#because I was raised by southerners but I grew up in north Appalachia but I currently live in New England

[plaguedocboi]

Since you grew up in PA: creek or crick? Or both? (I'm a sucker for crick, haha.)

Creek but most of my native PA friends say crick

[sammyunhinged]

I grew up in South Carolina, in a deep red county of Southern Appalachia. I live in the Boston area now for school and the number of people I talk to and witness who cannot comprehend their privilege—the privilege of simply being born in a northern state—is astounding to me.

The southern states are consistently ranked in the bottom in terms of education, minimum wage, and personal freedom. They are consistently at the top for rates of teen pregnancy, incarceration, poverty, child mortality, and STI (STD) diagnoses.

The conservative, republican policies in place are directly linked to all of these things. In the South we cannot afford to vote third party because our rights our on the line. Our state officials gerrymander to strip rights from black Americans. They incarcerate at mass levels to strip rights from the poor and non-white. They pass laws to take health and freedoms away from women, especially poor women. They refuse to raise minimum wage or give out more aid in order to help people live above the poverty line. They pass laws that make gender affirming care illegal for minors. They ban the discussion of queer identities from the classroom. Even more is at stake this election because of Project 2025. The federal government under Trump would strip away more of those rights and supports state level laws like the ones I mentioned above.

My state will not go blue this election. I don’t know if it will go blue in my lifetime, but my border states have and can again. Those in Georgia and North Carolina need to feel empowered to vote! My birth state of Texas absolutely could. Get out and vote! However, the rights of the people in conservative states rely on people in other states not voting third party.

My rights, my family and my friends rights, the rights of my high-school classmate and the rights of my four year old niece are all on the line. This election is personal to me. It should be personal to you.

[kittydoggie]

Accents

Youtube has decided that I like Wendigoon now, though I'm not subscribed. I decided to try it, though, because he was talking about something I'm interested in. But as soon as he opens his mouth, I'm just hit with a lot of feelings.

You see, there is no way he isn't from Appalachia, particularly the more southern parts. I can't pin him to a state. But he sounds like the people I grew up with. And that's... Well, that's something, isn't it? The man is highly successful, but what Youtuber sounds like that?

What professional sounds like that? The woman that raised me taught me to suppress my accent. I spoke and read just fine, but we did intensive drills and stuff like Hooked on Phonics. I wasn't allowed to say words like "ain't" or the internet's current favorite "ya'll". Flowers were "pretty", never "purdy". I must comport myself properly. Stand straight.

So maybe it isn't so much suppression. Maybe it's more... I didn't quite have more than the standard American accent for a long time. Only every so often would I stretch a word like "door" into two syllables, or hit a vowel in a way reflected the south. It is usually vowels, frankly. I's and U's.

I don't know when it happened, when I stopped worrying about it. I think I can track it to when I moved north for a year. I used the terms I wanted, and just stopped giving a shit. My accent isn't as thick as his, but hearing him talk always kind of makes me happy. You keep being you, Wendibro.

[themodernsouthernpolytheist]

Can you talk a bit about Southern folk magic? What's that like? How'd you learn it? What makes it distinctly Southern?

@erynn-lafae​ First, I’m so sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you! I was so excited for this ask, but life just got in the way. I’m also gonna tag @winebrightruby​ cause I know she asked me a long time ago and I never really got to discuss it. 

So, I’ll start with a little background on the term “Southern Folk Magic.” Obviously, hopefully anyway, the term is to denote regional variations of folk magic practiced in the US South. That said, I use it as an umbrella term for the practices that happen Down South because there are TONS. We tend to talk about the South as a whole, but what many folks from outside the region don’t seem to realize is just how much diversity there is down here. Like I mentioned here, there are tons of subregions in the South and just as our food, accents, and dialects are different, so can our magical practices be. My personal experiences have been in Memphis/Mississippi Delta/North Mississippi and Knoxville/East Tennessee/Southern Appalachia. I’ll be addin Atlanta and hopefully North Georgia to that list soon, but not quite yet. 

For those not from the Delta region, Memphis is often jokingly referred to as “the capitol of Mississippi.” This is largely cultural and demographic and I’ve long said “Memphis will always be more Mississippi than it’s ever been Tennessee.” And the older I get, the more true that seems to be. According to the 2010 census, Mississippi has a 37% Black population. It has also seen the largest increase in people reporting to be of “mixed race.” Memphis has a 61% Black population, with many of these folks bein the direct descendants of freed slaves who moved out of the rural South and into a city. And in West Tennessee, which runs from the Western border of the state to the western bifurcation of the Tennessee river and represented by the far left star on our state flag, even small towns often have 30%+ Black populations whereas Knoxville, the largest city in East Tennessee, only has a 13% Black population. So the folk magic I grew up around in Memphis is largely influenced by Black folks whereas East Tennessee Appalachian folk magic is much more influenced by Cherokee and Scots-Irish practices. 

