God and Nature in Cumberland County
Disaster Narratives From east Tennessee
This four part study concerns itself with how Appalachians in general, and Cumberland Countians in particular, created a God centered symbolic universe during the late 1700s, which still serves them today.
While denominational differences do exist, the peoples' core religious beliefs are essentially the same.
The study also reveals how a long established tradition of helping one another supersedes any institutional allegiance to regional and national branches of their own churches.
Chapter One explores what Berger and Luckman call the world-building process of externalization.
This occurred during campground meetings throughout Appalachia during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
These meetings, presided over by Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian and Church of Christ preachers, forced the settlers to choose between European orthodoxies, Calvinism and Arminianism.
They also resulted in the creation of a world view which placed God at the center of their symbolic universe, where He controlled everything, including nature.
Chapter Two reveals what role southern singing schools, which popularized shaped-note singing, played in objectifying the religious beliefs that had been externalized during the campground meetings.
Three of the texts that were used, Kentucky Harmony, The Southern Harmony and Sacred Harp, provide what George Pullen Jackson calls an unbroken musical chain, connecting the musical past with the musical present.
These three texts show how plain folk settlers divided their world into sacred and profane realms.
Chapter Three shows how Cumberland Countians created a plausibility structure about how the world is and internalized it through their contemporary church life.
This internalization, which leads to religious socialization, demonstrates that the people of Cumberland County, in their core religious beliefs, have more in common with each other than they do with the denominational movements with which they share their billboards.
Chapter Four focuses on the process of legitimation. Fourteen informants revealed their commonalities of experience, which located the primacy of God, nature and prayer in their symbolic universe.
Using this data, conclusions were drawn based on the informants' statements regarding their experiences with hailstorms, tornadoes, floods, blizzards and droughts.
These interviews showed that their world view, regardless of their religious affiliation, was essentially the same.
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