Faith and Foodways in Alabama

a project for the Southern Foodways Alliance

Fellowship through food is a way for faith families to connect, convey culture, and share abundance. I interviewed faith leaders and congregation members to document how they experience and express faith through food. Photography by Cary Norton.

Lucy Heidorn

"That’s church for us. That’s the way we worshiped. The Primitive Baptist [church] that I went to used a book called The Lloyd Hymnal. It’s a little book about, hmm I would say three by five. No; it must be four by six--something like that. And it’s only words; there is no notation. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with the country music person Ralph Stanley; Ralph Stanley was a Primitive Baptist and he--a few times I’ve heard him--lining out hymns. See people back then couldn’t read and a lot of the people were not educated. My dad was--well neither of my parents had much education but they were--they were smart people and they knew how to do things, but anyway in lining out a hymn you would say the words and then the congregation would sing it after you. And it was very, very primitive.”

Adele Boohaker

"I was born in Lebanon. My family came to the States when I was thirteen years old. The reason why my family came here, my mother was born in the United States and her ancestors came to the United States in the late 1800s. My grandfather was sick. He had a severe case of asthma, and the doctor asked him if he had the same problem in Lebanon. He said he never had any breathing problem. So, his asthma got so severe that they just picked the family up, and took 'em back to Lebanon. They lived there for a while, but the economic situation was so bad, and the wars and rumors of wars and all that. They had a hard time makin' it. You know? Everyone at the time was havin' a hard time worldwide, but the United States was a better place than any other place in the world.”

Jessica Goldstein

“Most of the people sitting around the table were not Jewish, and so that’s sort of an interesting thing, that I made this seminally Jewish thing that I did particularly to uphold my Jewish tradition, with a bunch of people who weren’t Jewish. Some of them were, but not a lot of them were. I always find it kind of fun that they learned to sing the prayers with me every week, and there’s a whole generation of five or six kids who were my kids’ age, who were children of my friends who came, who can sing their way through Kiddush without missing a beat, even though it’s not part of their faith tradition, because they came to my house every Friday night for fifteen years and they learned along with my kids, which is kind of fun. And we celebrate those moments together.”