Praying in the Pine Straw: The Camp-Meeting Experience in Alabama

Summary

Step into the South's brush arbors and piney woods where faith runs deep, stories run wild, and the old-time camp meeting was anything but quiet.

Praying in Pine Straw immerses listeners in the raw, rollicking, and deeply human world of Alabama's camp meetings—a Southern tradition where fire-and-brimstone preaching echoed through pine forests and where faith was often accompanied by contradiction. From "treeing the Devil" to "holy laughter," these revivals blended heartfelt worship with all the complications of human nature. Mule-drawn wagons brought the faithful to rustic camps, where gospel fervor mingled with whiskey traders, local politicians, and opportunists of every kind. Preachers thundered against sin—even as they sometimes flirted with it themselves.

Robert C. Morgan offers a textured portrait of camp meetings as both spiritual experience and cultural spectacle, reviving a Southern tradition that flourished from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. With a blend of humor and keen insight, Praying in the Pine Straw unveils the enduring contradictions of "old-time religion" and its significant influence on Southern culture and faith—a legacy that is both treasured and complex.