I seek funding for the completion for publication of two projects in the study of Appalachian mountain religion within the framework of American religious history. The first is a photographic essay of mountain churches and mountain religious history and culture in the central Appalachian region. I have enclosed for your examination a six-page chapter outline of the proposed manuscript as well as a selection of photocopies of photographs. The book proposal for the photographic essay is an attempt to create a representative visual record of the variety and continuity of mountain religion’s material culture, one of the primary clues -- for understanding and interpreting mountain religious life and history.

Since January 1987 I have been working with the photographer Warren Brunner, a prominent regional photographer whose photographs have appeared in Time and the c7hristian Science Monitor. Brunner has had a studio in Berea, Kentucky, for over thirty years. Since 1987, Warren and I have shot over 4,000 frames in black-and-white and color-slide film in our numerous travels into eastern Kentucky, southwest Virginia, southern West Virginia, east Tennessee, and western North Carolina. In 1988-1989 we were awarded an Appalachian Studies Fellowship to help defray the costs of the project. We are working towards a manuscript for publication based on photographs, oral history interviews, and in depth historical study. In October 1989 the Acquisitions Editor of The University of Tennessee Press, Ms. Tana McDonald, made a special all-day trip from Knoxville to Berea in order to meet with us about our project and review some of the photographs.