Appalachian Mountains and Sacred Harp/Shape Note Singing

Many of my distant relatives live in the Appalachian mountains.  It is  picturesque part of the country.  It is also a region that is rich in religious and cultural history.  Many of the songs in US history have originated in this region as has many  spirituals that are sung in churches today.  There is an incredible way of singing that is unique to this region called Sacred Harp/Shape Note singing (see  videos below).  Bible stories and music are part of the oral tradition of this region.  These stories and music are passed down from generation to generation.  Something that is not done in the rest of the country.  Young people to elderly will sit in a room for hours on end singing bonding generations together.  This region of the country has always been looked upon as the backward region of the country and spoken of with derision.  The US government cares little about so many in this region except for its rich natural resources.

In checking out some of my favorite blogs today I found a link to this story about the mountain top strip mining that is destroying the region.  Mountain tops have went from this:

 to this:

What I found unique was a Baptist publication that was voicing their objections to this kind of mining.  Usually Baptists could care less about environmental issues such as this. Their view, like Armstrongism, is that "God is going to soon return and burn it all up anyway.  It is better to save souls than worry about the environment."

In his prize-winning volume titled Uneven Ground: Appalachia since 1945, Appalachian scholar Ron Eller comments:


"Appalachia endures as a paradox in American society in part because it plays a critical role in the discourse of national identity but also because the region’s struggle with modernity reflects a deeper American failure to define progress in the first place.... We know that Appalachia exists because we need it to exist in order to define what we are not. The notion of Appalachia as a separate place, a region set off from mainstream culture and history, has allowed us to distance ourselves from the uncomfortable dilemmas that the story of Appalachia raises about our own lives and about the larger society."

In her groundbreaking study, Appalachian Mountain Religion, Deborah McCauley writes that Appalachia harbors a unique form of Protestantism born of "oral tradition," the "centrality of religious experience," and the "reality of the land." McCauley concludes that "the mountainous terrain that is the Appalachian region has had enormous impact on its character, its texture, and its religious values."

Building on the work of Eller and McCauley, Greg Griffey insists that: "By destroying the mountainous landscape of a geographical region formed millions of years ago, we are now effacing, and thereby choosing to forget, storied identities that have beckoned habitation, provided navigation through space, and evoked senses of rootedness in the mountains for thousands of years." His thesis explores "the interconnectedness of place, the environment, and religious and cultural thought," a communal network challenged by mountaintop removal in "tangible and intangible" ways. Vanishing Mountains

Sacred Harp/Shape Note singing: