God -- Present in Appalachia

God -- Present in Appalachia PDF Author: Ira Gahagen Howard
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Appalachian Region, Southern
Languages : en
Pages : 422

Get Book Here

Book Description

God -- Present in Appalachia

God -- Present in Appalachia PDF Author: Ira Gahagen Howard
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Appalachian Region, Southern
Languages : en
Pages : 422

Get Book Here

Book Description


In the Hands of a Happy God

In the Hands of a Happy God PDF Author: Howard Dorgan
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9780870499623
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Get Book Here

Book Description
The investigation of Primitive Baptist Universalists -- Calvinist 'No-Hellers, ' which sounds for all the world like an oxymoron -- requires the exact type of seasoned and comprehensive field experience which Dorgan has brought to it with meticulous care and insight. -- Deborah Vansau McCauley, author of Appalachian Mountain ReligionAmong the many forms of religious practice found in the ridges and hollows of Central Appalachia, one of the most intriguing -- and least understood -- is that of the Primitive Baptist Universalists (PBUs). Popularly known as the No-Hellers, this small Baptist sub-denomination rejects the notion of an angry God bent on punishment and retribution and instead embraces the concept of a happy God who consigns no one to eternal damnation. This book is the first in-depth study of the PBUs and their beliefs.As Howard Dorgan points out, the designation No-Heller is something of a misnomer. Primitive Baptist Universalists, he notes, believe in hell -- but they see it as something that exists in this life, in the temporal world, rather than in an afterlife. For a PBU, sinfulness is the given state of natural man, and hell a reality of earthly life -- the absence-from-God's-blessing torment that sin generates. PBUs further believe that, at the moment of Resurrection, all temporal existence will end as all human-kind joins in a wholly egalitarian heaven, the culmination of Christ's universal atonement.In researching this book, Dorgan spent considerable time with PBU congregations, interviewing their members and observing their emotionally charged and joyous worship services. He deftly combines lucid descriptions of PBU beliefs with richly texturedvignettes portraying the people and how they live their faith on a daily basis. He also explores a fascinating possibility concerning PBU origins: that a strain of early- nineteenth-century American Universalism reached the mountains of Appalachia and there fused with Primitive Baptist theology to form this subdenomination, which barely exists outside a handful of counties in Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, and West Virginia.Like Dorgan's earlier books, In the Hands of a Happy God offers an insightful blend of ethnography, history, and theological analysis that will appeal to both Appalachian scholars and all students of American religion.

Christianity in Appalachia

Christianity in Appalachia PDF Author: Bill J. Leonard
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9781572330405
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Get Book Here

Book Description
Religion has long been a source of identity for many Southerners, and the Appalachian areas in particular have proven to be a virtual fortress protecting faith and culture. Yet, in a region popularly thought to be religiously homogeneous, congregations reflect a wide range of doctrinal differences over such issues as conversion, ministerial leadership, and the authority on which a church bases its core beliefs. Profiling the prominent Christian traditions in southern Appalachia, this book brings together contributions by twenty scholars who have long studied the religious practices found in the region's cities, small towns, and rural communities. These authors provide insights into not only the independent mountain churches that are strongly linked to local customs but also the mainline and other religious bodies that have a significant presence in Appalachia but are not strictly associated with it. The essays explore the nature of ministry within these various churches, show the impact of broader culture on religion in the region, and consider the question of whether previously isolated, tradition-based churches can retain their distinctiveness in a changing world. One group of chapters focuses on elements of mountain religion as seen in the beliefs and practices of mountain Holiness folk, serpent handlers, and various Baptist traditions. Later chapters review the history and activities of other denominations, including Southern Baptist, Presbyterian, Wesleyan/Holiness, Church of God, and Roman Catholic. Also considered are the economic history of the region, popular religiosity, and the role of church-affiliated colleges. Taken together, these essays offer a richly nuanced understanding of Christianity in Appalachia. The Editor: Bill J. Leonard is dean of the Divinity School at Wake Forest University. His other books include Out of One, Many: American Religion and American Pluralism and God's Last and Only Hope: The Fragmentation of the Southern Baptist Convention. The Contributors: Monica Kelly Appleby, Donald N. Bowdle, Mary Lee Daugherty, Melvin E. Dieter, Howard Dorgan, Anthony Dunnavant, Gary Farley, Samuel S. Hill, Loyal Jones, Helen Lewis, Charles H. Lippy, Bill J. Leonard, Deborah Vansau McCauley, Lou F. McNeil, Marcia Clark Myers, Bennett Poage, Ira Read, James Sessions, Barbara Ellen Smith, H. Davis Yeuell.

