Review of Strangers Below
By David York
Joshua Guthman’s book, Strangers Below: Primitive Baptists and American Culture, tells the story of a small, fairly obscure, group of Southern Calvinistic Christians called the Primitive Baptists (as the title well implies). Although Guthman’s book uses the Primitive Baptists to trace a part of the American Calvinist experience in order to demonstrate how it shaped the Second Great Awakening and the post-World War II folk revival, Strangers Below also demonstrates that the Bible Belt was formed in the fire of religious schism. Strangers Below, spans from 1803 to the near present by portraying the stories of people and events that helped shape this time in American history. While tracing the lives of the Primitive Baptist Church members, Strangers Below illuminates the stories of the members of this nearly overlooked tradition. These stories are ones of struggle, loneliness and doubt. Guthman does an excellent job of painting the emotions and lives of the people he has studied with a great amount of color, while expertly presenting facts that many other historians have seen as hopelessly obscure or simply insignificant. Despite the fact that this is a distinctly historical text, the words on the pages of Strangers Below come together to personalize history, something not always accomplished by historical work.
The uniqueness of Strangers Below comes chiefly from its study of the Primitive Baptists who, until recently, have had little to no importance cast upon them by historical scholarship. This book argues that they are of importance and are even key to understanding American Calvinism and the various internal disagreements that shaped much of the American religious scene. Guthman uses the lives of some of these people to show how their religious thought influenced their mood and how that, in turn, can help us to see religion as a changing system of practices and attitude. The book also connects this network of change to the internal conflict of the church that revolved around the formation of the Bible Belt. Effectively, the book seeks to challenge the reader to think in new ways about the Bible Belt’s formation and about American Calvinism as a whole. In this goal, Strangers Below undeniably succeeds and pushes the reader toward further knowledge and greater understanding of the subject.
Through their musical practices, Guthman demonstrates, the Primitive Baptists continue their ideology into the modern era. Strangers Below emphasizes that music was one of the believer’s ways of talking and pleading with God. This music resonates with sounds of loneliness and, at times, even despair. Guthman uses the music, as well as some of its best musicians, such as Roscoe Holcomb, to show how the music has kept the Primitive thought and mood alive well into the modern era. Guthman also mentions how this sound has not only permeated the music scene but how its lonesome noise has filtered over into film, the prime example being O Brother, Where Art Thou?
As a whole, Strangers Below is a unique and interesting tale of a group that almost escaped notice from academia. This scholarly work’s use of primary and secondary sources helps to weave a previously untold tale that sparks interest and intrigue within the reader. As Guthman tells the story of the lonesome pilgrim of the Primitive Baptist, the reader is thrust into the melancholy mood of this Calvinistic religion. With this understanding comes the challenge to think about the Bible Belt’s formation and American Calvinism in new ways. Strangers Below has an elegantly constructed argument that does an outstanding job of proving the book’s thesis, challenging the reader and placing a great amount of life and color into lives past.
Guthman, Joshua. Strangers Below: Primitive Baptists and American Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.
More about Strangers Below at http://joshuaguthman.com/