Mountain Preachers, Mountain Religion

by Deborah Vansau McCauley Mountainreligion andmountainpreachers suffer the fate of being portrayed as either drab, oppressive, narrow purveyors ofdoctrinal darkness (read "Calvinism"), or as emotional exotics left over from the worst excesses of the Great Revival. Eitherway (usually both), the spectrumof religious traditionsmakinguptheregional religious response called Appalachian mountain religion has been narrowly focusedinthepopularmind,infiction, and in scholarship since the 188Os to mean one 40 fOup in particular—Primitive and Old egular Baptists (the literature never differentiates between the two). The reasons for this are straightforward. Just as the Appalachian region, and the social behaviors usually identified with the region, are invariably labeled "traditional" or unchanging , reflecting a world once common to 'long ago,' so the Primitive and Old RegularBaptists seem to embody this mythoftraditionalismwithinthereligious life of the region.2 Part and parcel with the myth come images ofpassivity and ignorance , illiteracy and dogmatism, emotional excess and escape. Such a portrait serves well the interests of industrial colonizers and has been exposed in many publications in Appalachian studies.3 An inability to hear historical echoes in what one observes and reads about, factual errors, and unmitigated bias are the three basic sourcesofdistortionin mostdescriptive and interpretive writings about mountain religious life. Within the field of American religious history, there is a tunnel of silence about religious life in the Appalachian region from the time of the Great Revival (very early nineteenth century) until near the beginning of the twentieth century when the predominant Protestant denominations introduced home missionaries into the region to evangelize and educate "mountain whites." The churches of Appalachian mountain people—their worship practices, belief systems, and religious traditions—were viewed as either nonexistent (i.e., mountain people were "unchurched") or deviant (i.e., Appalachian religious traditions left the people in a state of "moral and religious degradation"). This viewpoint has persisted until today and permeates much of the very limited literature that is now available on Appalachian mountain relifion . The viewpoints of social scientists ave tended to pick up where the home missionaries left off, describing and analyzing various aspects of mountain religious life (from Primitive Baptists to Holiness-Pentecostals) as products—and causes—ofdeprivation, both physical and emotional, and as retardants for "needed" social change. Ofnecessity the starting point for many a scholar's basic information about Appalachain religious traditions has been the observations andhistorical interpretations of home missionaries and social uplift workers in the region who have to date provided most ofthe descriptive information now available in secondary sources.5 Primary source material from within mountain religious traditions has yet to be identified and collected in any systematic manner.6 Scholars and commentators also get caught up in the underlying ideological and political agendas ofpublished denominational histories. As a result, antimissionary (Primitive and Old Regular) Baptists in particular are portrayed not as a significant social movement in the first half of the nineteenth century who, with much eloquence, called the hand of denominational leaders moving forward on thier plans to promote American Benevolence in the form ofmissionary and educational projects in order to promote their own social and political ends. Instead, they are portrayed as disruptive , embarrassing malcontents standing in the way of progress and the greater good (read a "Christian America") at the behest of a few narrow, zealous, ignorant leaders. Although a nationwide movement , antimissionary Baptists were concentrated in the Appalachain region. Instead ofconfrontingtne issuesraised by the antimissionary Baptists (issues of power, yes, and issues of enormous theological import), they were all but written out of American religious history. As the promoters of American Benevolence invaded the Appalachian region, especially in the 1880s, their agents were the most common sources of information about mountain religious life. The late nineteenth century Holiness movement was taking hold in the region, reinvigorating ecstatic worship traditions that had characterizedmountainreligious life since the camp-meeting days of the Great Revival .7 The Great Revival in turn had reinforced the "emotive" or "enthusiastic" 41 worship traditions Old Time Baptists had inherited from their Separate Baptist antecedentsduringtheGreatAwakeningin the South (and which had fed directly into the Great Revival period).8 The heart-felt expression ofintense religious experience has always been a hallmark of mountain religiouslifeandasourceofgravediscomfort for those with much different expectations about...