Download or read book Appalachian Mountain Religion written by Deborah Vansau McCauley and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A monumental achievement. . . . Certainly the best thing written on Appalachian Religion and one of the best works on the region itself. Deborah McCauley has made a winning argument that Appalachian religion is a true and authentic counter-stream to modern mainstream Protestant religion." -- Loyal Jones, founding director of the Appalachian Center at Berea College Appalachian Mountain Religion is much more than a narrowly focused look at the religion of a region. Within this largest regional and widely diverse religious tradition can be found the strings that tie it to all of American religious history. The fierce drama between American Protestantism and Appalachian mountain religion has been played out for nearly two hundred years; the struggle between piety and reason, between the heart and the head, has echoes reaching back even further--from Continental Pietism and the Scots-Irish of western Scotland and Ulster to Colonial Baptist revival culture and plain-folk camp-meeting religion. Deborah Vansau McCauley places Appalachian mountain religion squarely at the center of American religious history, depicting the interaction and dramatic conflicts between it and the denominations that comprise the Protestant "mainstream." She clarifies the tradition histories and symbol systems of the area's principally oral religious culture, its worship practices and beliefs, further illuminating the clash between mountain religion and the "dominant religious culture" of the United States. This clash has helped to shape the course of American religious history. The explorations in Appalachian Mountain Religion range from Puritan theology to liberation theology, from Calvinism to the Holiness-Pentecostal movements. Within that wide realm and in the ongoing contention over religious values, the many strains of American religious history can be heard.
Download or read book The Roots of Appalachian Christianity written by Elder John Sparks and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-10-17 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Appalachia's distinctive brand of Christianity has always been something of a puzzle to mainline American congregations. Often treated as pagan and unchurched, native Appalachian sects are labeled as ultraconservative, primitive, and fatalistic, and the actions of minority sub-groups such as "snake handlers" are associated with all worshippers in the region. Yet these churches that many regard as being outside the mainstream are living examples of America's own religious heritage. The emotional and experience-based religion that still thrives in Appalachia is very much at the heart of American worship. The lack of a recognizable "father figure" like Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Knox compounds the mystery of Appalachia's religious origins. Ordained minister John Sparks determined that such a person must have existed, and his search turned up a man less literate, urbane, and well-known than Luther, Calvin, and Knox—but no less charismatic and influential. Shubal Stearns, a New England Baptist minister, led a group of sixteen Baptists—now dubbed "The Old Brethren" by Old School Baptists churches in Appalachia—from New England to North Carolina in the mid-eighteenth century. His musical "barking" preaching is still popular, and the association of churches that he established gave birth to many of the disparate denominations prospering in the region today. A man lacking in the scholarship of his peers but endowed with the eccentricities that would make their mark on Appalachian faith, Stearns has long been an object of shame among most Baptist historians. In The Roots of Appalachian Christianity, Sparks depicts an important religious figure in a new light. Poring over pages of out-of-print and little-used histories, Sparks discovered the complexity of Stearns's character and his impact on Appalachian Christianity. The result is a history not just of this leader but of the roots of a religious movement.
Download or read book Mountain Sisters written by Helen M. Lewis and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Monica Appleby and Helen Lewis reveal the largely untold story of women who stood up to the Church and joined Appalachians in their struggle for social justice. Their poignant story of how faith, compassion, and persistence overcame obstacles to progress in Appalachia is a fascinating example of how a collaborative and creative learning community fosters strong voices. Mountain Sisters is a prophetic first-person account of the history of American Catholicism, the war on poverty, and the influence of the turbulent 1960s on the cultural and religious communities of Appalachia. Founded in 1941, The Glenmary Sisters embraced a calling to serve rural Appalachian communities where few Catholics resided. The sisters, many of them seeking alternatives to the choices available to most women during this time, zealously pursued their duties but soon became frustrated with the rules and restrictions of the Church. Outmoded doctrine—even styles of dress—made it difficult for them to interact with the very people they hoped to help. In 1967, after many unsuccessful attempts to persuade the Church to ease its requirements, some seventy Sisters left the security of convent life. Over forty of these women formed a secular service group, FOCIS (Federation of Communities in Service). Mountain Sisters is their story.
