Hard, Hard Religion: Interracial Faith in the Poor South by John Hayes (review)

To what extent did Jesus's words "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth" encapsulate the religious experiences of southerners in the early twentieth century? John Hayes's Hard, Hard Religion uses traditional folk religion, the fluidity of its oral culture and music, to understand how black and white congregations on the economic periphery sought to "inherit the earth" in this life. In doing so, Hayes adds an important piece to the historiographical puzzle of interracial exchange in the field of southern religious history. Indeed, this monograph helps readers appreciate how poor black and white congregations borrowed from and shared with one another in the midst of racial division. It shows that similar notions of economic alienation, death, conversion, sacraments and neighborly kindness in marginalized churches on the southern landscape produced a remarkable shared experience across racial lines.

Hayes begins with an introduction and a chapter titled "The Making of the Poor South," which sets the table nicely for closer examination of connecting themes in successive chapters. However, his focus is not "the innumerable lofty spires of 'First' churches on main streets" but "grassroots religious creativity" and "phenomena emerging form the social periphery" (4). His work utilizes folklorists, art, music, and material culture to showcase the voices of those who did not leave tremendous amounts of source material. In doing so, the book illustrates "how impoverished people crafted a distinct religious culture" that cut across racial lines in an economically depressed Bible Belt during the 1920s and 1930s (5).

Further, while scholarship has done well in delineating differences in African American and white Christianity, Hayes notes that in a racially heterogeneous "folk Christianity" a number of characteristic themes unite the two (6). This folk Christianity became a "critical factor in opening a sense of commonality among poor blacks and poor whites" in the New South. However, it wasn't just being "poor" that connected these Christians but a "poverty in symbiotic relationship with a grassroots religious culture" that "brought a different imaginative vision" outside common racial categories (9).

In chapter 2, Hayes delves into the lyrics of commonly shared music. He finds that while occasionally the lyrics differed, the theme of "conversion with death" remained. Indeed, the "folk songs of the death crafted in the New South sought to terrify their hearers in a profound and abiding appreciation of life" (85). In a world where the lives of the poor mattered little, folk music brought a sense of equality and hope of meaning. It reassured listeners that all would die, wealthy and poor alike, and lyrics recalled a greater "heavenly glory." Thus, songs of death became songs of life. In chapter 3, Hayes moves to tales of conversion. The central theme of these tales was "dramatic personal transformation," which helped secure separate identities from dominant narratives of the poor in American society (118). These stories also brought the spiritual realm into close proximity. Indeed, "folk Christians were continually reminded of how the mundane and material were shot through with the mysterious and the mystical. The sacred was not removed, in some distant other world, nor was the mundane, material world a flat, secular plane. Rather, folk Christians imagined the disruptive, liminal presence of Christianity in their very midst" (118).

In chapter 4, Hayes explores the "sacramental expressions" of southern folk Christianity. From seashells and coffee cups adorning gravesites to sermon themes, baptisms, and prayer meetings, Hayes shows sacramental consistency in folk Christianity. He argues that folk Christians inherited the sacraments but took that tradition from the churches to the highways and the hedges. Indeed, "this was an earthy transformation of a sacramental theology. Pushing sacraments out into the world," and thus folk Christians "opened up the sacraments to grassroots experimentation" (152). In chapter 5 Hayes examines the "ethics of neighborliness" and how, from Virginia to Texas, community was a centerpiece of the folk Christian experience. Hayes points out, using Howard Thurman...