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Annotated Bibliography

Primary Sources

Francis, Walstone Elisha. Adult Bible Quarterly. Ed. Michael Woolridge. 95.3 (2010). Print.

The adult Sunday school classes at Mount Moriah Temple Baptist Church work out of

this quarterly publication. Each lesson includes a sample of scripture, lesson objectives,

an analysis of the text’s historical context, modern-day applications of the scripture, a

reflection, and an extension assignment. The format is structured to facilitate a

sophisticated critical reading of the biblical text.

Grant, Jo Ann. Primary Bible Lessons: Ages 6-8. Ed. Michael Woolridge. 34.3 (2010). Print.

This is the quarterly publication used in the primary Sunday school class at Mount

Moriah Temple Baptist Church. Each lesson is divided into an explanation of the

scripture, a “Primary Contemporary Story,” a “Lesson Review,” and a “Primary

Activity.” Colorful illustrations and engaging review activities introduce entry-level

students to basic Christian principles.

Hodge, David. Baptist Teacher. Ed. Michael Woolridge. 51.2 (2010). Print. Teachers of adult

Sunday school classes at Mount Moriah Temple Baptist Church use this quarterly

publication to prepare for their classes. The lessons are arranged by date and provide the

teacher with background information, summaries, and techniques for teaching the week’s

lesson. The headings listed under each week’s lesson include, “The Teacher’s Guide,”

and “The Printed Text,” “The Teacher in Action,” “For Adults,” and “For Advanced.”

The Baptist Teacher helps prepare teachers to present lessons that reflect the diverse

learning needs of their students.

 Jones 22

The Holy Bible. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982. Print. New King James Vers. The process of

creating an updated version of the King James Version of the Bible started in 1975 and

was completed in 1982. Translators, the majority of whom were Baptists, undertook to

update the archaic language of the King James Version while preserving its poetic

beauty. I brought this version to church with me during the study because it came into

my hands by chance. Members of the congregation at Mount Moriah Temple Baptist

Church generally use the 1611 translation.

Johnson-Horton, Diane. Junior Activity Study Book. Ed. Michael Woolridge. 87.3 (2010). Print.

This activity book corresponds to the publication, Junior Bible Lessons: Ages 9-11. Each

section provides reinforcement and review activities for the week’s lesson. Fill-in-the-

blank activities, cryptograms, matching games, word searches, chronological ordering

activities, and prayer journals are just a few examples of the types of activities included.

Smith, Clara O., et al. Children’s Teacher: For Teachers of Children Up to Age 11. Ed. Michael

Woolridge. 34.3 (2010). Print. This is the quarterly publication that children’s Sunday

school teachers at Mount Moriah Temple Baptist Church use to prepare for their classes.

The lessons are arranged by date and provide techniques for teaching the week’s lesson to

children up to age eleven. The headings listed under each week’s lesson include, “Lesson

Objective,” “Materials Needed,” “Opening Activities,” “Bible Story,” “Bible Learning

Activities,” “and Closing Time.”

Turner, Harry E. Church History. MS. A&M-Commerce Libraries Digital Collections. 10

November, 1996. Web. 19 April, 2010. Harry Turner, Treasurer and Sunday School

Superintendent at Mount Moriah Temple Baptist Church, handwrote this history of the

church and presented it as part of an address to the congregation on the occasion of the

church’s 104th birthday on November 10, 1996. Turner discusses the Cypress District
 Jones 23

Association of Churches, the black Baptist missionary organization that established new

churches in small towns in Northeast Texas, including Mount Moriah Temple Baptist

Church. He also provides information about the contributions of the church’s most

notable preachers, the architecture of the church building, and the church’s continuing

mission of outreach at the close of the twentieth century. The digitized version of this

document is the most comprehensive history of the church available to the public.

--- Personal Interview. 2 April, 2010. I conducted this interview in Harry Turner’s church office

on the afternoon of Good Friday in 2010. My questions focused on Turner’s personal

history, his role at the church, and the church’s function as an educational institution in

the Norris Community. Turner discussed the teaching techniques the Sunday school

teachers and the preachers use to help church members access the Biblical text.

