Prudence has got the best of me and I’m going to go back and work on Chapter 2. This involves a number of things. First is the location of some Methodist records. Unlike the Baptists, who sent all their church-level records to Wake Forest, Methodist churches are charged with just holding on to their stuff, resulting in a non-existent collection or preservation policy. This means having to find Methodist churches founded in the antebellum period and calling them up to see if they still have the old stuff laying around. I expect more misses than hits. Then do the same thing for Presbyterians. For the German Reformed churches, I actually scored a small bit of money to travel to their archives in Lancaster, Pa., to look at their stuff. Only problem there is I don’t know if they actually have what I’m looking for. We’ll see.
All that will involve a bit of waiting and coordinating. In the meantime I need to read Gregory Wills’ Democratic Religion, and this dissertation out of Emory the author was kind enough to share with me.
And I need to do some reading on Emile Durkheim. On that, I have no idea where to start, other than, you know, Durkheim himself. Can anyone offer a suggestion on some history/anthropology that updates Durkheim-ian concepts for our own generation?
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