At Lincoln Center, a third of Mr. Porter's program will be gospel-based.
So as long as there's a God, there will always be gospel.
Joining Antony and the Johnsons onstage will be the gospel choir and brass band combo McCollough Sons of Thunder, as well as the 80-year-old jazz singer and kindred soul Jimmy Scott, whose gender-bending, anguished falsetto makes him another of Mr. Hegarty's forebears.
"BlackSUMMERS'night," he said, will be "full-blown gospel, but gospel turned on its head a little bit".
"A lot of people will go and see it who have never read any of the biographies and they will think it's gospel truth," Etchingham warned.
· Michel Faber's The Fire Gospel will be published by Canongate in November.
Mr. Gibson has said his movie will be true to the Gospel account of the last hours of Jesus' life.
Music will be provided by a gospel choir and by De Phat Funk Clique, a group of doctors who play jazz in their spare time.
Clive Davis, the former head of Arista Records who discovered Ms. Houston, will speak at the service, and a eulogy will be given by the gospel singer and family friend Marvin Winans.
"You won't find too many weddings where there will be Buddhist chanting and gospel singing," said Mr. Dudley, who teaches history, media studies and economics at Arturo A. Schomburg Satellite Academy High School, an alternative public high school in the Bronx.
But you have to wonder how effective the field representatives will be in spreading Republican gospel to a dyed-in-the-wool Democratic choir.If the main challenge lies in making a dent in the impression that Democrats fight for policies that benefit blacks and Hispanics, part of the strategy is to point out how poorly minorities have fared in the Obama years.
