Wrestling with 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...

There was an Irish girl named Clara whose father sailed to America before the Great Famine. He left his family in Ireland, not wanting to expose them to the dangers of the “coffin ship” that was the only passage he could afford, but he promised to send for them soon.  Clara was barely three when her father sailed away and had no memory of him, but every night her mother talked about the man and how deeply he loved them. During the Great Famine, Clara never tired of hearing how clever her father was, how he was  certain to succeed and take her to a land of plenty. At night she talked to her father and imagined she could hear him answer. A few letters came from America, not written by the father himself, but by friends who had met him, and Clara memorized them, untroubled that they postponed again and again the day of his return. His final letter reported that he had staked a rich claim in a California goldfield.  After that, Clara and her mother heard noth...