Andrew Connolly

Although most critics celebrate Lee Smith for disrupting Appalachian stereotypes, I argue that her fiction projects those stereotypes onto Appalachian Pentecostals, creating a religious other within Appalachia, and ultimately participating in the exoticization of this marginalized group. Both Richard, from Oral History, and Karen, from “Tongues of Fire,” enter a Pentecostal community in search of a spirituality they lack, but reject the community after only a brief involvement. Both characters see their experience as something they must outgrow to function in contemporary society, positioning Pentecostals as out of step with the rest of America. Smith’s novel Saving Grace takes a very different approach to Appalachian Pentecostalism. The protagonist, Grace, grows up as a Pentecostal preacher’s daughter and eventually leaves the religious tradition. Where Grace ends up is a subject of some critical debate. The textual evidence seems to suggest that Grace returns to Pentecostalism after she is unable to succeed in contemporary life, a choice the novel depicts as a failure. Grace’s inability to function in the contemporary world, and her subsequent irrational decision to return is a direct result of her upbringing within a Pentecostal community; she simply does not have the skills to function as a rational individual in the modern world. The implied contrast is that middle class, educated, rational individuals will make better choices. Smith ultimately promotes a neoliberal conception of both religion and class by depicting both the lower class status and restrictive religious practices of Appalachian Pentecostals as the result of poor choices. Smith is not the only author to position Pentecostals, especially Appalachian Pentecostals, as a religious other. There is a long tradition of othering Pentecostals in American fiction. What makes Smith’s portrayal of Appalachian Pentecostals as an anachronistic, immature, and irrational other to the sophisticated, middle class, spiritual Appalachians significant is the prominent place she holds in Appalachian literature. If Smith helps to push open a creative space by resisting the stereotypes of Appalachian people, it is not a space that includes Appalachian Pentecostals. Acknowledging her failure in this regard helps move Appalachian studies beyond an unqualified celebration of Appalachian literature to a critique of the exoticization of marginalized groups both inside and outside Appalachia.

Both Megan Fox and Katy Perry have discussed their Pentecostal past in magazine interviews, but the follow-up press has reacted very differently to the two celebrities. This paper looks at the formal differences between the interviews which prompted the different responses.

In a 1968 essay, Larry Neal argues that “the Black Arts Movement is an ethical movement.” What makes it ethical, he suggests, is that it works toward “the destruction of the white thing, the destruction of white ideas, and white ways of looking at the world” thereby clearing the way for a world that is more spiritual and affirms black ways of understanding the world. Neal points to “Black Art,” a poem by Amiri Baraka, as a primary example of this ethical, Black aesthetic.

“Black Art” is filled with graphic, violent imagery and racial slurs. The violence and slurs are directed at white people and those that collaborate with white people. The last portion of the poem justifies the imagery, and arguably violence, by suggesting that it will “clean out the world for virtue and love.” There is no mistaking the fact that Baraka describes a love that African-Americans have for themselves and for each other. The poem is not concerned about the love of white people and their collaborators. This is precisely the ethics that Neal describes in his essay, an ethics that Baraka was committed to as a leader of the Black Arts Movement.

This year I taught “Back Art” in a first-year ethics and literature course at Trinity College, a college which has been accused of both overt and subtle racism in its recent history. This paper is a reflexive examination of the pedagogical reasons for including the poem in the course, the approach to teaching the poem in a classroom where no one claimed an African heritage, and the results of the class. Ultimately, it will use the experience of the class to reinforce the importance of including the controversial poem in undergraduate courses.

