What the church called superstition

The old­er I get, the more I won­der who gets to decide what counts as faith.

It’s a ques­tion that rarely gets asked direct­ly. Instead, we inher­it the answers.

One belief is called doc­trine.
Another is called super­sti­tion.
One tra­di­tion is pre­served.
Another is dis­missed.
One voice is trust­ed.
Another is qui­et­ly ignored.

But those labels often tell us as much about pow­er as they do about truth.

For most of Appalachian his­to­ry, faith was­n’t some­thing peo­ple encoun­tered only on Sunday morn­ings. It lived in kitchens and gar­dens, around sickbeds and sup­per tables. It accom­pa­nied births, deaths, droughts, har­vests, and long winters.

It was woven into every­day life. And because life itself was rarely neat or pre­dictable, faith was­n’t always neat either. Mountain peo­ple learned to live with mys­tery. They under­stood that not every ques­tion had an answer. Not every hard­ship had an expla­na­tion. Not every expe­ri­ence fit com­fort­ably inside a sermon.

For gen­er­a­tions, that was­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly a problem.

But as church­es became more estab­lished and reli­gious author­i­ty grew more cen­tral­ized, the bound­aries around accept­able belief often became narrower.

Certain expe­ri­ences were embraced. Others were viewed with suspicion.

The ques­tion became less about whether some­thing brought com­fort, mean­ing, or con­nec­tion — and more about whether it fit with­in approved definitions.

I don’t say that as criticism.

Institutions serve impor­tant pur­pos­es. They pre­serve tra­di­tions. Provide struc­ture. Create com­mu­ni­ty. Offer guidance. 

But insti­tu­tions also tend to pre­fer clar­i­ty. Definitions. Consistency.

And human expe­ri­ence is rarely that tidy — espe­cial­ly in Appalachia. The peo­ple who set­tled these moun­tains lived close to uncertainty.

Weather could destroy a crop. Illness could take a loved one. A min­ing acci­dent could change a fam­i­ly forever.

Life required resilience. Adaptability. And a will­ing­ness to hold things that did­n’t always make per­fect sense.

That way of liv­ing shaped spir­i­tu­al life as well. People learned to trust what sus­tained them. What helped them endure. What gave mean­ing to suf­fer­ing and hope dur­ing hardship.

Yet over time, many of those ways of know­ing became eas­i­er to dismiss.

The lan­guage changed. Practices once con­sid­ered ordi­nary became ques­tion­able. Beliefs that had exist­ed com­fort­ably along­side Christianity were increas­ing­ly pushed to the margins.

What fas­ci­nat­ed me as I began study­ing Appalachian his­to­ry wasn’t sim­ply what changed. It was who had the author­i­ty to decide that it need­ed chang­ing. Because when we look close­ly, we often dis­cov­er that the line between reli­gion and super­sti­tion isn’t near­ly as clear as we imagine.

Many beliefs accept­ed today would sound strange to some­one out­side the faith. 

Prayer itself requires belief in real­i­ties we can­not mea­sure. So does the idea that grace trans­forms peo­ple. So does the belief that love sur­vives death.

Every faith tra­di­tion con­tains mys­ter­ies. The dif­fer­ence is that some mys­ter­ies become insti­tu­tion­al­ized while oth­ers remain local. Some are writ­ten into doc­trine. Others are passed qui­et­ly from one gen­er­a­tion to the next.

One becomes offi­cial. The oth­er becomes superstition. 

Perhaps that’s why this sub­ject inter­ests me so much. Not because I’m try­ing to decide which beliefs were right and which were wrong. But because I’m inter­est­ed in the peo­ple who car­ried them.

The women who held fam­i­lies togeth­er through impos­si­ble cir­cum­stances. The elders who pre­served sto­ries and wis­dom. The com­mu­ni­ties that found ways to endure hard­ship long before mod­ern sys­tems of sup­port existed. 

Too often, con­ver­sa­tions about super­sti­tion focus on whether a prac­tice can be proven. But per­haps there are equal­ly impor­tant questions.

What need was it try­ing to meet?
What fear was it try­ing to soothe?
What grief was it try­ing to car­ry?
What hope was it try­ing to preserve?

Viewed through that lens, many Appalachian tra­di­tions reveal some­thing deeply human.

A desire for con­nec­tion.
A long­ing for mean­ing.
A belief that the sacred remains present even when life feels uncertain.

And hon­est­ly, that long­ing does­n’t seem par­tic­u­lar­ly strange to me. It seems universal.

The more I study Appalachian spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, the less inter­est­ed I become in draw­ing hard lines between what belongs and what doesn’t. Instead, I find myself ask­ing dif­fer­ent questions.

What helped peo­ple sur­vive?
What helped them heal?
What helped them love one anoth­er?
What helped them endure?

Because faith, at its best, should make us more com­pas­sion­ate. More hum­ble. More will­ing to acknowl­edge that none of us pos­sess­es the whole truth. 

The moun­tains have always under­stood that. They remind us dai­ly that life is larg­er than our cer­tain­ty. That mys­tery still exists. That wis­dom often sur­vives in unex­pect­ed places.

And per­haps that’s what unset­tled insti­tu­tions most.

Not that moun­tain peo­ple lacked faith. But that they some­times found it in places author­i­ty didn’t ful­ly control.

For gen­er­a­tions, Appalachian faith sur­vived by adapt­ing. By blend­ing. By hold­ing onto what worked, even when it was whis­pered instead of preached.

What the church called super­sti­tion was often faith refus­ing to dis­ap­pear. It was peo­ple find­ing ways to car­ry mean­ing, hope, and con­nec­tion through cir­cum­stances that doc­trine alone could not always address.

And now, some­thing is shift­ing again.

Across these hills — and far beyond them — peo­ple are remem­ber­ing. Not in exact­ly the same way their ances­tors did, but with the same instinct: to tend what is sacred, to heal what was bro­ken, and to reclaim what was nev­er meant to be lost.

Next week, we’ll turn toward the present moment — not to close this con­ver­sa­tion, but to open it wider. Because remem­ber­ing isn’t about going backward.

It’s about car­ry­ing for­ward the pieces that still know how to hold us.