Work and Faith in the Kentucky Coal Fields: Subject to Dust (review)

Callahan uses the book's subtitle, "Subject to Dust," to underscore a fundamental component of religious expression in Kentucky's early twentieth-century coal mining region. In one way, the phrase refers to the ubiquitous coal dust that hangs in the air not only in the mines themselves but also in residences and streets, and in the lungs of everyone living in the area. It also conveys the strong sense of physicality in local spirituality, in that each person will eventually descend to the dust whence he or she came. Callahan argues that coal-field expressions of faith rested heavily on the tangible and corporeal, containing little that was ethereal or mystical. Central to this sensual experience of faith in Appalachian Kentucky was hard, physical labor—in mines, fields, and homes, performed by men or by women. So much were work and faith interwoven that residents talked about religious practice as a form of work, just as they talked about work as a form of religious practice. Callahan reflects deeply on what might be termed a theology of the human body, in which the body, through death, suffering, and especially labor, assumes the sacramental role of intermediary between people and the divine. As Callahan puts it, "In the coal fields, material experience and religious imagination wove through each other, through the constantly falling dust and dangers of the mining life, articulating a view of human existence as struggle and work" (123).

Callahan structures the argument as something of a case study, grafting particular forms of cultural theory onto an established historical base. He is most intrigued with theories of "everyday life," drawn primarily from Bourdieu and Williams' conception of "structures of feeling."¹ Both constructs allow Callahan to interpret religious expression less as theology or denominational history than as a cultural idiom through which people express their sense of reality. In fact, Callahan sees a fundamental consensus in that idiom among the white, native-born mining families that he studies, beyond denominational or doctrinal disagreements. He also sees a gender consensus that he might have demonstrated more concretely; although men and women both shared the experience of work in a mining context, surely their differing roles within that world and their contested relationships within the household (which Callahan does not discuss) generated at least a differentiated religious sensibility.

Overall, however, Callahan's application of cultural theory through the idiom of faith works well. In clear, jargon-free language, he analyzes texts of oral histories (conducted by others in the 1970s) and religious music (memorably, the song "O Death") in compelling ways. The book's less creative historical grounding may help to explain why Callahan saw such an uncomplicated cultural consensus. His argument that the Appalachian spirituality of body and work originated in the agrarian world of the nineteenth century, among sectarian Baptist congregations, relies on a 1980s historiography that considered profit seeking a violation of the religious idiom of work and community. He would have been better served by seeing pre-coal Appalachian culture as more contested and multifaceted.

Callahan fares better in the coal-town era, where he adds (with good effect) the tumultuous Holiness groups to the Methodists and persisting Old Regular Baptists. Nonetheless, he travels well-trod paths: Whenever scholars wants to investigate some aspect of Kentucky mining life, they invariably head, as does Callahan, for Harlan County. Perhaps such quibbling is ill-advised, since it is not the author's purpose to write new (or better) history. In any case, the appeal of Harlan County is primarily one of sources, which are particularly voluminous for the notorious miners' strikes of 1931/32. The memoirs and investigative hearings concerning the strikes allow Callahan to extend the theology of the body theme to labor agitation. Union action, Callahan says, assumed the same religious meanings, for both men and women, as did mining work itself—including action through the Communist-affiliated National Miners' Union. The...