In this paper I define and theorize “neoliberal spirituality” as distinct from consumer spirituality, capitalist spirituality, and self spirituality in order to better identify the dominant, popular understanding of spirituality in the Unites States. To do this, I draw on Michel Foucault’s understanding of American neoliberalism, as extended by scholars like We¬ndy Brown and Michel Feher. Foucault suggests that American neoliberalism applies an economic logic to areas of life which were previously thought to be non-economic, including family relationships, romance, and religion. Individuals become entrepreneurs of themselves, responsible for investing in their own “human capital” (education, experience, emotional competence, etc.), and for producing their own happiness. I will argue that under American neoliberalism, spirituality becomes a resource that individuals use to increase their human capital and happiness. I will also use examples from newspapers to illustrate that this the dominant understanding of spirituality in the popular press.

While the sales and production of religious books began to decline around the same time that attendance in mainline churches began to decline in the late 1960s, sales increased for books on subjects like astrology, eastern religions, Tarot cards, ESP, and witchcraft, all labelled as occult. Trade magazines like Publishers’ Weekly gave little attention to occult books, instead focussing on the “crisis” of religious (predominantly Christian) publishing, even though advertisements promoting occult books lined its pages.

Although Publishers’ Weekly did not acknowledge the increased interest in the occult, and the accompanying rise in sales of occult books, the mainstream press did take notice. In 1970 McCall’s magazine ran an article titled “The Occult Explosion” (Pileggi). It is typical of articles about the occult in the mainstream press in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and is often cited in subsequent coverage of the occult. The tone is sometimes ominous, linking the occult to practices like Satanism and witchcraft, which author Nicholas Pileggi characterizes as dangerous. Other times, Pileggi is dismissive of those interested in the occult, suggesting practitioners are largely naïve students on college campuses engaged in counter-culture activities or gullible consumers exploited by opportunistic marketing.

Publishers and booksellers generally reacted to coverage like this in one of two ways. Some publishers capitalized on the concern and derision that the mainstream press cultivated by promoting their books as a way for the general public to casually explore the danger and curiosity of the occult. Others, however, distained marketing to the general public, and instead focussed on the niche market of occult practitioners. This paper examines the way these two approaches manifested themselves in the marketing content and strategies of publishers and booksellers. It will focus specifically on the specialty occult publishers Llewellyn and Quest Books, as well as occult booksellers Sam Weiser Inc. and Gnostica Books, as representative examples. Ultimately, this paper will argue that the kinds of relationships that publishers established with both general and niche markets helped shape the market and production of New Age, and later, Mind Body Spirit books. While publishers helped shape the way the general public understood alternative spirituality, they alienated niche market of readers who practiced that spirituality.

In a 1976, author Catherine Marshall told the Washington Post that her faith was an integral part of her creative process. “The Spirit became my instructor in creative writing,” she says. “As I worked on [a] manuscript, He poured through me a stream of strong emotion.” For those familiar with Marshall and her legacy, these statements are not surprising. Christianity is central in her writing, including her bestselling novel Christy. That novel tells the story of a woman who goes into the Appalachian Mountains as a teacher with the aim of spreading Evangelical Christianity. The novel is so revered among Evangelicals that the Evangelical Publishers Association named its annual awards the Christy Awards. It is surprising that Marshall’s explicit religious statements appear in a mainstream newspaper because of the way the mainstream press represents Marshall and her work. When Christy was published in 1967, reviews of the novel went out of their way to avoid mentioning religion with few exceptions. This avoidance continued during a resurgence of interest in Marshall’s fiction at the time of her death in 1983, and then again when Christy was adapted as a television series in 1994. This paper examines the promotion and reception of Christy in these three time periods as a way of exploring the role that crossover Evangelical fiction plays in mainstream culture. Specifically, it will argue that the influence of Evangelicals on American popular culture remains muted despite the success of Evangelical cultural producers.