Download or read book Faith and Meaning in the Southern Uplands written by Loyal Jones and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jones attacks what he sees as the historical dismissal of mountain religious life, as supported by nineteenth- and twentieth-century missionary movements bent on changing mountain life through better religion. He explores the creation and perpetuation of negative stereotypes as mainline Christians contended that "Upland Christians" had to be saved from themselves.
Download or read book Mountain Holiness written by Deborah Vansau McCauley and published by Univ Tennessee Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Deborah McCauley and Laura Porter's text combines descriptions of the pictures with the history of the churches and interviews with members. They create a representative window into the material and oral culture of central Appalachia's independent Holiness heritage. Mountain Holiness is a book that will fascinate anyone who cares about these traditions, as well as anyone concerned with the preservation of America's most vital folkways."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Praying with One Eye Open written by Mary Ella Engel and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2019-07-15 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1878, Elder Joseph Standing traveled into the Appalachian mountains of North Georgia, seeking converts for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Sixteen months later, he was dead, murdered by a group of twelve men. The church refused to bury the missionary in Georgia soil; instead, he was laid to rest in Salt Lake City beneath a monument that declared, “There is no law in Georgia for the Mormons.” Most accounts of this event have linked Standing’s murder to the virulent nineteenth-century anti-Mormonism that also took the life of prophet Joseph Smith and to an enduring southern tradition of extralegal violence. In these writings, the stories of the men who took Standing’s life are largely ignored, and they are treated as significant only as vigilantes who escaped justice. Historian Mary Ella Engel adopts a different approach, arguing that the mob violence against Standing was a local event, best understood at the local level. Her examination of Standing’s murder carefully situates it in the disquiet created by missionaries’ successes in the North Georgia community. As Georgia converts typically abandoned the state for Mormon colonies in the West, a disquiet situated within a wider narrative of post-Reconstruction Mormon outmigration to colonies in the West. In this rich context, the murder reveals the complex social relationships that linked North Georgians—families, kin, neighbors, and coreligionists—and illuminates how mob violence attempted to resolve the psychological dissonance and gender anxieties created by Mormon missionaries. In laying bare the bonds linking Georgia converts to the mob, Engel reveals Standing’s murder as more than simply mountain lawlessness or religious persecution. Rather, the murder responds to the challenges posed by the separation of converts from their loved ones, especially the separation of women and their dependents from heads of households.
Download or read book The Man who Moved a Mountain written by Richard C. Davids and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 1970 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This biography of Reverend Bob Childress of the Blue Ridge Mountains has been compared to the tales of Mark Twain and the Mississippi. Shows Childress' transforming effects on rough and wild mountain communities.
Download or read book Appalachian Mountain Girl written by Rhoda B. Warren and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the compelling memoir, Rhoda Warren, whose father was a miner, introduces us to Letcher, KY in 1930. She takes us inside this isolated community, whose denizens lived difficult, poverty-stricken lives. This is the story of the Bailey family's escape from the grueling Corbin Glow mines to find a better life in Letcher--"The prettiest place in the world." Rhoda Warren's account is three-dimensional: with humor and warmth, but without sentimentality. She recounts the lives of these mining people whose religion and "family values" buttressed and sustained them.
Download or read book Salvation on Sand Mountain written by Dennis Covington and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-02 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For Dennis Covington, what began as a journalistic assignment - covering the trial of an Alabama preacher convicted of attempting to murder his wife with poisonous snakes - would evolve into a headlong plunge into a bizarre, mysterious, and ultimately irresistible world of unshakable faith: the world of holiness snake handling, where people drink strychnine, speak in tongues, lay hands on the sick, and, some claim, raise the dead. Set in the heart of Appalachia, Salvation on Sand Mountain is Covington's unsurpassed and chillingly captivating exploration of the nature, power, and extremity of faith - an exploration that gradually turns inward, until Covington finds himself taking up the snakes. University.
