Anthony Van Zanten

Every Sunday more than two hundred people, about 80 percent of them Black, gather on the south side of Chicago to praise God in a building that once served as a funeral home. They are members of Pullman Christian Reformed Church.

I pastor a congregation of people who clap their hands a lot. We clap while singing. We clap when fellow worshipers speak a word of testimony and mutual encouragement. Once in a while the congregation even claps when I make a strong point in my sermon.

We have no prescribed pattern for clapping, no rules for when it is or is not appropriate. But I can think of at least one time when it would be impossible and wrong for us not to clap…