Public Lament and Intra-Faith Worship in an Appalachian Context

Abstract

On 5 April 2010, the largest mining disaster in the US since 1970 occurred at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia. Twenty-five miners were known to have died in the explosion, with the fates of four miners unknown. Families of the twenty-nine miners gathered together at the mine site as they awaited word as to which of the miners died and who had survived. On 6 April, the Red Cross invited representatives from the West Virginia Council of Churches to the mine site to help organize pastoral support for the families. On the evening of 10 April, five days after the explosion, word came that all of the 29 miners had died in the initial explosion. Governor Joe Manchin declared, on 25 April, for a public memorial service for the miners—an event attended by several thousand worshipers and led by clergy, denominational leaders, and public officials, including President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Robert C. Byrd, and Governor Manchin. This collaborative essay traces how the pastoral, political, and relational response to trauma shaped this liturgical form. Given the oral traditions of the region, narrative will be one of the primary structures for analysis, and testimony is central to this public worship. A public secular ritual with its goals of unity and inter-riting of distinct religious voices and identities will provide a grammar for reading the service.

Keywords

• inter-riting
• cross participation
• etic and emic
• trauma membrane
• belongingness