Appalachian Mountain Religion: A History

Front Cover
University of Illinois Press, 1995 - History - 551 pages
"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.
 

Contents

Brother Callaway of Avery County
49
Emma Bell Miles and The Oldtime Religion
80
The New Salem Association of Old Regular Baptists org 1825
90
We Believed in the Family and the Old Regular Baptist Church
101
Baptists Methodists and the Radical Decline of Religious Experience 182527
113
Old Father Nash and Charles Grandison Finney A Parting of the Ways 182527
126
Roots of Mountain Religiosity
143
Mountain Religion and Denominationalism Campbell Hooker and Albanese
147
How an Independent Holiness Church Became a Major Denomination
276
Brother Coy Miser
311
The Home Mission to Mountain Whites
339
Mr Schermerhorns Statement
345
In the Brush
371
A Christian America and the Appalachian Problem
392
Elizabeth Hooker and Brother Terry Galloway On the Same Side of the Mountain
417
Appalachias Victims and Their Liberators Today
442

Pietism Pietists and Holiness People
156
ScotsIrish Religiosity and Revivalism
168
The Baptist Revival and the Power of SelfDefinition
201
Methodism in Appalachia A Clash of Religious Values
238
The Independent Holiness Church
255
Mountain Religion and the HolinessPentecostal Movements
259
As the Pieces Begin to Fall into Place
465
Essay on Sources
469
Notes
479
Works Cited
509
Index
525
Copyright

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