"I Love to Tell the Story": The Competing Exceptionalism of Appalachian Religion Open Access
Doster, Meredith Abigail (2017)
Published
Abstract
The story of "Appalachian religion" brings longstanding investments in both critical and nostalgic interpretations of a region and its religious cultures to the fore. "'I Love to Tell the Story': The Competing Exceptionalism of Appalachian Religion" explores how one compound term authorizes a particular interpretation of "Appalachianness" as sui generis and innately religious. Interpreting "Appalachian religion" as a distorting category that posits religious difference as a hallmark of regional identity underscores the competing exceptionalisms that shape the intersection of personal, regional, and national storytelling. This dissertation considers the mechanisms by which one term makes region-wide claims but confers "Appalachianness" on a limited elect, thereby perpetuating and authorizing an Appalachia that wields stories of exceptionalism as self-authorizing tools and mechanisms of exclusion.
In the North American landscape, stories of self, region, and nation collaborate, documenting unwitting allegiances that ascribe gospel-like authority to personal truth claims. Writing at the intersection of Appalachian and Religious Studies long dominated by Catherine Albanese's case study on "regional religion," I parse the stories that name and claim Appalachian religious difference to redress disciplinary structures that authorize "facts" and "fictions" alike. While stories can be read at face value, proving meaningful to those who name and claim them, my intervention challenges traditional readings of "Appalachian religion" to relate its storytelling apparatus to dominant modes of American scripturalizing.
To read the story of "Appalachian religion" for evidence
of competing centers and conflicting narratives focuses on the
discursive formation of a compound term that connotes a minoritized
tradition studied primarily within a marginal(ized) discipline.
Appalachia and the story of "Appalachian religion" are far from
traditional centers of power, but their traction in the national
imaginary begs questions about how we might leverage the
storytelling apparatus that authorizes regional and national
exceptionalism to reframe the qualities of both "Appalachianness"
and "Americanness." Examining the collusion of self, regional, and
national storytelling in the authorization of one regional
religion, I theorize the stories we love to tell about "Appalachian
religion" as a mode of American scripturalizing that produces and
perpetuates exceptionalism as gospel truth. To query and unsettle
these truth claims, I posit auto-historiographical
lifestory-telling as a methodology capable of demythologizing the
stories that shape lives and worlds.
Table of Contents
Prologue: "This is My Story, This is My Song" • 1
Introduction: The Story • 13
Pivoting from Soundscape to Story • 21
A Storied Region and the Either/Or Story of "Appalachian Religion" • 27
Appalachia, Appalachian, Appalachianist: Naming A Field, Telling A Story • 33
Scripturalizing (from) the Ex-Center: The Competing Exceptionalisms of "Appalachianness" and "Americanness" • 39
Lifestories and Lifeworlds: (Story)Telling Auto-Historiography • 46
Retelling "American" Religious History • 49
Appalachia as Story: The Religion of Exceptionalism • 53
Naming, Claiming, and Reframing "Appalachian Religion" • 63
Chapter One: Naming Appalachian Religion • 71
"Appalachian Religion" in Two Stories • 76
Ron Rash, Cratis Williams, and the Facts and Fictions of "Appalachian Religion" • 78
Fred Craddock and Institutional(izing) Stories of Religious Difference • 94
The Positional, Paradigmatic Exceptionalism of "Appalachian Religion" • 113
Chapter Two: Claiming Appalachian Religion • 116
The Value(s) of "Appalachianness" • 116
(Pro)claiming Innate Religiosity • 120
The (Sui Generis) Story and Study of "Appalachian Religion" • 126
From "Appalachian Values" to "Regional Religion": A Case Study in Exceptionalism • 134
The School of "Appalachian Religion" • 141
Loyal Jones' Story of Faith and Meaning • 153
Who Counts? The Representational Politics of "Appalachian Religion" • 160
Chapter Three: Reframing Appalachian Religion • 163
The Danger of a Single Story: Reframing Literature, Lifestory, and Lifeworld • 165
(Life)Story as (Thinking) Technology: An Auto-Historiographical Exercise in Reframing • 171
Reframing Lifestory and Lifeworld of "Appalachian Religion" • 174
Storied Encounters, Scholarly Formations: Where Africa and Appalachia Meet • 177
Reframing Legends: Barbara Ellen Smith's Auto-Historiography • 186
Competing Appalachias, Contested Frames of Reference • 198
Conclusion: Can There Be an "Appalachian Religion"? • 201
Begging the Question(s) • 201
Recounting the Stor(ies) • 210
An Auto-Historiographical Turn: Killing My/Our Darlings • 214
Two Final Stories: The Next Generation • 218
Epilogue: "Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now" • 223
Works Cited • 227
Appendix A • 257
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