So, when I moved to Knoxville for college, it was absolute culture shock. I wasn’t actively or knowingly practicing magic at that point, but the foundations had been laid. I got a blue doormat for the front door because that’s what you do. Now I realize this comes from a West African idea that harmful spirits can’t cross water and the blue doormat (or painting the underside of your porch roof) will hopefully confuse em. I’ve since learned this is common in Carolina Lowcountry from the Gullah-Geechee people, so I’m not sure the exact lineage of me learnin it, but it’s somethin I still do. Little things like this abound and I honestly only think about it when I find myself doin one of em.

Another tradition I grew up around is water-witchin water dowsing. The first time I heard the term as a kid, I was confused, but both of my grandparents on my daddy’s side could do it and it basically involves balancin a forked stick and when it drops, that’s where you dig your well. Other people use 2 sticks or metal rods and wait for em to cross. Either way, it seems to work.

I also wear a dime on a red string on my right ankle for good luck and to avert “the evil eye.” This is somethin a childhood friend’s grandmother made for me the first time sayin, “honey, you just need it.” And I think she was right. This is a practice that, from what I’ve read, also comes from African tradition, but specifically what or where has been all over West Africa. But the red string also carries over into Irish lore on good luck and as a Gaelic Polytheist, it makes a perfect blend of practices for me. There’s also what I feel like is a broder American tradition that comes to us likely from the Irish of hangin a horseshoe above the door. Modern folklore says to hang it points up so that the “luck doesn’t run out,” but it also seems to do have to do with the idea that horseshoes are traditionally iron and the fae don’t like iron. In East Tennessee, it’s not unheard of to see a tree with ribbons or scraps tied to it. The type of tree varies, but the idea is similar to Buddhist prayer flags (for a more recognized practice) and seems to come from the Gaels that settled in the area. But over heard people say it has Indigenous ties, too. How much of that is true and how much is “Cherokee Princess Syndrome” as I like to call it, I just don’t know. That’s one thing about bein down here; we’ve created a string cultural identity that, regardless of how it happened, mashed cultural practices together that there’s just no tellin where some of em exactly come from. And that’s honestly part of what makes it “Southern.” Our culture is an amalgamation of various African cultures, Irish and German immigrants, Acadians, French and Spanish historical colonization and influence, and countless indigenous cultures. If the stories of how that happened weren’t so absolutely mortifying, it could be beautiful, but we’ll always carry the wounds and scars of the past, imo. As for how I learned, it’s been a wild ride. A lot of things I just learned culturally growin up. When you’re “born in the South, given to a town raised on hand to mouth,” a lot of things I’d now qualify as folk Magic are just a part of life. But as I’ve grown and begun intentionally practicing, I’ve read everything I can. Lots of times, this means pickin through charlatans and pseudo-intellectual horseshit. It means often bein VERY wary of other white folks claimin to know anything about anything. I’ve talked to older folks who practice and try to learn what they’re willin to teach. But it’s been a tough road. And that, along with other historical factors, are why I don’t use terms like hoodoo for my practice. I think hoodoo is a form of Southern Folk Magic, but it also has its own specific history and practices ties to the Christianization and slavery of African peoples. I’ve found a lot of similarities in my practices and Hoodoo™, but I also have a much more heavy and specific Irish influence because of bein a Gaelic Polytheist than a lot of other folks. So, as with most topics, it’s incredibly nuanced and I’m sure I’ve left somethin out or even said somethin that wasn’t super clear, so if there are any questions, shoot! And if there are any other folks that practice Southern Folk Magic or Southern-influenced Magic, hit me up! I’d love to hear from y'all cause lord does it feel lonely sometimes. We can pm here, send me asks, hit me up on twitter, or shoot me an email at TheModernSouthernPolytheist@gmail.com.  

[blackchurchnewswire]

Bob Smietana's Book Review of 'Strangers and Friends at the Welcome Table: Contemporary Christianities in the American South' by James Hudnut-Beumler

In the spring of 2008, my wife and I loaded up a truck and moved to Tennessee, where I’d taken a job as the religion writer at a newspaper in Nashville. I’ve spent the decade since then covering religion in the South, first at the paper and later as a magazine writer and freelancer.

I thought I understood how things work here. But I was mistaken. A new book from Vanderbilt Divinity School professor James Hudnut-Beumler, Strangers and Friends at the Welcome Table, helps explain why.

