By David R. Bains

Magic City Religion began in fall 2019 to encourage Samford University undergraduates to explore the many dimensions of religious life in Birmingham, Alabama. By sharing their findings, we hope to advance the public’s understanding of religions’ role in our common life.

Over the past five years a total of 180 students in twelve different classes have contributed 121 essays to the website. The students’ research is introduced and contextualized by an additional thirteen editorial essays. Students have been involved in the project every semester, except one, spring 2022, when I was teaching at the Daniel House, Samford’s study center in London, England. There are five different courses in which the students have been enrolled: Introduction to World Religions, the religion senior seminar, Christian Worship: History and Theology, Core Seminar, and Race, Ethnicity and Religion in the United States.

The essays have addressed three major topics: congregations, worship services, and art works or memorials. In the last category we have included several subjects that aren’t explicitly religious, such as a statue of baseball legend Willie Mays and Birmingham city councilor Nina Miglionico.

Magic City Religion played a large part in the generous citation Dr. Charlotte Brammer read when she presented me with the Howard College Outstanding Teacher award this past January. I am grateful for supportive colleagues and the many students who have cooperated with these explorations of the religious landscape. Given the restrictions of Covid, and the hesitancy about landscape exploration that continued thereafter, students have not always been able to be as diligent in visiting the sites they write about as I would like. But they have learned a lot about the city, its history, and its various religious dimensions.

This project was birthed by an initiative at Samford on the digital humanities and inspired by projects undertaken by colleagues at other universities, especially Rachel McBride Lindsey’s Arch City Religion on St. Louis and Christopher Cantwell’s Gathering Places on Milwaukee.

My own growing focus on religion in Birmingham has also shaped my continuing exploration of the cornerstones of Birmingham houses of worship documented on my own academic blog, Chasing Churches.

Things to Come

Samford University (then Howard College) moved from Marion, Alabama, to East Lake, a developing community six miles from the center of Birmingham in 1887, when it accepted land from developer Robert Jemison, Sr. across the street from Ruhama Baptist Church. Jemison claimed that the area’s “original country charms” would be preserved and that “persons and practices that did not commend themselves to the moral and religious element of society” would not be permitted in the town (quoted in Bass 2024, 118). In time, however, East Lake was annexed into Birmingham and a large community grew up around the college. After World War II, the college was landlocked. So needing a larger campus, Samford moved to its current location over the mountain from Birmingham in Homewood in 1957. In fall 2024, my Race, Ethnicity, & Religion course will include an examination of the history of East Lake. This will be our third neighborhood focus for the website after Avondale and Woodlawn (the two neighborhoods closer to downtown town on the city’s east side).

This summer, to supplement, our essays on worship I will also be adding an introduction to the different varieties of liturgical spaces Birmingham Christians have created. This is supported by a grant from the Center for Worship & the Arts at Samford. To keep track of these new developments follow us @bhmreligion on Twitter, Threads, and Instagram.

References

Bass, S. Jonathan. 2024. From Every Stormy Wind That Blows: The Idea of Howard College and the Origins of Samford University. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.