Appalachian Mountain Religion

Author : Deborah Vansau McCauley
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 9780252064142
Total Pages : 584 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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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.

Author : Elder John Sparks
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
ISBN 13 : 0813158397
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.96/5 ( download)

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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 352 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.

Author : Helen M. Lewis
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
ISBN 13 : 081318858X
Total Pages : 433 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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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.

Author : Dennis Covington
Publisher : ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN 13 : 1458766276
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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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.

Author : Willis Duke Weatherford
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 186 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Life and Religion in Southern Appalachia written by Willis Duke Weatherford and published by . This book was released on 1962 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "During the summers of 1958 and 1959, a survey was carried on in the Southern Appalachian Mountains Region [the hill country of Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, and Virginia] to gather data on current economic, cultural, and social conditions ... This book contains selected data from the study, with interpretive comments and human interest highlights."--Preface, p. [ix].

Author : Deborah Vansau McCauley
Publisher : Univ Tennessee Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

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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.

Author : Loyal Jones
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 9780252067594
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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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.

Author : Rhoda Bailey Warren
Publisher : Chicago Review Press
ISBN 13 : 1613732392
Total Pages : 142 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Appalachian Mountain Girl written by Rhoda Bailey Warren and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2005-08-30 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One woman’s “affecting and well-written” memoir of growing up with twelve siblings in rural Kentucky, and returning as an adult (Kirkus Reviews). Appalachian Mountain Girl is a sensitive and beautifully written autobiographical account of a childhood in the coalmine district of Depression-era Kentucky. With humor and warmth—but without sentimentality—Rhoda Warren recounts the lives of these mining people whose religion and family values buttressed and sustained them. As a young girl, Rhoda began to catch glimpses of the world outside her narrow mountain community through the stories in True Confessions magazine and the pictures in the Montgomery Ward catalog—which to her seemed like visions of a fairy world. Much later, after poverty drove her family to Wyoming and then Rhoda married and moved to a small town in New York State, it seemed that her dreams of a better life had finally been realized. Yet scenes of Letcher always hovered in the back roads of her memory. When she revisited her homeland, this time as a New Yorker, Rhoda found that Letcher was no longer the place she recalled—and in this vivid memoir, she contemplates the relationship between our past and our present and the ways that our childhood stays with us forever.

Author : Gerald Milnes
Publisher : Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN 13 : 9781572335776
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Signs, Cures, & Witchery written by Gerald Milnes and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The persecution of Old World German Protestants and Anabaptists in the seventeenth century--following debilitating wars, the Reformation, and the Inquisition-- brought about significant immigration to America. Many of the immigrants, and their progeny, settled in the Appalachian frontier. Here they established a particularly old set of religious beliefs and traditions based on a strong sense of folk spirituality. They practiced astrology, numerology, and other aspects of esoteric thinking and left a legacy that may still be found in Appalachian folklore today. Based in part on the author's extensive collection of oral histories from the remote highlands of West Virginia, Signs, Cures, and Witchery; German Appalachian Folklore describes these various occult practices, symbols, and beliefs; how they evolved within New World religious contexts; how they arrived on the Appalachian frontier; and the prospects of those beliefs continuing in the contemporary world. By concentrating on these inheritances, Gerald C. Milnes draws a larger picture of the German influence on Appalachia. Much has been written about the Anglo-Celtic, Scots-Irish, and English folkways of the Appalachian people, but few studies have addressed their German cultural attributes and sensibilities. Signs, Cures, and Witchery sheds startling light on folk influences from Germany, making it a volume of tremendous value to Appalachian scholars, folklorists, and readers with an interest in Appalachian folklife and German American studies.

Author : Mary Ella Engel
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820355240
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.45/5 ( download)

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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 248 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.