Wooden Churches: A Celebration

by Rick Bragg (Introduction)

Though usually plain, sometimes humble, wooden churches are something special. With no fancy accoutrements - the flying buttresses, the mountains of organ pipe, the marble floors, the windows of stained glass - wooden churches distinguish themselves through the people who built them, the people who preach in them, and the place they assume in the civic, moral, and spiritual life of the community. There is something about wooden church that moves artists and writers to very personal acts of creation. Perhaps it's the grain of the wood or the flaking paint. Maybe it's the strict angles of the eaves and the way footsteps echo across the floor. Wooden Churches glows with the work of such famed photographers as Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, Gordon Parks, William Christenberry, and Tom Rankin and sings in the words of Eudora Welty, Raymond Carver, James Baldwin, Reynolds Price, Mark Twain, Carson McCullers, Lee Smith, Anne Tyler, John Irving, and Thomas Jefferson, among many others. The images and words follow shared lives from birth to death as they unfold between the hallowed walls of wooden churches large and the marriages, the picnics, the baptisms, the political meetings, the funerals, the hoedowns, and even the military strategy sessions of General U.S. Grant. In the tradition of Algonquin's bestselling Out on the Porch, Wooden Churches takes the reader up the steps, through the doorway, and down the aisle of hundreds of American wooden churches, old and new, fancy and plain, rich and poor.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Art

122 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1999

About the author

Rick Bragg is the Pulitzer Prize winning writer of best-selling and critically acclaimed books on the people of the foothills of the Appalachians, All Over but the Shoutin, Ava's Man, and The Prince of Frogtown.

Bragg, a native of Calhoun County, Alabama, calls these books the proudest examples of his writing life, what historians and critics have described as heart-breaking anthems of people usually written about only in fiction or cliches. They chronicle the lives of his family cotton pickers, mill workers, whiskey makers, long sufferers, and fist fighters. Bragg, who has written for the numerous magazines, ranging from Sports Illustrated to Food & Wine, was a newspaper writer for two decades, covering high school football for the Jacksonville News, and militant Islamic fundamentalism for The New York Times.

He has won more than 50 significant writing awards, in books and journalism, including, twice, the American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1993, and is, truthfully, still a freshman at Jacksonville State University. Bragg is currently Professor of Writing in the Journalism Department at the University of Alabama, and lives in Tuscaloosa with his wife, Dianne, a doctoral student there, and his stepson, Jake. His only real hobby is fishing, but he is the worst fisherman in his family line.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

A beautiful and peaceful collection of old wooden churches.

This book includes a brief introduction by Rick Bragg, but primarily is composed of pictures of old churches across America, accompanied with with scripture, hymnals or quotes as page space allows.

I would have liked to have seen these passages be more personal to the pictures- instead of being taken from different works of literature. The churches are so beautiful I wanted to read memories about them being built, going to Sunday School inside, weddings, revivals. I'd like to know something more about the life of the people in these pictures.

[Nelda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rick Bragg writes another down-home and sweet essay for the book's introduction. I will read anything by this guy. This essay brought to mind the melancholy song by Kris Kristopherson, "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down." In Bragg's essay, the focus is on why you could rob a bank in the South on a Sunday and not get caught 'cause all the witnesses are in church, and as I recall in Kris's song, you walk the streets alone with a hangover on a Sunday and feel bummed out and oh-so lonely.

The photos of wooden churches are by other people. All have captions of where the photo was taken, and there is a passage about worship from a work of fiction (mostly) by authors like Eudora Welty, Mark Twain, Anne Tyler, James Baldwin, and Kate Chopin. The photos are all in black and white, so I do wish some were in color. However, most wooden churches are white, and black and white photos lend the charm and nostalgia this book aims for. I attended one of those old wooden churches as a child (yes, painted white, then with white vinyl siding later on). Beside the bed, this is a comfort book for sweet dreams indeed!

[T · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was a little surprised that this book was a coffee table book and only the introduction was actually by Rick Bragg. I had not realized it until I picked it up at the library. What a way he has with words! He certainly knows how to turn a descriptive phrase! Each of the pictures was a study in themselves with regards to time and history.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extended introduction by Bragg, and up to his usual standards, followed by photos of wooden churches across the United States.

[Angie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful photography. Beautiful churches. I had hoped for more of Rick Bragg's writing. Instead, this is more of a collection of excerpts from other authors.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely pictures-- if you grew up in the South, you can identify with prose/poems with pictures-- Rick Bragg's introduction is perfect -- again if you grew up in the South

[Betsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

quaint pictures and perfect additions from so many poems and books.