I appreciated your response to an earlier question about bi-vocational vs. full time pastoring. It would seem that a strong financial disinsentive exists with regard to preaching “outside of the box” as it is locally understood. A full time pastor can quickly find himself out of a job trying to be faithful to Christ. There is some independence (of a good kind) with bivocational support that may help those few brave souls who strive to present everyman complete in Christ.

Would you mind clarifying (privately if you feel it is necessary) just what you mean when you refer to preachers who preach the 10 commandments and avoidance of a few socially unacceptable sins instead of Christ. Having read your posts, I am pretty sure you would insist on the necessity of a changed life as evidence of conversion. The work of the Holy Spirit in progressive sanctification would require speaking of many things including sin and the the decalogue. Obviously the source of the power and the motivation for change can be quite different.

I do not wish to pick a fight – just trying to learn who change works in my life and in the lives of those I have input in.

Thanks,
Mort

Although I and my siblings were born in IN, a number of my highschool friends had been born in Clay county as their families had moved north later than mine. We were all Southern Baptists or Pentecostals. They are all still there in IN, working in the factories that are left, or the postal service, driving OTR or whatever, my cousins included.

I got one of those full scholarships to a prestigious Quaker college. I almost didn’t make it through the first year. A third of the students came from private schools, many of those from the those excellent Quaker boarding schools on the Eastcoast. I talked funny compared to them. They were raised with nannies and “au pairs”, had been to Europe, usually more than once, and compared to me, had all the money in the world. I realize now that it was the grace of God that I stuck it out, and in four years changed into a different person my cousins and old friends didn’t know any longer. I learned to talk like I was from “the Mainline” in Philadelphia and spent my junior year in universities in Berlin and Vienna (the ones in Europe) and learned to discuss politics, literature, history, philosophy and religion.

I graduated and moved to NYC. I admit I wanted the polar opposite of what I grew up in. I know that my parents are proud of me, as are my factory-worker brothers. My extended family treats me like I’m from a different planet, even though I spent my childhood summers playing baseball and catching fireflies (lightning bugs, as we called them)in our grandfather’s front yard as he sat on the porch smoking cigarettes and listening to the Cincinnati Reds on radio and my grandmother cracked beans or quilted. I have never tried to impress them with my “book learnin’” or my ability to advise my family on finacial matters, although this is where my expertise lies. We still find it hard to talk to each other.

I’ve often thought of what I could do back in KY to help, but your essays have only pointed out what I have often thought was the truth: The people who share my heritage back in Appalachia don’t share my attitude toward education, knowledge and the obligation to improve one’s self to the extent that that’s possible with one’s Gog-given abilities and opportunites.

I now find myself a member of a Bible-believing Baptist church in a very unGodly city, sharing the Gospel with homosexuals who feel that gay sex is a God-given right, investment bankers who think that achieving great wealth at the expense of others is a God-given right, artists who think that putting an up-side-down crucifix in a plexiglass box of their own urine is a God-given right, and the list of unGodly, self-indulgent, God-given rights goes on and on in this most self-indulgent of cities. For some reason I can relate to these people more than I can my own kin when we gather on Chistmas Eve.

I go back to IN seven times a year to help my mom and dad as they get older, and I help out with the heating bill that’s twice what it was last year. When I was struggling with my self identity that first year in college, someone told my that somehow I was going to have to find a way to live with each foot in a very different world than the other. Your essays have reminded my of just how different those two worlds really are.

Sorry this note is not well written. I read you regularly but just saw your Appalachian essays this morning when I arrived at work and needed to comment while trying to do right by my employer.

Please continue to preach Jesus. He’s the only real hope have in anything.

I grew up in Letcher County so I know what you are talking about. Remember Harry Caudill’s “Night Comes to the Cumberlands”? His efforts seemed to backfire instead of having the desired affect.

I feel as if I can speak for all the Appalachian people and be one with them yet still be able to take an outsiders view because I haven’t lived in the culture since 1979. Harry Caudill, even though he is a cousin of mine and one of “us”, spoke as if he had no real connection to Appalachian people. Nobody wants to be “helped” by those who look down on them. It will take someone who grew up there and knows the people and their families to convince them that there are better ways of doing things. I think a lot of the problems you are seeing today are happening because the people were given charity or good paying jobs in a coal mine before the education system was in place with good teachers to teach them how to use their wealth. Welfare takes away your self respect. I believe only those with REAL mental or physical incapacities should be handed a free living.

A love of reading should be instilled in the children early on. Start them out on books about people in their situations. Encourage them to write stories early and share them with their peers. Then graudally move on to new cultures and new ideas. But don’t ever try to tell them that their God is not real or only one of many. I have always closed my ears to people who seem to want to change my faith.

Too much TV watching makes the kids think life is better somewhere else but the minute they are able to get outside their comfort zone they find that the world finds them too odd. Just the speech and accent gives the “dumb hillbilly” label before they can prove otherwise.

I think you are wrong about why there are so many senior dropouts. It’s not so much being afraid to “get above your raisin” as it is just getting trapped by the responsibility of owning a car or falling in love and wanting to raise a family. I don’t know why that urge seems to come earlier to Appalchian teens. Bordom, not enough other things to do, or maybe just tradition?

Adults as well as children in Appalachia need some structured social time with each other. I know people have tried to do this before but if the young people could be taught to work together building things (like Habitat For Humanity) repairing homes or making things together (quilts, jewelry, or clothing) to give to those who need them it would keep them off the fourwheelers and out of crackhouses.

The people who teach the new skills and household health, cleanliness, and personal pride should be their regular school teachers or pastors not someone shipped in from New York or LA with obvious reformation in mind. That sense of community in Appalachia will make them circle the wagons to shut out outside influences,

This seems to be something I simply don’t understand. Do any of you know why the Christian church had a flow of amazing missionaries ready to die for the gospel until about 1940, and them it stopped until recently? What happened to 50 years?

My friend’s parents were social workers who moved to this area of the country 40 years ago. They were idealistic liberals who believed that because of the money being pumped into this area from the government’s war on poverty, it would be the cornerstone of great changes that would influence this part of the world for good. Of course, the war of poverty has been of no consequence. Real change only comes from within. Perhaps the gospel message might actually make a real difference in the lives of this culture.

Yes I’m looking for that revolution. I hoping to shake things up for my family and I’m very attracted to Catholic Christian culture.

Dad learned a trade, and when I was 15, moved us all to Texas. To this day, there are family members back in KY who think Dad (and by extension, the rest of us) were too “uppity” (one of the kinder words)for leaving for greener pastures.

It’s sad to see that is still going on even now. I haven’t been back since my grandma’s funeral 10 years ago. I would love to visit, but would I stay? I don’t know.