---The Superintendents Guide to Small and Medium Size Sunday Schools. TS. Collection of

Harry Turner, Commerce. This is one of a series of unpublished manuscripts Harry

Turner has written during his employment at Mount Moriah Temple Baptist Church. The

manuscript provides new Sunday school superintendents with practical information for

structuring and running an effective Sunday school. Turner is currently seeking a

publisher. The manuscript is an example of Turner’s efforts to extend his educational

mission beyond the walls of the church.

Wilkerson-Chaplin, Jimmie. Junior Bible Lessons: Ages 9-11. Ed. Michael Woolridge. 88.3

(2010). Print. This quarterly publication is used in the junior Sunday school class at

Mount Moriah Temple Baptist Church. The weekly lesson is divided into an explanation

of the scripture, a Bible Lesson a review list of “Points to Ponder,” a contemporary story

titled “Living the Life.” A review activity helps students practice and retain the lesson’s

main concepts.
 Jones 24

Secondary Sources

Brandt, Deborah. Literacy in American Lives. New York: Cambridge UP, 2001. Print. Brandt

collected over eighty life histories in order to complete this study of the

evolution of literacy practices in America between 1895 and 1985. Brandt discusses the

impact of regional economic restructuring on literacy learning; rising standards of

literacy resulting from the emergence of the information age, and the consequences of

these rising standards; and the ways that historically marginalized groups, specifically

African Americans, have nurtured literacy within their communities. I drew on Brandt’s

concept of literacy sponsorship and on her discussion of the uniquely African American

perspective of literacy, which is tinged with religious and political overtones.

---“Sponsors of Literacy.” College Composition and Communication 49.2 (1998): 165-185.

Print. Brandt’s twenty-page article introduces her now widely accepted concept of

sponsors of literacy. She draws on oral history interviews to examine how the economic

setting shapes individuals’ literacy practices. Brandt later expanded this article into the

book Literacy in American Lives.

Carter, Shannon. “Living Inside the Bible (Belt).” College English. 69.6 (2007): 572-95. Web.

Carter considers the challenges of teaching college writing to students who have been

raised “inside the Bible” (574). Students from evangelical backgrounds often find it

difficult to distinguish between the disparate rhetorical modes of religious and academic

discourses. Carter proposes making students aware of the “rhetorical spaces” of different

communities of practice and teaching them how to move deftly between these spaces
 Jones 25

(587). Carter profoundly shaped my ideas about helping church-literate individuals

translate their skills into the domain of academic writing.

Duffy, John. “Other Gods and Other Countries: The Rhetorics of Literacy.” Towards a Rhetoric

of Everyday Life: New Directions in Research on Writing, Text, and Discourse. Ed.

Martin Nystrand and John Duffy. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2003. 38-57. Print.

Duffy’s study examines the literacy experiences of Hmong people who attended either

Laotian or Christian missionary schools as children and later immigrated to the United

States. Duffy depicts literacy education as a means of indoctrinating learners with the

ideology of the teachers. He warns against the trend of viewing literacy practices as being

“self-generated” by communities (39), emphasizing the importance of understanding a

particular group’s literacy practices as resulting from the complex, overlapping histories

of cultures, whose interactions are characterized by conflict and struggle. My study

similarly acknowledges the history of struggle that shaped and continues to shape African

American literacy practices.

Heath, Shirley Brice. “Protean Shapes in Literacy Events: Ever-Shifting Oral and Literate

Traditions.” Spoken and Written Language. Ed. Deborah Tannen. Norwood: Ablex,

1982. 91-117. Print. Advances in Discourse Processes vol. IX. “Protean Shapes” is the

precursor to Heath’s classic 1983 study of two rural communities in the Carolina

Piedmonts, Ways with Words. In this article, Heath introduces the concept of the literacy

event, which describes any group interaction that relies on the guiding presence of a

written text. She discusses the relationship between written text and speech events that

“describe, repeat, reinforce, expand, frame, or contradict” the text (93), focusing

specifically on the African American church’s practice of converting scripture into an

interactive speech event during the sermon.

 Jones 26

---Ways with Words. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983. Print. Heath’s classic study follows the

language development of children growing up in two closely situated rural communities,

one black and one white. She observes children and adults in home, school, and work

settings, noting remarkable differences among the language uses of the two communities

and the mainstream community of town. For the purposes of my study, I focused on

Chapter 6, “Literate Traditions,” which features observations made during a visit to the

African American church in the community of Trackton. Heath includes transcripts of

prayers and dialogues among church members during the service, which are characterized

by improvisational movement away from the text of the Bible.

Mitchell, Henry H. Black Preaching. Philidelphia: J.B. Lipincott, 1970. Print. The C. Eric

Lincoln Ser. in Black Religion. Rev. Dr. Henry H. Mitchell wrote this book as a

“statement on Black religious culture” (12) geared toward an audience of Black

preachers. Included in this groundbreaking text, published in 1970, is a comprehensive

history of Black preaching in the United States and discussions of Black English, the

Black sermon, and the theology of Black preaching. I drew heavily on Mitchell’s text for

insights into the Black preacher’s unique rhetorical approach to interpreting the Bible.

Moss, Beverly J. A Community Text Arises: A Literate Text and a Literacy Tradition in African

American Churches. Creskill: Hampton, 2003. Print. Moss’ book arises from an

ethnographic study conducted in three African American churches. The author moves

from a discussion of the historical context of the African American church, into an

examination of the rhetorical tactics employed by one African American minister, and

finally into a summative discussion of the relationship between written and oral texts in

the church. My focus on the community negotiation of the biblical text is deeply

indebted to Moss’s study.

 Jones 27

---“Ethnography and Composition: Studying Language at Home.” Methods and Methodology in

Composition Research. Eds. Gesa Kirsch and Patrick A. Sullivan. Carbondale: Southern

Illinois UP, 1992. 153-71. Print. Moss analyzes the ethnographic approach she used in A

Community Text Arises, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of studying one’s

own community. Although she stresses the benefits of studying as an active participant

in order to “fully experience actions of the community” (391), she also urges the

researcher to maintain a removed perspective. Researchers studying a familiar

community run the risk of taking certain actions for granted, rendering potentially

significant observations invisible to the researcher’s eye. Although I studied an

unfamiliar community, I hearkened to Moss’ advice to become an active participant and

achieved a fuller understanding of my subjects’ emotional, philosophical, and spiritual

motivations as a result.

Sitton, Thad, and James H. Conrad. Freedom Colonies: Independent Black Texans in the Time

of Jim Crow. Austin: U of Texas P, 2005. Print. Sitton and Conrad tell the story of

communities of freed African Americans that thrived in Texas from emancipation into

the 1930s. The writers draw on archives and oral history interviews to paint an engaging

picture of life in freedom colonies. For the purposes of my study, I focused most heavily

on Chapter Five, “School Days,” which provides a detailed history of the types of

educational services available to Blacks of this era, including the Davis-free school

system, “subscription schools,” the basic education provided in African American

churches, and the services made available by the Texas Agricultural Extension Service.

Street, Brian V. and Adam Lefstein. Literacy: An Advanced Resource Book. New York:

Routledge, 2007. Print. Routledge Applied Linguistics. Street and Lefstein collaborate

to present an overview of the major themes within the discipline of literacy studies. The
 Jones 28

authors include excerpts from the works of a wide variety of literacy scholars whose

ideas form the canon of literacy studies. Studying this book before I entered the field

provided me with a theoretical framework for interpreting my observations.

Sunstein, Bonnie Stone and Elizabeth Chiseri Strater. FieldWorking: Reading and Writing

Research. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. Print. This book is designed to introduce

the college English student to the basic concepts of conducting an ethnographic study.

The authors include numerous samples of professional and student-produced

ethnographies and analyze the techniques employed in their creation. The samples

featured in this text shaped my use of a narrative style in presenting my findings.

Wade, Harry E. “Commerce, Texas.” The Handbook of Texas Online. Texas State Historical

Association, 15 February 1991. Web. 6 May 2010. The Handbook of Texas Online is

an encyclopedic publication with over 23,500 articles detailing the history, geography,

and culture of Texas. The entry on Commerce provided me with a timeline of

Commerce’s economic development and demographic details about the town.