‘Vex the devil’: Scripture, God-talk and holiness at Villa Road

This article gives a critical account of the engagement with Scripture among a group of women and men from the Villa Road Methodist Church, Handsworth, Birmingham, UK. It presents research done in community during 2004/05 for the unpublished thesis, ‘Mary in the Kitchen, Martha in the Pew: Patterns of Holiness in a Methodist Church’ (MPhil., Birmingham, 2006), updated to include critical engagement with contemporary scholarship in Black British theology, womanist and feminist theology, holiness teaching and hermeneutics, and congregational studies. Working from ethnographic research, the article considers three clusters of emphasis, or creative tensions, in the use of Scripture: gender and God, thanksgiving/resistance in response to evil, and displacement/home-coming. The article argues that these themes specially concern the negotiation of identity and relationship between self, God, Scripture and context.