This paper examines the way publishers construct a spiritual readership in trade magazines such as Publishers Weekly. This spiritual readership is made up of “disaffected church goers” who have no formal religious affiliation and who experiment with “a variety of paths toward enlightenment.” Publishers insist that “people who shop for one [spirituality] aren’t interested in shopping for the other [religion]” While religion is the primary point of contrast for spirituality readers, publishers also try to distinguish them from New Age readers by suggesting New Age “implies crystals, candles, channeling,” none of which adequately addresses “more serious spiritual pursuits.”  This paper contrasts the way publishers and booksellers understood readers of New Age books in the late 1980s with readers of spirituality books in the late 1990s. The differences ultimately demonstrate a drift toward a neoliberal conception of spirituality as a resource for self-fulfillment.

In an interview with NPR, Jenji Kohan, the executive producer and creator of the original Netflix show Orange is the New Black, says “We talk about this country as this big melting pot, but it’s a mosaic. There’s all these pieces, they’re next to each other, they’re not necessarily mixing. And I’m looking for those spaces where people actually do mix— and prison just happens to be a terrific one.” On one hand, this approach to depicting life in prison leads to sympathetic portrayals of racialized women who have been imprisoned, as well as a moving representation of a transgendered woman, played by Laverne Cox. In the latter case at least, the portrayal has led to a rise in visible activism for transgendered people. On the other hand, numerous columnists have complained that Orange is the New Black relies far too heavily on stereotypes to identify different types of people who mix in prison. They also critique the way that Piper Chapman, the white, middle class, university educated protagonist becomes a surrogate for a middle class audience to enter the othered world of prison. The result is an ambivalence to the show among scholars who celebrate the kinds of stories the show brings to public attention while critiquing some of its methodology.

Of course, the show does not portray all of the characters sympathetically. For example, Tiffany Doggett, better known as “Pennsatucky,” becomes one of the prime antagonists in the show half-way through the first season. She is a former methamphetamine addict from Appalachia. Before she is imprisoned, she has several abortions, and in a moment of rage, shoots an employee in an abortion clinic after the employee insults her. At her trial, an anti-abortion group adopts her as a hero. Pennsatucky embraces the role, and performs her newfound religious convictions with fervor in Litchfield Prison, where she becomes a charismatic leader who preaches, tries to heal inmates, and promotes a confusing amalgamation of eccentric, conservative theological and political ideals. She is one of the few characters in the show to appear without makeup, she has rotting teeth, and she often has dishevelled hair. In Kohan’s melting pot, she is an intolerant, uneducated, Christian right chunk that refuses to blend.

The unflattering portrayal of Charismatic Christianity has not gone unnoticed. Todd VanDerWerff  suggests that “Pennsatucky never really comes together as a character in the same way as some of the others on the show, too easily defined as a hick, fundamentalist Christian stereotype,” but he goes on to say this is just one of several minor “quibbles” that “simply don’t matter.” Xarissa Holdaway, on the other hand, sees the show’s portrayal of religion as a major shortcoming which is crystalized in Pennsatucky, a character who “has been painted with the crudest brush strokes.” Likewise, conservative columnist B. D. McClay suggested that “Pennsatucky concentrates all the fears of the secular upper-class into one terrifying caricature.” McClay’s characterization of the audience as upper class and secular is problematic, but her characterization of Pennsatucky as a composite of various stereotypes is disturbingly accurate.
This paper will examine the way the show draws on a century of stereotypes surrounding Appalachian Pentecostals in order to portray the poor, irrational, ignorant, and archaic, Pennsatucky as a representative figure. It will examine the way Pennsatucky appears visually, the dialogue she speaks, and her role in the narrative in the context of representations of Appalachian Pentecostals dating back to the early twentieth century. Ultimately, this paper will argue that Appalachian Pentecostals function as an other in Orange is the new Black, designed to critique the Christian Right; by contrast, the secular entrepreneurialism of Piper appears pluralistic, modern, educated, and rational.

This paper will argue that evangelical deconversion narratives published since 1990 use prison imagery to constitute a neoliberal approach to the self, and by extension religion and spirituality, as “freedom.” This is an extremely limited version of “freedom” as numerous critics of neoliberalism have noted. Neoliberal concepts of the self require individuals to frame their religious beliefs and practices according to a cost/benefit model, which will ultimately lead to an appreciation of emotional health and self-value. By framing a conservative religious past as prison, these narratives help to obscure the ideological implications of a neoliberal approach to self and religion.