Download or read book Another Appalachia written by Neema Avashia and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Examines both the roots and the resonance of Neema Avashia's identity as a queer desi Appalachian woman. With lyric and narrative explorations of foodways, religion, sports, standards of beauty, social media, and gun culture"--
Download or read book In the Hands of a Happy God written by Howard Dorgan and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The investigation of Primitive Baptist Universalists -- Calvinist 'No-Hellers, ' which sounds for all the world like an oxymoron -- requires the exact type of seasoned and comprehensive field experience which Dorgan has brought to it with meticulous care and insight. -- Deborah Vansau McCauley, author of Appalachian Mountain ReligionAmong the many forms of religious practice found in the ridges and hollows of Central Appalachia, one of the most intriguing -- and least understood -- is that of the Primitive Baptist Universalists (PBUs). Popularly known as the No-Hellers, this small Baptist sub-denomination rejects the notion of an angry God bent on punishment and retribution and instead embraces the concept of a happy God who consigns no one to eternal damnation. This book is the first in-depth study of the PBUs and their beliefs.As Howard Dorgan points out, the designation No-Heller is something of a misnomer. Primitive Baptist Universalists, he notes, believe in hell -- but they see it as something that exists in this life, in the temporal world, rather than in an afterlife. For a PBU, sinfulness is the given state of natural man, and hell a reality of earthly life -- the absence-from-God's-blessing torment that sin generates. PBUs further believe that, at the moment of Resurrection, all temporal existence will end as all human-kind joins in a wholly egalitarian heaven, the culmination of Christ's universal atonement.In researching this book, Dorgan spent considerable time with PBU congregations, interviewing their members and observing their emotionally charged and joyous worship services. He deftly combines lucid descriptions of PBU beliefs with richly texturedvignettes portraying the people and how they live their faith on a daily basis. He also explores a fascinating possibility concerning PBU origins: that a strain of early- nineteenth-century American Universalism reached the mountains of Appalachia and there fused with Primitive Baptist theology to form this subdenomination, which barely exists outside a handful of counties in Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, and West Virginia.Like Dorgan's earlier books, In the Hands of a Happy God offers an insightful blend of ethnography, history, and theological analysis that will appeal to both Appalachian scholars and all students of American religion.
Download or read book A History of Appalachia written by Richard B. Drake and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2003-09-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Drake has skillfully woven together the various strands of the Appalachian experience into a sweeping whole. Touching upon folk traditions, health care, the environment, higher education, the role of blacks and women, and much more, Drake offers a compelling social history of a unique American region. The Appalachian region, extending from Alabama in the South up to the Allegheny highlands of Pennsylvania, has historically been characterized by its largely rural populations, rich natural resources that have fueled industry in other parts of the country, and the strong and wild, undeveloped land. The rugged geography of the region allowed Native American societies, especially the Cherokee, to flourish. Early white settlers tended to favor a self-sufficient approach to farming, contrary to the land grabbing and plantation building going on elsewhere in the South. The growth of a market economy and competition from other agricultural areas of the country sparked an economic decline of the region's rural population at least as early as 1830. The Civil War and the sometimes hostile legislation of Reconstruction made life even more difficult for rural Appalachians. Recent history of the region is marked by the corporate exploitation of resources. Regional oil, gas, and coal had attracted some industry even before the Civil War, but the postwar years saw an immense expansion of American industry, nearly all of which relied heavily on Appalachian fossil fuels, particularly coal. What was initially a boon to the region eventually brought financial disaster to many mountain people as unsafe working conditions and strip mining ravaged the land and its inhabitants. A History of Appalachia also examines pockets of urbanization in Appalachia. Chemical, textile, and other industries have encouraged the development of urban areas. At the same time, radio, television, and the internet provide residents direct links to cultures from all over the world. The author looks at the process of urbanization as it belies commonly held notions about the region's rural character.
