from the site : The Republic
Religion: Goodbye to that old mountain religion
* By TERRY MATTINGLY - Scripps Howard News Service
* First Posted: September 21, 2011
Terry Mattingly
September 21, 2011
Travelers who frequent the winding mountain roads of Southern Appalachia
know that, every few miles, they're going to pass yet another small Baptist
church sitting close to some rushing water.
It's all about location, location, location.
Why would a preacher want to baptize a new believer in a heated, indoor
tank when he can dunk them in the powerful, living, frigid waters of the river
that created the valley in which his flock has lived for generations?
There's no question which option the self-proclaimed Primitive Baptists will
choose, even if it adds an element of risk.
"Among Primitive Baptists, you almost always see two ministers when they
baptize someone -- one to do the baptism and one to hold on. It's even become
part of their unique liturgical tradition to have two ministers there,"
said Baptist historian Bill Leonard of the Wake Forest School of Divinity in
Winston-Salem, N.C.
"As the saying goes, you could get baptized and go to heaven on the same
day if there wasn't somebody there to hang on so you didn't wash away and
drown."
This is the kind of old-fashioned faith that Americans are used to seeing
in paintings of frontier life or grainy black-and-white photographs from the
days before interstate highways, shopping malls, satellite dishes and the
Internet. Appalachian religion has played a dramatic role in American
culture, helping shape our folk art, Scotch-Irish history, roots music and a
host of other subjects.
The question, for Leonard and many other scholars, is whether the rich
heritage of "mountain Christianity" will play much of a role in the nation's
future.
"Increasingly," he said, "our modern forms of American religion and our
mass media and culture are sucking the life out of one of our most distinctive
regions."
While the region contains religious groups with European ties, the most
important fact about the common Appalachian churches is that they are uniquely
American.
For outsiders, this can be very complex territory.
The Calvinist, Primitive Baptists are not the only Baptists whose
sanctuaries dot the landscape of the 1,600-mile-long strip of mountains that
run
from Eastern Canada down to the high hills of Alabama and Georgia, cresting at
Mount Mitchell in the heart of North Carolina's Black Mountains. There are
Independent Baptists (of various kinds), Free Will Baptists, Old Regular
Baptists, Missionary Baptists, Southern Baptists and dozens of other brands.
Even the Primitive Baptists are a complex bunch, noted Leonard. There are
some who avoid wine and some who make their own. Some refuse to hire
professional pastors or to send their preachers off to seminary, fearing they
will be corrupted. There's even a small body of Primitives -- critics call them
"no-hellers" -- who insist God's love is so strong that everybody ends up
in heaven, no matter what.
Then there are the various kinds of Pentecostal-Holiness churches,
including the rare -- but world-famous -- congregations in which believers
handle
snakes, sip poison and wrestle with demons.
Some "Oneness" Pentecostal believers baptize in the name of Jesus, alone,
while others embrace the traditional Trinity of God the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit. In an academic paper titled "Looking for Religious Appalachia,"
Leonard noted that he once heard a Trinitarian Pentecostal preacher explain
that doctrinal feud in terms anyone could grasp: "Jesus had a Daddy. He
wasn't no bastard."
"Case closed," wrote the historian.
Ironically, some of the most powerful forces that threaten these churches
are the efforts of outsiders to help the region -- such as missionaries sent
to evangelize the locals or social-justice activists who want to help the
locals escape their own way of life. Then there are the softer forms of
Evangelical Protestantism that arrive through television, mass-marketed gospel
music and those new, transplanted megachurches that keep sprouting up like
suburban superstores.
Thus, the stark "Sacred Harp" hymns of the shape-note era gradually gave
way to the cheery gospel quartets of the radio era, which were then blitzed
by the pop-rock "praise bands" of the Contemporary Christian Music era.
What happens when the mountain churches and their traditions are gone?
"Appalachia still exists and it remains something to celebrate," said
Leonard. "Still, what's happening there is a danger signal to us all. ... What
was once pristine wilderness is becoming an exploited region. Tragically, a
crucial element of America's religious history and heritage is being lost,
as well."
--
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