Critics often praise southern novelist Lee Smith for her nuanced portrayal of the Appalachian people. Rodger Cunningham even uses her novel Oral History as an example of how fiction is able to challenge colonialist tendencies of other American portrayals of Appalachia. The celebration of her work extends to her portrayal of Appalachian Pentecostalism, especially in her novel Saving Grace. This novel is the fictional deconversion narrative of Grace, the daughter of a snake-handling Pentecostal preacher. While Grace leaves Pentecostalism, she regains a vague kind of spirituality by the end of the novel. The novel follows many of the formal patterns of deconversion narratives, setting up a dichotomy between the old Pentecostalim and the new spirituality. This new spirituality downplays the doctrinal content of belief in favour of an open, undefined spiritual practice. As a result, the novel could easily find a home within what John McClure calls “postsecular literature” which promotes “dramatically ‘weakened’ religiosity with secular, progressive values and projects” (3); the novel is postsecular because it favours what Amy Hungerford calls “belief without content” where the presence of belief in the spiritual is much more important than the doctrinal specifics of that belief (xiii).

A closer examination of Saving Grace, and Smith’s other portrayals of Pentecostalism, undermines critics’ claim that Smith’s portrayal of Appalachian religion is nuanced. Set alongside paratextual sources such as interviews and reading guides prepared by the author, a disturbing tendency to marginalize this small group of Pentecostals begins to emerge. This paper examines the ways that Smith employs stereotypes of Appalachian Pentecostals in order to present a foil to the postsecular spirituality she favours. Ultimately, this paper argues that Smith participates in the colonialist tendencies of work portraying Appalachia rather than challenging those tendencies.

John Barbour has argued that deconversion narratives “rarely entail [a] total reversal;” there are always some elements of the rejected religion which the narratives reinterpret or reappropriate. This is certainly true for Pentecostal deconversion narratives written in the past thirty years. These narratives tend to reject Pentecostalism for its conservative theology, and associated treatment of sexuality, gender, and political affiliation. In so doing, the narratives appeal to what Robert Orsi, David Hollinger, and Matt Hedstrom identify as a Liberal Protestant sensibility, dominant in the United States. None-the-less, the narratives attempt to redeem certain aspects of Pentecostalism, most often ecstatic religious experiences like glossolalia (speaking in tongues), by describing them in favourable terms, Liberal Protestant terms. Using Kim Barnes as a case study, this paper seeks to examine the ways these narratives accomplish this reinterpretation. In her two memoirs In the Wilderness and Hungry for the World she cautiously celebrates particular aspects of ecstatic experiences and how they prepared her for her life of writing, while rejecting the Pentecostal context in which she had these experiences. This celebration is even more explicit in her essay “Prayer, Piety, Passion, and Prose.” In all three cases, she assigns new meaning to these experiences, meaning which is incompatible with Pentecostal theology and more palatable to an audience with Liberal Protestant sensibilities.

