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Contents
Background
Content
Key Terms
Dialogue
References
External Links
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Background
Loyal Jones was born (1928) and grew up in the mountains of western North Carolina (Cherokee and Clay counties), one of seven children of tenant farmers. He received his Bachelors degree from Berea College in 1954, and a Masters in Education from UNC in 1961. He served as the director of Berea College’s Appalachian Center from 1970 to 1993 (which was renamed the Loyal Jones Appalachian Center in 2008). He has authored or co-authored at least a dozen books and many articles on the Appalachian region. Ron Eller, former director of the Appalachian Center at the University of Kentucky, has said that “Jones’ message has been that Appalachia should be judged by its own values–family, land, traditionalism–rather than mainstream values of accumulation, wealth and power.” Jones preaches this message loudly in Faith & Meaning in the Southern Uplands.
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Content
In Faith & Meaning in the Southern Uplands, Jones responds to mainline misunderstandings of religious life in the mountain regions of the Southern United States by drawing from a number of interviews, recording, and publications conducted by the author himself, his students, and others over a 60 year period. This book is a response to the misperception of Appalachia he attributes to American Christians in the Introduction: that it is “an unchurched area with people who have little religion or an inadequate faith or…part of Mencken’s Bible Belt, with many small unacceptable fundamentalist churches and fervent believers” (4-5).
Jones divides his material into six broad chapters on The Human Condition, God, The World and the Devil, The Word, Salvation, and Praise in Zion, providing mainly first person accounts from interviews, accompanied by organizing statements in the first person plural written by the author himself. In his attempt to respond to mainline America’s misperception of the Uplands’ inadequate or unacceptable religion, Jones provides material showing a range of beliefs that draw heavily from opposing the Calvinist and Arminian heritages of the Uplands. He illustrates that those interviewed, a great number of them lay members of various churches, have an understanding of the theological issues at stake in their teachings on sin and salvation, Jesus and the Trinity, the difficulties of life, and the afterlife. He also shows that Upland religion is not homogenous, but includes those who follow Calvinist teachings of predestination and election, those who embrace universalism, and a wide range of beliefs in between.
In the final chapter, “Some Observations,” Jones writes that he had “looked for evidence of positive and enduring values in the people of the Southern Uplands,” and that he specifically sought people who “have prevailed in spite of their problems…who have been ennobled by them.” for this work (202-203). He lifts up five values that he finds characteristic of those in the Southern Uplands: humilty/modesty, independence, personalism/egalitarianism, familism, and a reluctance to confront others. He also addresses factors other than religion that have helped to shape the character of the people in his book, factors of place which include “Isolation; subsistence farming; an exploitive economy, whether in mining or in the renter and sharecopping farming systems; and poor schools and government services” (207). He engages the issues raised by John Photiadis and B. B. Maurer in their study, “Religion in an Appalachian State,” which found that “The aged, poor, less educated, alienated and infirm all rank significantly higher in religiousity than do the socially well-adjusted” (208). Although Jones does acknowledge that the precarious situation of those living in the Southern Uplands has an influence on such beliefs as the presence of the Devil in the world, death, the human condition, and salvation, he chooses to focus not on the conditions that might make up the meaning of religion in the Southern Uplands, but rather on how religion helps the people to make meaning of their lives.
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Key Terms
Mainline (denominations, America)
Uplands
Calvinism
Arminianism
Meaning
Fatalism
Predestination
Humility/Modesty
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Dialogue
From the introduction, final chapter, and Bibliographic essay, it is apparent that Jones is writing in response to those who have written inadequately about Appalachia, “people with a bias, such as missionaries seeking converts, journalists looking for strange and peculiar ways, or scholars who viewed Appalachian religion as a response or adaptation to deprived lives” (231). Faith & Meaning is a defense of the religion(s) of the Southern Uplands against the misperceptions of the missionary movement of mainline denominations, about which Jones observes that “never have so many missionaries been sent to save so many Christians as has been the case in this region” (4). Jones positions himself firmly on the side of the Appalachian people, using the first person plural throughout the book: “We Christians,” “We mountain people,” and “We Upland people.” When this positioning is paired with his admission that he sought and selected those who prevailed against conditions and exemplified the positive and enduring values of the Southern Uplands, it becomes apparent that book’s bias leaves the reader with little room to objectively evaluate the material. For example, Jones highlights the good race relations in three integrated churches that could serve as models for many a mainline denomination. Although he does includ the fact that black members of community speak about racism in both the community and the church, and acknowledge that the racial harmony illustrated is “still a rarity in the Uplands and in most places in the country,” (38), he allots only three lines out of twelve pages on racial harmony for this admission. While Faith & Meaning is an important response to any stereotypes that might paint the entire region as one vast area of ignorant fundamentalism, Jones has so selected his material that it is unclear how much more realistic his portrait is than any other.
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References
Jones, Loyal. Faith & Meaning in the Southern Uplands. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.
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External Links
“About Loyal Jones,” from http://www.berea.edu/appalachian-center/appalachian-center-home/about-loyal-jones/. Accessed 4/12/2013.
Buchanan, Brittany. “Mr. Appalachia” Loyal Jones–his story in his own words, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GAGxm_-t98. Accessed 4/12/2013.