A Monograph Both Inspiring and Frustrating

Abstract

religionists are listened to, learned from, and appreciated. Likewise, by using only one student (himself something ofan anomaly) as an example of AMERC "products," McCauley has again failed to utilize effective methodology. Interviews with other students would have revealed that they too are a diverse and complex group, some of whom understand the realities of mountain religion, while others do not. Thus Appalachian Mountain Religion: A History, is itself something of an anomaly and dilemma for scholars of American religion. It is a helpful resource for understanding a rich tradition and a fine study of a much neglected and misunderstood expression of American religious life. Yet this valuable resource is flawed by the author's decision to move from the historical to the polemical without applying a rigorous academic method to every aspect of the work. —Bill J. Leonard A Monograph Both Inspiring and Frustrating Deborah McCauley's Appalachian Mountain Religion is an impressively comprehensive examination of distinctly Appalachian Christianity. What is most striking is her success in enabling mountain church people to speak for themselves and in helping her readers to get inside the minds and hearts of a religious group that is often caricatured. Her critique of American Protestantism's arrogant attitude toward mountain Christians is often incisive. However, in her zeal to defend Appalachian religion, she often paints its practitioners and apparent detractors with disturbingly broad strokes. The resulting monograph is one that is alternately inspiring and frustrating. McCauley's greatest achievement is her thoroughly nuanced portrayal of the different traditions that have given mountain religion its distinctive character. She makes a compelling case that groups as diverse as Old Regular Baptists and independent Holiness/Pentecostal Christians have far more in common than is generally recognized, that mountain religiosity has its roots in an irreducibly varied web of historic religious traditions, and that this religiosity contrasts sharply with that of the Protestantism that came to dominate American life and thought by the middle of the nineteenth century. It is a measure of her achievement that she presents this shared religiosity without violating the particularities of the different traditions, groups, and individuals she studies. McCauley makes a strong case that mountain religion is a uniquely vital bearer of the "plain folk, camp meeting" religion that so crucially shaped American Protestantism in its formative stages and that this religion stands in stark contrast to the denominationalism that later came 49 to characterize mainline Protestants. She repeatedly argues that Protestant denominations now meet themselves in Appalachia as they once were at their best before giving in to the hierarchical, rationalistic, and Arminian ("do-it-yourself) ethos that came to describe America after the mid-nineteenth century. Among other things, she sees considerable virtue in how mountain churches nurture community through sacramental worship, corporate conversion experiences, an emphasis upon spontaneity and the heart in worship, preaching that is anecdotal and not doctrinal, the centrality of love as a treasured virtue, minimal organizational and doctrinal structure, democratic self-governance, and the absence of a paid caste of preachers. As readers will quickly gather, she contrasts these virtues with what she sees as the individualistic and hierarchical character of mainline American Protestantism. McCauley is at her best when she carefully traces the lineage of contemporary mountain religious practices to their antecedents. Her thesis, developed from Schmidt's and Westerkamp's research, that the protracted meetings of the Second Great Awakening have precedents in Scots-Irish sacramental meetings and conventicles is riveting. The same is true of her contention that mountain Holiness/Pentecostal religion is not simply the descendent of the Wesleyan holiness movement but that it has been powerfully shaped by Baptist influences. (Saying any Appalachian church tradition has been unaffected by Baptist traditions is like saying that Protestant church life in Boston has been unaffected by Roman Catholicism!) McCauley's critique of American Protestantism's attitude toward Appalachian mountain religion is more problematic. She offers plenty of examples of arrogant stereotyping by mainline missionaries, who often feel compelled to try to save Appalachians from themselves and their supposedly primitive religiosity. Most Appalachians are all too familiar with such caricatures by writers such as William Byrd in the eighteenth century and Jack Weller...