Maintaining Difference: Testimony from the Cambridge Christian Fellowship

Abstract

The following is an account of how I came to “know” God. This knowing was deeply physical; my knowledge of God and vocabulary for speaking about Him expanded alongside physical changes in my body. These physical changes occurred during prayer, while reading the Bible, while listening to other people’s testimony and while giving testimony myself. I was exposed to all of these forms of “communicating” during my fieldwork at the Cambridge Christian Fellowship at Duke University. I completed the fieldwork over a six month period between October 2008 and March 2009. In the field, I listened and spoke, heard and praised, felt and knew that the way to God is through Christ. This form of knowing informs my thesis that Christian identity is maintained not only by rhetoric but also by God himself.