Download or read book The Foxfire Book written by Foxfire Fund, Inc. and published by Anchor. This book was released on 1972-02-17 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1972, The Foxfire Book was a surprise bestseller that brought Appalachia's philosophy of simple living to hundreds of thousands of readers. Whether you wanted to hunt game, bake the old-fashioned way, or learn the art of successful moonshining, The Foxfire Museum and Heritage Center had a contact who could teach you how with clear, step-by-step instructions. This classic debut volume of the acclaimed series covers a diverse array of crafts and practical skills, including log cabin building, hog dressing, basketmaking, cooking, fencemaking, crop planting, hunting, and moonshining, as well as a look at the history of local traditions like snake lore and faith healing.
Download or read book Cades Cove written by Durwood Dunn and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 1988-08-15 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cades Cove The Life and Death of a Southern Appalachian Community, 1818-1937 Durwood Dunn Winner of the Thomas Wolfe Literary Award! Drawing on a rich trove of documents never before available to scholars, the author sketches the early pioneers, their daily lives, their beliefs, and their struggles to survive and prosper in this isolated mountain community, now within the confines of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In moving detail this book brings to life an isolated mountain community, its struggle to survive, and the tragedy of its demise. "Professor Dunn provides us with a model historical investigation of a southern mountain community. His findings on commercial farming, family, religion, and politics will challenge many standard interpretations of the Appalachian past." --Gordon B. McKinney, Western Carolina University. "This is a fine book. . . . It is mostly about community and interrelationships, and thus it refutes much of the literature that presents Southern Mountaineers as individualistic, irreligious, violent, and unlawful." --Loyal Jones, Appalachian Heritage. "Dunn . . . has written one of the best books ever produced about the Southern mountains." --Virginia Quarterly Review. "This study offers the first detailed analysis of a remote southern Appalachian community in the nineteenth century. It should lay to rest older images of the region as isolated and static, but it raises new questions about the nature of that premodern community." --Ronald D Eller, American Historical Review Not only is his book a worthy addition to the growing body of work recognizing the complexities of southern mountain society; it is also a lively testament to the value of local history and the variety of levels at which it can provide significant enlightenment." --John C. Inscoe,LOCUS
Download or read book High Mountains Rising written by Richard A. Straw and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection is the first comprehensive, cohesive volume to unite Appalachian history with its culture. Richard A. Straw and H. Tyler Blethen's High Mountains Rising provides a clear, systematic, and engaging overview of the Appalachian timeline, its people, and the most significant aspects of life in the region. The first half of the fourteen essays deal with historical issues including Native Americans, pioneer settlement, slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, industrialization, the Great Depression, migration, and finally, modernization. The remaining essays take a more cultural focus, addressing stereotypes, music, folklife, language, literature, and religion. Bringing together many of the most prestigious scholars in Appalachian studies, this volume has been designed for general and classroom use, and includes suggestions for further reading.
Download or read book Christy written by Catherine Marshall and published by Evergreen Farm. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The train taking nineteen-year-old teacher Christy Huddleston from her home in Asheville, North Carolina, might as well be transporting her to another world. The Smoky Mountain community of Cutter Gap feels suspended in time, trapped by poverty, superstitions, and century-old traditions. But as Christy struggles to find acceptance in her new home, some see her — and her one-room school — as a threat to their way of life. Her faith is challenged and her heart is torn between two strong men with conflicting views about how to care for the families of the Cove. Yearning to make a difference, will Christy’s determination and devotion be enough?
Download or read book Yesterday s People written by Jack E. Weller and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-04-23 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The distinctive way of life of the Southern Appalachian people has often been criticized, romanticized or derided, but rarely has it been understood. Yesterday's People, the fruit of many years' labor in the mountains, reveals the fears, anxieties, and hopes that underlie the mountaineers' way of thinking and acting, and thereby shape their relationships in family and community. First published in 1965, this book has been an indispensable guide for all who seek to study, work or live within the Appalachian culture.
