"A strong contribution to our understanding of Appalachian religions and Appalachian lives." —Courtney Bender, Columbia University
(Courtney Bender, Columbia University 2008)"Callahan's book on the Jesus—haunted Appalachian coal country restores the hard work men and women do every day as a necessary subject for U.S. religious historians. This book tells the important, rich, and compelling story of how the miners and their families engaged the harsh realities of their world." —Robert A. Orsi, Northwestern University
(Robert A. Orsi, Northwestern University 2009)Callahan (religion, Univ. of Missouri-Columbia) provides a multidisciplinary study of the religious culture that developed when coal mining replaced subsistence farming as the economic base of eastern Kentucky life starting in the late 19th century. He first sketches traditional Appalachian mountain religion, rightly rejecting interpretations that see it as a fatalism rooted in deprivation. Rather, a profound sense of the supernatural was key to this religious style associated with independent Baptists and Old Regular Baptists. Companies often subsidized churches representing mainline denominations, but white miners preferred newer Holiness-Pentecostal groups. They bridged mountain religion and the industrially oriented mines. Mistreated by mining executives, mining families found in the Holiness-Pentecostal churches ways to resist oppression and give the life of work meaning. For those sometimes attracted to unions (even the communist-backed National Miners' Union), unions became extensions of the church, for they also spoke to issues of meaning and values. Callahan shows the profound connections between work and religion that those who study each separately often overlook. This volume will interest undergraduates and others who work in southern and Appalachian religion and culture, American studies, and labor studies. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates through faculty/researchers. --Choice C. H. Lippy, formerly, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, June 2009
(C. H. Lippy, formerly, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga 2009)"... In this graceful portrayal, Richard Callahan wipes away some of... [the] soot. Through oral history, songs, folklore, and social scientific reportage, 'Work and Faith in the Kentucky Coal Fields' tackles a region (Appalachia) and a mode (work) often neglected by scholars of U.S. religious history.... Callahan's book pays attention to the relationship between religion and labor practices, showing how the work of miners informed their religious ideas, and how their religious lives molded their working choices. The study of religion is, in Callahan's rendering, the study of a 'kind of work,' a work that can be discerned in everyday life, in the sensual body, and in the political decisions of lay believers." —Kathryn Lofton, Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University, Books and Culture, May 11, 2009
(Kathryn Lofton, Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University Books and Culture 2010)"Callahan shows the profound connections between work and religion that those who study each separately often overlook.... Recommended." —Choice, June 2009
(Choice 2010)"... an excellent study that will benefit anyone interested in coal culture throughout the Appalachian mining regions because life within any society can hardly be understood apart from its religion." —Doug Cantrell, Elizabethtown Community and Technical College, Register Kentucky Historical Society, Vol. 106.2 Spring 2008
(Doug Cantrell, Elizabethtown Community and Technical College Register Kentucky Historical Society 2010)"[The author's] analysis of the spread of Holiness... is a nuanced, careful interpretation with suggestive ideas for other contexts. He argues that miners joined the Holiness movement as a way to preserve, and intensify, precisely the elements of older rural religion that were under attack by the emissaries of 'railroad religion.' Holiness took the older belief in visions and omens and made it tangible.... Callahan skillfully links industrial transformation to Holiness as an intensified resistance movement.... He goes further and shows that this active engagement with the new context made Holiness believers ripe for unionization when national organizations came into the coal fields in the early 1930s." —John Hayes, Wake Forest University, H-Pentecostalism, August 2009
(John Hayes, Wake Forest University H-Pentecostalism )"... outstanding study of work and faith.... For Kentucky's coal miners and their families, religion functioned as a counterweight to the industrial capitalism that came with coalmining. It served sometimes as a form of resistance to evil company powers, sometimes as an account of a better life or as an explanation of brushes with death, and sometimes as a source of hope and comfort in the midst of tragedy. For recovering their story we are indebted to Richard Callahan's first-rate history." —James Hudnut-Beumler, Vanderbilt University, JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY, Vol. 96. 3 December 2009
(James Hudnut-Beumler, Vanderbilt University JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY )"[A] commendable piece of scholarship, completing the link between cultural theory, religious studies, and history." —Robert S. Weise, Eastern Kentucky University, JRNL INTERDISCIPLINARY HISTORY, Vol 41.1, Summer
2010
"Callahan's hard labour has excavated some rich analytical mines and cut a path into subterranean but vital dimensions of religious experience in America." —Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 61/2, April 2010
(Journal of Ecclesiastical History )"Work and Faith in the Kentucky coal Fields is an outstanding book. Building on the excellent scholarship of Deborah Vansau McCauley, Dwight B. Billings, and Alessandro Portelli and weaving in theoretical insights from James C. Scott, Robert A. Orsi, and Raymond Williams, Callahan gives us a sophisticated reading of religion as it was lived and felt in the everyday world." —The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 76, No. 3, August 2010
(The Journal of Southern History )"[T]his fine study should inspire more attention to the rich but oft-neglected intersection of religion and labor in American life." —The Journal of Southern Religion, Vol. 13
(The Journal of Southern Religion )
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A Strange Land and Peculiar People,
By Stephen Lawson "www.peaceablezealot.com" (Lexington, KY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Work and Faith in the Kentucky Coal Fields: Subject to Dust (Religion in North America) (Hardcover)
In this book, Richard Callahan seeks to tell the stories of faith and life of the people who lived in eastern Kentucky during the incursion of the coal industry into that area. This "people's history" of religion in Appalachia is a fascinating read and highly recommended for anyone interested in the history of Appalachia or general American religious history.
Callahan faithfully tells the stories of people whose lives have been "swept under the rug" by capitalistic expansion. With the current economic crisis, there is a lot of rhetoric about preserving the "American way of life." This book tells the stories of a way of life that was sacrificed on the altar of capitalism to create and sustain an "American dream." There is a much longer review that I wrote on this book that was published by the Englewood Review of Books. Rather than post a customer review that is far too long, I will give the url for those interested. The review in it's entirety is posted here: [...]
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