“If You Read Your Bible”

Abstract

This chapter discusses the popular religiosity of the southern, white, working class, relying heavily on oral histories. Popular religiosity has been the subject of a great deal of debate in the scholarly literature. According to religious historian Charles H. Lippy, popular religiosity exists alongside formal religious belief and practice, but it is also about “the ways in which individuals take religious belief, interpret it in practical terms, and put it to work to do something that will give order and meaning to their lives.” He suggests that Americans have long operated within both sacred and secular realms, each with their own measure of power. For those without power in the material world, access to sacred power can nevertheless give someone “a sense of control, of being able to chart one's own destiny.” That control becomes the key to experiencing happiness and to seeing life as endowed with meaning.