Creativity Quote by Bernice Johnson Reagon

A rule like this turns singing, in a place built for communal voice, into a gated privilege. Reagon isn’t just recalling an odd church custom; she’s exposing how power can hide inside “reverence.” The policy draws a bright line between the certified and the merely present: until you’ve had the sanctioned conversion experience, your sound is treated as suspect. In a tradition where song is often the technology of survival and solidarity, that’s not a small constraint. It’s a social sorting mechanism.

The line works because it’s quietly outrageous. Reagon delivers it with the plainness of memory, letting the listener feel the pinch without needing a sermon about it. “Could not sing out loud” is physical, almost bodily: breath held back, volume policed. “Until you had been saved” loads the whole thing with theological and cultural weight, suggesting that belonging is conditional and externally verified. Salvation becomes less a private spiritual event than a membership card that authorizes expression.

Reagon’s wider context matters: as a musician and movement figure steeped in freedom songs, she understands singing as a public act that makes a people. So the anecdote reads like an origin story for her politics of voice. If a community can muzzle you in the name of holiness, you learn early that liberation isn’t only about laws or economics. It’s also about who gets to speak, who gets to sing, and how loudly.