Hard, Hard Religion: Interracial Faith in the Poor South

New Directions in Southern Studies

by John Hayes

In his captivating study of faith and class, John Hayes examines the ways folk religion in the early twentieth century allowed the South's poor--both white and black--to listen, borrow, and learn from each other about what it meant to live as Christians in a world of severe struggle. Beneath the well-documented religious forms of the New South, people caught in the region's poverty crafted a distinct folk Christianity that spoke from the margins of capitalist development, giving voice to modern phenomena like alienation and disenchantment. Through haunting songs of Death, mystical tales of conversion, grassroots sacramental displays, and an ethic of neighborliness, impoverished folk Christians looked for the sacred in their midst and affirmed the value of this life in this world.

From Tom Watson and W. E. B. Du Bois over a century ago to political commentators today, many have ruminated on how despite material commonalities, the poor of the South have been perennially divided by racism. Through his excavation of a folk Christianity of the poor, which fused strands of African and European tradition into a new synthesis, John Hayes recovers a historically contingent moment of interracial exchange generated in hardship.

250 pages, Paperback

Published October 23, 2017

Reviews

[EP · Rating 4 out of 5]

“There was no triumph, no plateau of social or moral victory. Put differently, the devil lay always in wait, undermining, attacking, seeking to snatch souls into irretrievable abandonment.”

[John Warner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Folk Christianity, prevalent in the early 2oth century Southern U.S., was primarily the product of the poor, both blacks and whites. Many of the poor barely scrimped out a living through sharecropping. Occasionally, a few would have religious conversion experience resulting in a call to lead neighbors as pastors in religious services. The houses of worship were rustic rural buildings some no more than a simple farm building. The worship leaders were often illiterate and not seminary trained.

The author meticulously details the worship life of the poor South through its song, conversion experiences, sermons, and sacramental worship. Since almost all of the southern folk Christian praxis was unwritten, it was spread throughout the Bible Belt mouth to mouth.

Growing up in the South, I welcomed Dr. Hayes research, which cleared up some of my misconceptions experienced in my children, including the denigration of the poor. This book is a must read for any scholar seeking a better understanding of folk Christianity in the United States.