Baptist scholar says remember Appalachia before it disappears

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (ABP) -- Dynamite pulling down mountain tops and
satellite dishes pulling down a homogenizing signal are making
Appalachia as a clearly defined region disappear before our eyes,
according to longtime Appalachian watcher, minister and historian Bill
Leonard.
 
"Mass culture is overtaking it," Leonard said during a breakout session
at the 2011 annual meeting of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship March
25 at First Baptist Church in Asheville, N.C. 

Technology penetrates the isolation that gave Appalachian families,
churches and cultures its distinctive lilt. Now 24/7 "virtual religion"
flows down the crease of every holler, streaming into trailers and
cabins from sources as disparate as the prosperity gospel of TD Jakes
and Mike Murdoch, the sweet Catholic piety of Mother Angelica, the
strange new perspective of Mormons, the ubiquitous presence of the
Gaithers music and Joel Osteen "insisting God feels good about himself
and you should too."
 
"No single force is changing Appalachian church life like the
technology of televised religions," said Leonard, who is on sabbatical
as professor of church history from Wake Forest University School of
Divinity.
 
Leonard addressed the changing Appalachians because the Cooperative
Baptist Fellowship and other denominational groups are targeting the
region with social ministries they expect will lead to spiritual
development. Appalachia is a 1,600-mile long belt of mountains in
eastern North America that stretches southwest from the Gaspé Peninsula
in Quebec to the Gulf coastal plain in Alabama. Mount Mitchell (6,684
ft) in North Carolina's Black Mountains, just a few miles from where
Leonard was speaking, is the highest peak.
 
They currently, but less frequently, find distinctive branches of
faithful in the mountains, such as "No Hellers," who are Primitive
Baptist Universalists of no more than 1,000 members in 20 counties. They
"press their Calvinism to the logical conclusion -- or illogical --
that Christ's redemption is so powerful that all will be redeemed,"
Leonard said. They believe, "It's hell enough down here."
 
You will also find Pentecostal Holiness and those who will handle
snakes and drink poison, pressing the literalism of Jesus' words in Mark
16:18. Disagreements will surface between Trinitarian and "Jesus only"
theology. Leonard said denominationally connected churches, both in
rural areas and in town, thrived in Appalachia, "holding to a
fundamentalism that paralleled mountain sectarians."
 
King James remains the only "orthodox text" Leonard said, as he told of
one pastor relating a conflict in an associational meeting because "one
of the young preachers stood up and announced he was NIV positive."
 
More than any other distinctive religious expression, mountain religion
is tied to oral tradition, the centrality of religious experience and
the reality of the land," Leonard said, quoting Appalachian observer and writer Deborah McCauley.

The elements that give the Appalachian region is distinctiveness are
being hit hard by demographics, culture and destruction of the very
mountains that gave the religion its uniqueness. In the cultural
dilution, Appalachia is not immune from the "mega-churching of America,"
Leonard said. Such churches "may be doing for Appalachian ecclesiology
what Wal-Mart did for customer service. They rise on the edge of town,
draining the life from mom and pop churches."