MY PATH to GOD in APPALACHIA

MY PATH to GOD in APPALACHIA PDF Author: Sherylene Holbrook
Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
ISBN: 1644581442
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 60

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Appalachia, the mountains seems to be a place where you can sense the presence of God. In the Bible, it says many times that Jesus went up to the mountain to pray. The people that are raised in that area seem to have a desire to serve the Lord. Our life is a battle between God and Satan for our souls. It's a fight between our flesh, which is the mind, and the spirit, which is our soul. The flesh lust against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. We will encounter many things in life as we mature from children to adults. Some encounters can be spiritual, physical, mentally, or even financial. As we go through life, we make all kinds of choices and decisions. We need to make sure that we stop and think about what the choice or decisions are about and how it will affect our future. First and foremost, we need to ask God to help us make the right choice or decision. The choices and decisions in life will be the way our life will turn out. This was my Path to God in Appalachia. He never left me or gave up on me. He loves me just as I am. He has taken me to his plans and purpose. What a mighty God we serve! Be strong in the Lord and His might, be bold and stand your ground in Jesus, the Rock of our salvation. You will defeat the enemy and be victorious in Christ.

Along the Road

Along the Road PDF Author: James T. Elder
Publisher: WestBow Press
ISBN: 1449766412
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 422

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the midst of a prospering career, Jim and Rita Cmolik heard the Lord calling them to bring His gospel of love to the people of McCreary County, Kentucky. They abandoned the comforts of their home in the Chicago suburbs and moved to the hills and hollers of Appalachia, following God's directive to "teach the people about My love, and show them how to take care of each other!" The couple established Hills and Hollers Ministries, a mission organization in their new community, to do just that. This writing is a parable of sorts, a work of fiction in which the story of the joys and heartbreaks of this journey of discovery is brought to us through the lives of Paul and Marie, a husband and wife who continue daily to encounter the Living God "along the road." Reading the account of their journey is a constant reminder that the Lord still calls and equips missionaries of all ages, often at most interesting moments in their lives.

The Airwaves of Zion

The Airwaves of Zion PDF Author: Howard Dorgan
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9780870497971
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Get Book Here

Book Description


Appalachian Mountain Religion

Appalachian Mountain Religion PDF Author: Deborah Vansau McCauley
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252064142
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 584

Get Book Here

Book Description
"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.

Women, Music, and Faith in Central Appalachia

Women, Music, and Faith in Central Appalachia PDF Author: Heather Ann Ackley Bean
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book Here

Book Description
Both urban Appalachian evangelical Christianity, as embodied in Appalachian women's folk art and music, and process theology as articulated by John B. Cobb, Jr, and those he has mentored share an existentialist eschatology that emphasizes the salvific quality of individual life in the present rather than hope in the future. Explores the ways in which these two marginal Christian existential theological traditions share common beliefs, articulate them in radically different ways with radically different results, and thus might learn from one another.

Giving Glory to God in Appalachia

Giving Glory to God in Appalachia PDF Author: Howard Dorgan
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9780870496660
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Giving Glory to God in Appalachia, Howard Dorgan explores the worship practices of Primitive, Regular, Old Regular, Union, Missionary, and Free Will Baptists. The worship practices of the denominations under consideration are varied and often exuberant, and Dorgan''s writing is highly evocative, conveying in rich detail the joy and pathos of worship in these mountain churches. As Dorgan states in the introduction, he is less concerned with academic theorizing and more concerned with presenting a vivid, first-hand account of all that he has seen and heard. And in the nearly fifteen years he spent researching his book, Dorgan saw quite a lot: spirited, vociferous sermons, creek baptisms, foot washings, home comings, dinners on the ground, and evangelistic radio broadcasts. Dorgan''s prose is at its most enchaining when he presents tableaus of these phenomena: a foot washing precipitates the erasure of interpersonal turmoil between two women; a preacher uses his lively mode of sermonic delivery to orchestrate the rapturous shouts and "hollers" of a group of women; a radio evangelist exhorts a recent widower to except salvation. The wonderful pictures interspersed throughout the book and the transcription of sermons help to further reify the worship scenes that Dorgan describes. At times, Dorgan''s prose is intensely personal. Dorgan is always aware that he is writing about sets of shared values and worship practices that mean a great deal to the congregations he is studying, and Dorgan treats his subjects and their beliefs with tremendous sensitivity and respect. Ultimately, Dorgan is writing about people and the ways in which they invest their lives with meaning and purpose. This gives Giving Glory to God in Appalachia a universal appeal: even readers who find the religious settings in the book completely alien will be able to sympathize with the congregations'' search for meaning. To sum up: Dorgan has written a beautiful, enthralling book. Don''t think--just buy. And while you''re at it, you might want to consider Airwaves Of Zion: Radio Religion In Appalachia (ISBN-10: 0870497979), also by Dorgan.

GOD CAN MOVE MOUNTAINS

GOD CAN MOVE MOUNTAINS PDF Author: FATHER RALPH W. BEITING
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 132

Get Book Here

Book Description