Work and faith in the Kentucky coal fields : subject to dust / Richard J. Callahan, Jr.

Work and faith in the Kentucky coal fields : subject to dust / Richard J. Callahan, Jr.

9780253352378 (hardcover) (alkaline paper)
0253352371 (hardcover) (alkaline paper)

Bloomington : Indiana University Press, [2009]

©2009

English

xv, 259 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.

BR555.K4 C35 2009

277.69/082

"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."--Jacket.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 233-248) and index.

Religion in North America.

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