The Gaithers and Southern Gospel: Homecoming in the Twenty-First Century

Ryan P. Harper *13 examines songwriters Bill and Gloria Gaither’s Homecoming video and concert series, a gospel-music franchise that has outperformed all Christian and much secular music on the market. The Gaithers and Southern Gospel (University Press of Mississippi) examines how the Gaithers negotiate the tension between traditional and changing community norms by their incorporation of “traditional” kinds of American Christian life while deliberately integrating their stages racially and articulating a relatively inclusive evangelical theology.