Sunday, June 8, 2008

WIREGRASS JOURNAL | Introduction

This is the first of periodic entries on the more personal side of my research into the early history of the Assemblies of God movement in (mostly) southeast Alabama, for an independent study in the Masters’ program in the School of Library and Information Studies at The University of Alabama.

WHAT, WHERE, and HOW : For this research I will identify text references to tent revivals, camp meetings and brush arbor meetings of the Assemblies of God Church and its predecessors in southeast Alabama, focusing on Coffee, Dale, Houston, Geneva, Covington, and Conecuh counties, and into the bordering areas of the Florida Panhandle, from about 1906 to about 1916. Then I plan to travel around and attempt to discover where the actual locations of these early meetings were. By accessing archival materials at the Flower Center and other Pentecostal archives, by reading local histories and genealogy work, by traveling to the areas, visiting present-day Assembly of God churches there, and by interviewing A/G members and old-timers, I hope to document actual locations, photograph them, find corresponding US Geological Survey locations, and map and record my findings, thus adding to the foundation of knowledge about this religious group that was and continues to be very influential in American culture.

WHY : This project is a multi-layered one in which my personal and scholarly interests have converged in the field of Library and Information Studies. Exploring and mapping the woods and lake where I grew up, studying early Irish monastic culture and later medieval devotional practices in art history make up some of the back story for how I became interested in this topic and developed this project.

Underlying it all, however, is family history. My great grandfather, Lafayette Snellgrove, and my great-great uncle, Handy Washington Bryant and their families were born and raised in Coffee, Dale, and surrounding counties. Lafayette and Handy were both ordained ministers in the newly organized Assemblies of God, and my great-great aunt, Daisy Snellgrove Bryant, was licensed to preach. Early in this research I discovered that they also attended the earliest organizational meetings for the Southeastern District of the Assemblies of God. Lafayette Snellgrove in 1915, and the Bryants in 1916, and 1917 (Spence, 18-28).

Maps may be the resource that pulls this information together. One of the most exciting aspects of this research is the web-based map I hope to create and develop over time. Imbedded with much of the data and images I am collecting, I hope it will turn out to be a small treasure trove of south Alabama religious history. A click on the location of an early 20th-century revival, for example, could bring up a window displaying a thumbnail image or explanatory text with URLs for further sources. A prototype in Google Maps and the very beginnings of one in Google’s Panoramio is bringing mixed results. More to come.

ABOUT THE SOURCES : The early history of the Pentecostal movement and the organization of the Assemblies of God has been written about by a few able historians, usually focusing on the better-known pastors and leaders, and defining organizational events. But there are many undiscovered details about the movement’s ordinary participants in places like south Alabama, where a culture of revivals and camp meetings already permeated the rural landscape.

The Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center, the Archives of the Assemblies of God (iFPHC.org), has a large collection of archived materials on the Pentecostal movement, including periodicals, photographs, oral histories, audio and video recordings, and ephemera concerning the movement’s early formation and history. Many of these items have been digitized, including newspapers published by early Pentecostals. There are other archives and sources for primary materials, which I will detail in later entries.

Secondary sources focusing on the A/Gs in Alabama are few but concentrated. In the 1960s, Robert H. Spence, now president of Evangel University, wrote The First Fifty Years – A Brief Review of the Assemblies of God in Alabama (1915-1965). A dissertation covering many details and some of the “on-the-ground” evangelizers of the movement in Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida was written by Gary McElhany in 1996. Assemblies of God Heritage magazine constitutes a rich source of writing on the history of the Assemblies of God, including early Alabama. Congregational histories by the children of early organizers, such as Laurelle DuBose Weatherford’s “El Bethel Assembly of God History,” ca. 1992, are also vital contributions.

MORE ON WHY : All of these historians are members of the Assemblies of God, often going back a generation, sometimes more. My situation is different. Except for the ancestors I mentioned above and a few cousins, none of my family now is Pentecostal. I was raised in the Episcopal Church, the other end of the Protestant spectrum from Pentecostalism. Growing up, I also attended my grandmother’s big downtown Baptist church every time I visited her. Maybe because one of her parents was Pentecostal while the other was Primitive Baptist, my grandmother has always been interested in other religious persuasions besides her own, particularly Roman Catholic. And she has sometimes taken me along with her. When I was about twelve, we went for a long weekend to a Christian camp (whose affiliation I do not know) at Rock Eagle, Georgia, where I witnessed for the first time healing with laying on of hands, speaking in tongues and interpretations. When she brought back holy oil from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, she prayed over me as she dipped her finger into the tiny vial and made the sign of the cross on my forehead. I imagine this exploration will be a continuation of my family’s somewhat eclectic religious genealogy and would be fascinating to her.

SUPPORT: Travel for this project was supported in part by the Jewel Sandoval Fund of the University of Alabama School of Library and Information Studies, and in part by the UA Graduate Student Research and Travel Support Fund.

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