In a 2013 interview with Esquire magazine, actress and glamour model Megan Fox spoke openly, more so than ever before, about her religious beliefs and practices. In the article, she discusses her experience of speaking in tongues as a teenager in a Pentecostal church, and her lingering attachment to the practice. The reaction to the revelation was swift in other news media. “Megan Fox May Be Hot, But She Is Also Really Crazy” read a headline from the CBS Detroit website, reducing Fox to her role as a sexual object and the “otherness” of her religious practices. Although other headlines were a little more muted, the sentiment was similar. What is interesting is the way the coverage is different from that of Katy Perry, also a former Pentecostal. While Perry is careful not to critique her Pentecostal upbringing too heavily, or her parents who still act as Pentecostal ministers, she is also reluctant to talk about her current beliefs. Both stars seem to reflect what John McClure calls “postsecular” religious sensibility in their discussion of religion, in that they both emphasize belief over the content of that belief, and remain open to a variety of different, even conflicting, beliefs. Yet the subtle differences in what they say, and the public reaction to what they say reveals a line that Fox crosses, a line that reinforces a Liberal Protestant theology, in which what Perry says is acceptable, and what Fox says is not acceptable. Using recent work by Matt Hedstrom and Robert Orsi on Liberal Protestantism in the United States, this paper will argue that the contrast in media portrayals of Katy Perry and Megan Fox in terms of their religious beliefs helps to reveal the pervasiveness of Liberal Protestant bias in a supposedly “secular” media, and the limits of Liberal Protestant pluralism in the United States.

Scholars who theorize postsecular literature and postmodern religion in literature more broadly do not often include Dennis Covington’s Salvation on Sand Mountain in their discussion. Instead, they tend to focus on fiction in which a non-religious character turns toward a deliberately vague understanding of the spiritual and supernatural. Despite this focus, I want to argue that Covington’s book belongs in this conversation for two reasons. First, because the identity that Covington establishes for himself matches the one that scholars like McClure and Amy Hungerford examine in American fiction: he affirms the existence of the spiritual and supernatural without defining it in a clear theological manner. Second, because it illustrates a different way of arriving at this postsecular identity. Instead of moving away from the secular toward the religious, Covington moves toward the secular away from the religious (or, to use Hungerford’s terms, from doctrinal faith to non-doctrinal faith); Salvation on Sand Mountain is a deconversion narrative in which Covington defines himself against the snake handlers rather than against a “secular” world. Yet, the dichotomy that Covington creates between himself and the snake handlers goes beyond differences in religious practices and beliefs to incorporate differences that perpetuate stereotypes of Appalachian people. As a result, including the book in a discussion about postsecular literature not only opens up the discussion to include deconversion narratives, it also points to new questions about postsecular literature. Namely, what impact does telling the story of moving from doctrinal religion to non-doctrinal religion have on the representation of the religious communities left behind?

Public libraries in Canada claim to do much more than circulate books. Through their mission statements, public libraries across the country position themselves as an important part of a democratic society because they provide all citizens with access to information. John Buschman connects this positioning to Jürgen Habermas, arguing that “libraries are the concrete place of the democratic public sphere” (47) because they provide both “equality of opportunity and access and the development of critical literacy in a democracy” (177). Buschman goes on to argue that constant threat of budget cuts has compromised this positioning, propelling libraries into a customer oriented librarianship which emphasizes customer satisfaction and quantifiable measures of success. Instead of public spheres filled with democratic dialogue libraries become sites of consumption.

In this paper, I will examine how marketing campaigns of public libraries in Canada reflect this consumer oriented view of libraries. I will focus specifically on the Calgary Public Library’s award winning “Everything You’re Into” campaign. I will argue that this campaign not only promotes programs and materials, but also presents the library as a place to consume materials instead of a place for the discourse that constitutes the public sphere of Habermas.

In an article for the Boston Review, Brooklyn novelist Darcey Steinke writes that “during the writing of Milk [she] began to sense that grace flows through the world evenly... that sex, even at its most sordid, is soaked through with both humanity and divinity.” Milk clearly reflects that sense. Mary, the protagonist, searches for the physical touch of God through a mixture of masturbation and prayer, breastfeeding her newborn baby, and sexual encounters with a former monk. Using Georges Bataille’s theories of eroticism, and Julia Kristeva’s writings on breast feeding, I argue that Milk attempts to overcome the sexually repressive tendencies of Christian theology to merge sexual and religious desire. While this combination of desires does not result in any sort of lasting fulfilment, it sanctions any attempt Mary makes to find temporary satisfaction.

