Hard, Hard Religion

In his captivating study of faith and class, John Hayes examines the ways folk religion in the early twentieth century allowed the South’s poor — both white and black — to listen, borrow, and learn from each other about what it meant to live as Christians in a world of severe struggle. Beneath the well-documented religious forms of the New South, people caught in the region’s poverty crafted a distinct folk Christianity that spoke from the margins of capitalist development, giving voice to moder