Work and faith in the Kentucky coal fields
Subtitle: subject to dust
By: Richard J. Callahan, Jr.
Series: Religion in North America
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Bloomington, IN
Language: eng
Number of pages: 259
ISBN-13: 9780253352378
Subjects: Coal miners -- Religious life; Kentucky -- Religious life and customs
Description: "Exploring themes of work and labor in everyday life, Richard J. Callahan, Jr., offers a history of how coal miners and their families lived their religion in eastern Kentucky's coalfields during the early twentieth century. Callahan follows coal miners and their families from subsistence farming to industrial coal mining as they draw, upon religious idioms to negotiate changing patterns of life and work. He traces innovation and continuity in religious expression that emerged from the specific experiences of coal mining, including the spaces and social structures of coal towns, the working bodies of miners, the anxieties of their families, and the struggle toward organized labor. Building on oral histories, folklore, folksongs, and vernacular forms of spirituality, this rich and engaging narrative recovers a social history of ordinary working people through religion."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Appalachian Mountain religion; title: Patterns of life and work; title: Coal town life; title: "It's about as dangerous a thing as exists"; title: Power in the blood; title: Suffering and redemption; title: Conclusion.