Based on a lifetime’s worth of work—Hudnut-Beumler grew up visiting his mom’s relatives in Appalachia—the book winds its way from a slave cabin in Spring Hill, Tennessee (about five minutes from my house), to the storm-ravaged neighborhoods of New Orleans; from a Catholic monastery in the sticks of Alabama to the headquarters of the Sons of the Confederacy.

Along the way, we see the many splendors and the deep flaws of Southern religion. It’s a place where faith is always personal, where everyone knows your name, and where the Bible shapes everything. At the heart of this new book is the question of Southern hospitality. Who is able to “sit at the welcome table,” in the words of the old spiritual? Who is turned away? And why is the South—a place of such kindness—so divided and inhospitable at times?

Hudnut-Beumler answers these questions and more in a book that’s part pilgrimage, part history lesson, and part celebration of the many versions of Christianity in the South. He writes with grace about almost everyone he meets. At one point, he visits a table at a homeschooling convention that features tips on “food security”—how to plant your own garden and raise your own crops. An inferior writer might have mocked these people. Instead, he sees echoes of Wendell Berry in their desire to reconnect to the land. Still, Hudnut-Beumler doesn’t shy away from the deep divides and sins of Southern Christians.

Conditional Hospitality

One of the first questions a Southerner asks when meeting a stranger is “Who are your people?” In the South, hospitality is conditional. People want to know who you are—where you come from, where you go to church—before they know how to treat you.

There’s a superficial friendliness—think “Bless your heart” delivered with a smile. But Southerners keep their distance unless there’s a bridge between them and a stranger, no matter how tenuous. “Moreover, the newcomer who finds a bridge is no longer a stranger but a kind of kin,” writes Hudnut-Beumler. “The person asking the question is proffering a deep kind of enduring hospitality—conditionally.”

The hospitality is conditional, in part, because the South has been shaped by scarcity as well as by faith. There are Wednesday night church suppers full of fried chicken, biscuits, and Jell-O salads. But a surprising number of people struggle to put food on the table the rest of the week. And the South isn’t just the Bible Belt. It’s also the Meth Belt—a place where poverty and addiction are commonplace and opioid overdoses are among the leading causes of death.

These circumstances—and a sense that charity begins at home—make Southerners eager to help their kin but wary of helping strangers. “Although southerners will give to those they know, they hate being forced to help others, especially those beyond their gaze,” explains Hudnut-Beumler.

Southerners will rush to help each other when disasters strike. When a tornado or hurricane devastates a community, chances are a host of Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians will follow in its wake, bringing chainsaws, hammers, and hope. Months after Hurricane Maria, Southern Baptists were still cooking thousands of meals for disaster victims in Puerto Rico.

But they will raise hell when asked to send government aid to foreign countries or pay higher taxes. As one Southern Christian explains, “We hate the group but love the individuals, as opposed to other parts of the country, where they love the group but hate the individual.”

In one of his most hopeful chapters, Hudnut-Beumler retells the story of the faith-based response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and around the Gulf Coast. The chapter opens with a TV reporter standing outside a church in New Orleans, not long after the hurricane hit the city. One of the church members was setting up tables outside so that the church could feed neighbors who were without power.

“Are you doing this for your church members?” the reporter asked.

“No, this is for anybody who is hungry and needs food,” the church member replied. “It’s what we do as a church. We feed people.”

Southern Christians have remarkable confidence in what they can do to help their neighbors. When things go wrong, they get to work. And they don’t stop until the job is done. That’s the case for Ben McLeish, one of the founders of St. Roch Community Church, a Presbyterian Church in America congregation in New Orleans’s Eighth Ward. The church was planted after Katrina, and one of its early goals was to help the community rebuild. Now its members also run a community development organization.

The church, a multiethnic conservative congregation, links its development work to theology, McLeish told Hudnut-Beumler. Rather than focus on immediate charity, the church looks at long-term, holistic community development—something unexpected for a conservative Southern evangelical church.

“There’s a verse that haunts me about John the Baptist, about how he is called to make a way for Christ, but also to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children,” McLeish told Hudnut-Beumler. “If a man is not working or a single mom is not working and struggling, it’s really hard to keep your head up and have pride, have dignity about yourself, and deliberately raise your children. But if we can help create livable wage employment opportunities that count in this discipleship, mentoring model, then we can really begin to turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and that alone would revolutionize families in our neighborhood.”

Hudnut-Beumler sees the faith-based disaster volunteering after Katrina as a kind of penance—a way for Americans from North and South alike to make amends for the neglect that caused the levees to fail.

He also sees something more: “Disaster relief,” he writes, “is also a place where racial divisions seem more susceptible to being bridged because something is being built in this American society so divided by race and class, rather than being analyzed, argued over, or torn down.”

Click here to read more. Source: Christianity Today