Near the middle of James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, Florence expresses her doubt about the transformative effects of a religious conversion, especially when it comes to her brother Gabriel. To Florence, he is the same man he was before his conversion experience: selfish, lustful, and oppressive, “no better than a murderer” (Baldwin 84). Critics have generally agreed with Florence’s judgment of Gabriel’s conversion. Some call it “fake” (Harris 36) and suggest he uses it as a ploy to manipulate other characters (May, Lundén). Even those who present Gabriel’s inability to change in a more sympathetic light allow little room for the possibility that his conversion is genuine and sincere (Powers, Robinson).

Gabriel’s failure, however, is not due to his lack of sincerity, but rather the inefficacy of the conversion process itself. This becomes clear when Gabriel’s conversion is set beside the model of conversions William James lays out in The Varieties of Religious Experience. Although James’ writing has been critiqued for its Protestant bias (Rorty, Proudfoot), it offers an idealistic account of the practical results of a conversion experience. Following James’ model, Gabriel gravitates toward a belief system that offers him an escape from despair, and he experiences a euphoric joy upon his escape. Instead of maintaining his joy, and performing acts that James deems helpful for the community, Gabriel slips back into despair and only after that becomes selfish and destructive. Gabriel’s conversion, then, serves not only as a critique of the practical benefits of conversion, it is also an ominous prediction of what lies ahead for John, the protagonist of Go Tell It on the Mountain.

David Hollinger has recently argued that, although mainline liberal Protestants “lost American Protestantism” due to declining membership, they “won the United States.” He is among a group of scholars who suggest that American religious pluralism, individualism, and even multicultural tolerance have liberal Protestant roots. This paper takes a more critical approach by examining the relationship between the liberal Protestant legacy and a neoliberal understanding of religion, an understanding which permeates Democratic politics and the book publishing industry.

This course explores ethics and literature, from ancient Greek tragedy to the present. The first half of the course will focus on pre-twentieth-century works, while the second semester will focus on twentieth-and twenty-first-century works, mostly from the United States. The aim of the course is not to provide a comprehensive examination of ethics and literature, but rather to help students develop the skills they need to analyze some of the ethical dimensions of literature. To that end, assignments will be designed to help students develop skills for close reading, seminar presentations, and essay writing. The classes themselves will be primarily discussion based, rather than lecture based, and will require participation from students.

The spiritualties that the deconversion narratives in this dissertation study embrace, whether they be liberal or neoliberal, are heirs of liberal Protestantism. Recent scholarship on liberal Protestantism and its apparent demise in the 1960s suggests that traces of liberal Protestant ideas about religion, broader values, and pluralism are present in dominant cultural approaches to religion in the United States. Some even point to the kind of religion that Oprah promotes as one of the heirs to liberal Protestant ideas and values. Since Oprah’s spirituality is quintessentially neoliberal, this creates an interesting genealogy for neoliberal spirituality. In Chapter One, then, I argue that neoliberal spirituality builds upon and accentuates particular aspects of liberal Protestantism and liberal spirituality. This link presents more than just a genealogy. It also helps to highlight limitations with the kind of pluralism that liberal Protestantism, liberal spirituality, and neoliberal spirituality promotelimitations that ultimately undermine the individualism and autonomy it celebrates.

Many deconversion narratives in this dissertation employ a coming-of-age structure. Not only does this narrative structure tap into an audience that is familiar with coming-of-age memoirs and novels, it also presents an opportunity to privilege one ideology or religion over another in a subtle way; in this case, neoliberal spirituality over Pentecostalism. While these coming-of-age narratives represent Pentecostalism as having some positive attributes, the attributes are underdeveloped. By contrast, liberal and neoliberal spirituality fosters these supposedly positive attributes and helps them develop. As a result, Pentecostalism is represented as antiquated and stifling, while neoliberal spirituality is portrayed as modern and liberating. In Chapter Two, I explore this narrative structure using Kim Barnes’s two memoirs In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in an Unknown Country and Hungry for the World. Barnes has received some recognition for her work, earning a Pulitzer Prize Nomination for In the Wilderness. The success of her memoirs helped her to secure a tenured teaching position at the University of Idaho. Beyond this recognition, however, Barnes provides interesting examples for study because of how sympathetically she portrays her Pentecostal parents. Perhaps more than any other author referenced in this study, Barnes makes great efforts to bridge the rifts between herself and her neoliberal spirituality that arise after she leaves home and Pentecostalism behind. Her efforts, however, come off flat and condescending next to the critique of Pentecostalism contained in the memoirs.

