mance a bit further,broadeningthe horizonof language
in relation to culture, reality, and the sacred.
Notes
Acknowledgments. Thanks to Peter Stromberg, Edith
Turner,and three other AA reviewers who chose to remain
anonymous. I am also grateful to the coordinators of The
Wordof God community,who gave me permissionto conduct
research and to use the community library, where I tran-
scribed the bulwarkprophecies. A more elaborated analysis
of charismaticritual language appears in Csordas 1997.
1. Onthe CatholicCharismaticRenewal,see Csordas1987,
1994a, 1997, McGuire 1977, 1982, 1983, Neitz 1987, and
Paloma 1987.
2. On parallelismand couplet form, see Du Bois 1986,Fox
1974,Lord 1960, and Tedlock 1985.
3. Note that despite my transcriptionin verse, certain pas-
sages in the prophecies appear more proselike. In perfor-
mance the alternation between a more relaxed prose style
and more marked and emphatic parallelism and couplet
structure would likely enhance rhetorical effect.
verbs"are those by use of which zto say
4. UPerfol-lllative
something is to do something"(Austin 1975:12).
5. A similar rhetorical device appears in the Navajo Holy
Wayprayer (Gill 1977:150-151),where rhetorical change in
verb tense from future to present is the basis for a presump-
tive perlocution that brings about healing. Tambiahimplies a
similar role of verb tense in Trobriandaspells"that include a
Zstatement that the intended effect has been achieved"
(1985:38). Catholic charismatic prophecy, Navajo healing
prayer, and Trobriandspells thus appear to bear a family
resemblance with respect to tense change as a strategy for
achieving presumptiveperlocution.
OF METAPHOR/ THOMASJ. CSORDAS 331
6. Prophecy bears what Emily Ahern (1979) calls strong
illocutionary force, pointing out that regardless of the
speaker's forcefulness or enthusiasm, different types of illo-
cution are rhetorically endowed with different degrees of
force.
7. For the anthropological critique of intentionality in
speech-act theory, see Du Bois 1986, 1993, Duranti 1993a,
1993b,Kuipers1993,and Rosaldo 1982. For an anthropologi-
cal approach to intentionality from a phenomenological
standpoint, see Kapferern.d.
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