The Holler Gospel
The holler gospel is the good news that lifts up our people out of the low places, redeems our hollowed-out communities, and restores our dignity and humanity.
Hey y’all, it’s me, Rev. Brad Davis, founder and co-director of this thing here we call From Below: Rising Together for Coalfield Justice.
We’ve gotten quite a few new group members over the last month since the southern West Virginia flooding happened, so I thought this might be a good time to let y’all know who we are and what we’re all about… So if you’re one of our new friends, welcome! Make yourself at home, “sit a spell” with us, and walk alongside us as we work for liberation in these hills and hollers we call home.
Now, I realize I may have just lost some of y’all when I said “hollers.” You may be thinkin’ to yourself, “What in the heck is that?” Well, lemme explain…
In the vernacular of Central Appalachia, “holler” is how we say hollow, which is the hollowed-out, low lying depression between two hills that forms a very narrow valley.
Many of us live in these hollers, which is an appropriate metaphor I think, considering our people have been hollowed out and laid low for generations by outside exploitative forces that have not only extracted our resources but along with them our dignity, leaving us sunken, depressed, living lives without significance in a valley of despair.
Lives at the bottom…
Appropriate I think for this movement based outta McDowell County, the southernmost county in the great state of West Virginia. In other words, we figuratively and quite literally exist “from below.”
In this sense, we can rightly be counted among those whom the late Salvadoran theologian and philosopher Ignacio Ellacuria calls the “crucified peoples of history” ; those Franz Fanon calls the “wretched of the earth” ; those whom Howard Thurman says exist with their backs against the wall, wondering what the religion of Jesus has to say to them.
What does the good news of God’s kingdom have to say to those of us in the holler? We say that the gospel tells us that God is in the holler, that Jesus can be found there preaching a “holler gospel.”
What is the holler gospel? Simply put, it’s an interpretation of the good news for us and by us, on our own terms and in our own specific context. The holler gospel is the good news that lifts up our people out of the low places, redeems our hollowed-out communities, and restores our dignity and humanity.
That’s the foundation of our work, with the goal being healing and wholeness of our land, people, and story—communal salvation that brings about economic, social, and political liberation.
So that’s a little bit about us. We’re glad you’re here, and we hope you decide to enter into solidarity with us as this revolutionary thing God is doing from below bubbles up and erupts.
Then we’ll rise together as one, and create a better world right here at home.