Religion

Church denominations; Primitive Baptists; Holiness Churches, and snake handling; religion in schools; missionary workers; circuit riders; revivals

Blanton, Anderson.  2015.  Hittin’ the Prayer Bones: Materiality of Spirit in the Pentecostal South.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.  222 pp.  “...illuminates how prayer, faith, and healing are intertwined with technologies of sound reproduction and material culture in the charismatic Christian worship of southern Appalachia.”

Burnett, John.  2013.  “Snake-Handling Preachers Open Up about ‘Takin’ Up Serpents’.”  All Things Considered, 4 October.  NPR radio.  Transcript, 1,176 words; podcast, 7:43 min.  http://n.pr/1h8Jpjo.

Burnett, John.  2013.  “Serpent Experts Try To Demystify Pentecostal Snake Handling” [follow-up to the author’s October 4 story, “Snake-Handling Preachers”].  All Things Considered, 18 October.  NPR radio.  Transcript, 683 words; podcast, 3:41 min.  http://n.pr/19RdHCA.

Catholic Committee of Appalachia.  2016.  “The Telling Takes Us Home: Taking Our Place in the Stories That Shape Us” [“A People’s Pastoral”].  Spencer, W. Va.: Catholic Committee of Appalachia.  84 pp.  “We celebrate the 40th anniversary of  “This Land Is Home to Me” (1975) and the 20th anniversary of “At Home in the Web of Life” (1995)” -- two groundbreaking pastoral letters of the Catholic Bishops of Appalachia.  http://www.ccappal.org/thetellingtakesushome2015.pdf.

Chapell, Colin B.  2013.  “Sanctified Manhood: Theology and Identity in the Southern Holiness Movement.”  Journal of the Historical Society 13, no. 4 (December): 465-490.

Cole, Jennifer.  2015.  “Exploring Christianity in Antebellum Kentucky through The Filson Historical Society Collections.”  Ohio Valley History 15, no. 4 (Winter): 63-73.  Manuscript and rare print collections.

Diaz, Elizabeth.  2013.  “‘Snake Salvation’: One Way to Pray in Appalachia.”  Time, 9 September.  1,106 words, plus video clip (1:57).  This preview of National Geographic’s new 16-episode reality TV series, “Snake Salvation” (premiering Sept. 10), examines the snake handling practice of a Pentecostal church in LaFollette, Tenn.  http://ti.me/15Lkoex.

Dunn, Durwood.  2013.  The Civil War in Southern Appalachian Methodism.  Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.  264 pp.   Examines the split over slavery in the Holston Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South: Tenn., Va., N.C., Ga.

Edwards, Kari.  2014.  “‘Equal Space with Adam and Eve’: Tennessee’s ‘Genesis Bill’ of 1973 and the 50th Anniversary of the Scopes Trial” [Dayton, Tenn.].  Journal of Southern Religion, vol. 16.  8,428 words.  http://jsreligion.org/issues/vol16/edwards.html.

Guthman, Joshua.  2015.  Strangers Below: Primitive Baptists and American Culture.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.  219 pp.  Includes Chap. 5, “The Lonesome Sound,” which focuses on singers Roscoe Holcomb (Old Regular Baptist) and Ralph Stanley (Primitive Baptist).

Hamrick, Miriah, and Elizabeth Fones-Wolf.  2014.  “An Adversary for Mr. Bryan: West Virginia’s Forgotten Contribution to the Antievolution Crusade” [1922].  West Virginia History, n.s. 8, no. 2 (Fall): 47-70.  “WVU professor of botany Robert Clifton Spangler in a dialogue with U.S. orator and politician William Jennings Bryan concerning the concepts of evolution and the theories of naturalist Charles Darwin, ....[and] fundamentalist Christian opposition to Darwinism.”

Hayes, John.  2015.  “Pleading with Death: Folk Visions of Death (and Life) in the New South.”  Southern Quarterly53, no. 1 (Fall): 105-120.

Henris, John.  2013.  “‘A Little Leaven Leaveneth a Whole’: Unearthing the Moral Ecology of Antebellum Quaker Appalachia.”  Ohio Valley History 13, no. 4 (Winter): 23-42.  Short Creek Valley, southeastern Ohio; Harrison, Jefferson, and Belmont counties.

Kerns, Robert W., Jr.  2013.  “Protecting the Faithful from Their Faith: A Proposal for Snake-Handling Law in West Virginia.”  Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2014-8.  West Virginia Law Review 116 (November): 561-581.  Available at Social Science Research Network: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2504122.  “While other states prohibit snakehandling in the name of safety, West Virginia law remains void on the issue. This Article introduces the practice of snake-handling and examines the risks posed by taking up poisonous animals....then suggests how the West Virginia law may temper the threat of this vehemently dangerous practice. ”

Loggins, Janice.  2014.  “Preaching the Word at Colbert Living Waters Holiness Church” [Madison Co., Ga.].  Student interview by Corey Lovell.  Foxfire Magazine 48, no. 3-4 (Fall-Winter): 48-60.  Corey interviews the pastor, his grandmother.

Mattern, Eleanor.  2015.  “The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and the Papers of the Harmony Society: An Acquisition, a Five-Decade Loan, and Recovery.”  Pennsylvania History 82, no. 4 (Autumn): 516-535.  “Harmony, Pennsylvania (1804–15), New Harmony, Indiana (1815–24), and Economy [Old Economy Village, now Ambridge], Pennsylvania (1824–1905).  [George] Rapp, who lived until 1847, served as the leader of the Harmonists at each of the three sites.

McVicar, Michael J.  2013.  “Take Away the Serpents from Us: The Sign of Serpent Handling and the Development of Southern Pentecostalism.”  Journal of Southern Religion, vol. 15.  12,915 words.  http://jsr.fsu.edu/issues/vol15/mcvicar.html.

Odom, Michael.  2013.  “Dennis Covington’s Salvation on Sand Mountain: Descent and Vision in the Southern Memoir.”  Southern Literary Journal 46, no. 1 (Fall): 96-109.  Literary criticism of Covington’s book, Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia (Da Capo Press, 1995).

Smith, Matthew D.  2013.  “Barton Warren Stone: Revisiting Revival in the Early Republic.”  Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 111, no. 2 (Spring): 161-197.

Stambaugh, Bruce.  2013.  “Businesses in Ohio’s Amish Country Connect Globally.”  Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 28, no. 2 (Winter): 42-43.  Profiles of seven family-operated businesses, including Lehman’s in Kidron, Oh.

Super, Joseph.  2013.  “West Virginia Incorporated: Religion and the Railroad in the Timber Counties” [Randolph and Tucker counties].  West Virginia History, n.s. 7, no. 2 (2013): 33-62.

West Virginia Baptists [ten essays].  2014.  Special issue, American Baptist Quarterly 33 (Spring): 1-120.  Contents: Preface to the West Virginia Baptist Convention Sesquicentennial / David Carrico -- Introduction to West Virginia Baptist Sesquicentennial / Richard Hepler -- Baptist beginnings in northern West Virginia [1700s] / George Truett Rogers -- Baptist beginnings and expansion in southern West Virginia [late 1700s] / William J. Bryan -- In the beginning--the establishment of the General Association of West Virginia Baptists [1866] / Barbara Smith -- The Judson legacy in West Virginia / Deborah Bingham van Broekhoven -- A legacy of education / Valerie Gittings -- American Baptist women of West Virginia / Linda Hepler -- American Baptist youth work in West Virginia / Jean Cunningham -- History of the American Baptist men of West Virginia / Ray Lucky.