Negotiating Baptist Influence in East Texas: Examining "Multiple Reflections" to Disrupt the Local Sociopolitical Stage

• In Event: 26.034 - Intersections of Faith in Education: The Often Silenced Connections of Faith, Education, and Global Religions

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine multiple reflections (Ronai, 1995) of a White, southern male navigating through and of the influence of the missionary Baptist church in rural east Texas. While east Texas continues to engage in social struggle through economics and identity politics, the author desires to examine the role of the missionary Baptist church in maintaining certain power structures and borders (Anzaldua, 2012). The author critically reflects on intersections of culture, neoliberalism, religion, and power to engage in naming (Freire, 1970) covert means that influences the sociopolitical complex (Conquergood, 2002). Themes across autoethnographic reflections are identified and further critically analyzed to provide responses for conditions of social equity in a context that is marred by discrimination across race, class, gender, sexuality, and other sociocultural variables. Autoethnography provides space for conversations and performance toward radical social transformation through dialogue, reflection, narratives, emotion, and engaged embodiment (Jones, 2005).
References
Anzaldua, G. (2012). Borderlands La Frontera: The new Mestiza (4th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books.
Conquergood, D. (2002). Performance studies: Interventions and radical research. Drama Review, 46(2), 145-156.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum.
Jones, S. H. (2005). Autoethnography: Making the personal political. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed.) (pp. 763-791). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Ronai, C. R. (1995). Multiple reflections of child sex abuse: An argument for a layered account. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 23, 395-426.

Author

• Brandon L Fox, Stephen F. Austin State University