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Poster (LUO Remote) - Textual or Investigative

Description

The Southern Appalachian Mountains are steeped with deeply held, and individually personal, religious beliefs. The diverse influences upon the region during their settlement have blurred the lines between folklore, Christianity, and other belief systems. This research uses primary and secondary sources to identify how those cultural beliefs have become infused into mountain religion and what makes the various denominational churches of the region reflect each other and their cultural identity more than their broader national conventions. Settlers brought forms of Christianity with them into the mountains, but it did not look like the Christianity that had developed in the colonies. It came with mystic traditions, Granny Women, healing, and lore and married itself right into the American Indian traditions of the people they met when they settled the land. As more common denominations grew and spread throughout Southern Appalachia, they did not develop without reflecting the unique mountain culture around them. What makes mountain religion so fascinating is the way the mountain culture permeates even the strictest, most fundamental-leaning bodies of believers while a biblical worldview inserts itself into the minds of skeptics and unbelievers. A challenge with understanding the culture of Appalachia and the impact on religion is its limited historiography. Appalachia is only now in a revisionist period of history that started in the late twentieth century. As revisionist history continues and primary sources are objectively analyzed and rediscovered, a clearer picture of the anomaly that is Appalachian Mountain religion will likely emerge. Moreover, as the barriers that have historically isolated the Southern Appalachian region are torn down, the future of mountain religion is a story waiting to be told.

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Apr 15th, 12:00 PM

Appalachian Mountain Religion

Poster (LUO Remote) - Textual or Investigative

The Southern Appalachian Mountains are steeped with deeply held, and individually personal, religious beliefs. The diverse influences upon the region during their settlement have blurred the lines between folklore, Christianity, and other belief systems. This research uses primary and secondary sources to identify how those cultural beliefs have become infused into mountain religion and what makes the various denominational churches of the region reflect each other and their cultural identity more than their broader national conventions. Settlers brought forms of Christianity with them into the mountains, but it did not look like the Christianity that had developed in the colonies. It came with mystic traditions, Granny Women, healing, and lore and married itself right into the American Indian traditions of the people they met when they settled the land. As more common denominations grew and spread throughout Southern Appalachia, they did not develop without reflecting the unique mountain culture around them. What makes mountain religion so fascinating is the way the mountain culture permeates even the strictest, most fundamental-leaning bodies of believers while a biblical worldview inserts itself into the minds of skeptics and unbelievers. A challenge with understanding the culture of Appalachia and the impact on religion is its limited historiography. Appalachia is only now in a revisionist period of history that started in the late twentieth century. As revisionist history continues and primary sources are objectively analyzed and rediscovered, a clearer picture of the anomaly that is Appalachian Mountain religion will likely emerge. Moreover, as the barriers that have historically isolated the Southern Appalachian region are torn down, the future of mountain religion is a story waiting to be told.

 

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