Deconversion narratives, including those that double as coming-of-age stories, extend beyond literary fiction and memoirs. They often appear in various popular culture forms, including interviews with celebrities. Chapter Three analyzes the ways in which two contemporary celebrities deploy their deconversion narrative in promotional interviews to gain and maintain access to different kinds of audiences. Pop singer Katy Perry uses a coming-of-age deconversion narrative that presents her emergence from the confines of Pentecostalism as a neoliberal triumph over difficulties and traumas to achieve a successful life. Movie star Megan Fox, however, presents a deconversion narrative that has a muddled timeline and is steeped in a sensual nostalgia. In this chapter, I argue that both approaches are calculated moves to appeal to different audiences. Both cases, however, draw on the caricatures of Pentecostals and privilege neoliberal spirituality.

While Pentecostal stereotypes tend to be repeated regardless of the different cultural contexts in which Pentecostals live, the context can sometimes add an extra layer of significance to those stereotypes. This is particularly true for Appalachian Pentecostals. This group of Pentecostals is unique because they practice snake handling and, as a result, they have received a disproportionate amount of coverage in popular media as well as in scholarly studies. Chapter Four introduces the Appalachian community and examines a deconversion narrative that may seem out of place with the others in this dissertation. Not only is Dennis Covington the only male author/storyteller in this study, but calling his deconversion narrative in Salvation on Sand Mountain a coming-of-age story is also a stretch. Covington enters the community as a reporter and slowly, over the next few years, becomes deeply involved in their rituals. He even contemplates joining them permanently. Ultimately, however, he decides to leave the community. Some scholars have critiqued the way Covington depicts his departure, but in this chapter I argue that the depiction of his departure is not the only problematic portrayal in his memoir. Instead, I posit that Covington sets up a dichotomy throughout the memoir, a dichotomy that privileges the neoliberal spirituality he adopts at the end over the Pentecostalism he dabbles in throughout the narrative.

While scholars critique Covington for his portrayals of Appalachian Pentecostals, they celebrate novelist Lee Smith. In Chapter Five, I argue that this celebration is unwarranted, and instead I suggest that, in her fiction, Smith participates in the same tradition of condescending portrayal as Covington. Ultimately, her fiction works to critique Pentecostalism while celebrating neoliberal spirituality. Her promotional interviews enhance this privileging. In them, she downplays the nuance in the fiction itself and positions herself alongside the readers as a neoliberal observer of backwards, constraining, and ultimately anachronistic religious practices.

The tendency of deconversion narratives in this study to draw on stereotypes and other Pentecostals does not fully realize the potential of deconversion narratives. There is an opportunity to create and explore alternative spiritualties that embrace the supernatural and ecstatic religious experiences while representing a loss of faith without stereotyping and othering Pentecostals. This dissertation’s conclusion sets out to recover this possibility, which is left unrealized in all of the narratives in this study, while at the same time suggesting ways to expand this scholarship. In the end, I turn to articles by Michelle Syba as an example of a deconversion narrative that does not resort to stereotypes and othering. Instead, it depicts Pentecostals with a sensitive respect. Even though Syba does not explore or experiment with the spiritual or supernatural in her new, more secular worldview, her narrative disrupts Pentecostal stereotypes rather than support them.