Paul Rousseau
Rural South Christianity, 1882-1968
Driving home on a rural macadam road amidst the sluggish humidity of the Deep South on a Sunday morning, the radio dialed to reverent words, roadside crosses teetering and broken, and Jesus Saves signposts ornamenting houses, I contemplate a supplicant Christianity that knowingly permitted the hateful lynching of persons of color* during a violent era of racial tumult. It is a shameful history of ethnic iniquity buried in the sultry swamps and red soil of religious racism, and one deserving of ecumenical apology.
* NAACP data: 3446 persons
Paul Rousseau’s words can be found in sundry literary and medical journals, including The Healing Muse, Blood and Thunder, Intima. A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Months To Years, Cleaning up Glitter, Burningword Literary Journal, Prometheus Dreaming, Dr. T. J. Eckleburg Review, and others. A lover of dogs, he lives in Charleston, SC, and longs to return home to the west.