Religious History and Visual Culture.

PHOTOGRAPHS; UNITED States history; AFRICAN American religions; RELIGIOUS articles; UNITED States history, 1933-1945; RELIGION & sociology; PICTURES; MANNERS & customs

The article reports on the U.S. Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographs, taken in the 1930s and 1940s as part of then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, and the author's use of them to study Christian communities. The author explains that he studied the collection looking for illustrations of how people used religious objects and images in their homes and found many examples of "material Christianity" including crucifixes, scripture mottoes, and church calendars. He also found in the collection photographs of churches, gospel trucks, religious rituals and social gatherings, and church leaders. He discusses the difficulties in researching the subjects of the photographs and the ways the photographs represent African Americans and religion in the U.S. of the time.