Invisible Old-Time Religion
Religion in the old South Growing up in an Alabama Protestant town and a Baptist family in the 20th century, I had a clear idea what religion was, but a limited one. Most local religion was austere or invisible in the frontier tradition, all about words and the "truths" they signified, scarcely existing outside of songs, prayers, sermons, books, and pamphlets. A "mixed" religious family was one where a husband and wife disagreed about which church to go to Sunday morning. There was a Catholic church--small but thriving in 1950 as university influence made Auburn vaguely cosmopolitan--but I've heard that the church was founded by mistake. Around 1910, when no establishment of religion meant promoting all Christian denominations equally, students were required to sign a log at the church of their choice every Sunday morning. Since there was no Catholic church in Auburn, if they registered as Catholic, they could sleep in, and the story is that thes...