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Church fans used to be among the most prominent items in Southern religious culture. The original hand-held fans that worshipers used to move the air in Southern churches were palm fans, common in hot climates and used in residences and businesses as well as sacred spaces. In the early twentieth century, printers began producing inexpensive cardboard fans on wood handles for businesses to purchase and distribute with information on the back. Funeral homes and insurance companies-businesses dealing with death-most typically used the fans to get their message out to congregants hoping for the rewards of an afterlife that would surely be cooler than hot Southern Sunday mornings. Indeed, the images on the fans suggested peaceful Southern images of heaven-cool mountain scenes, peaceful pastoral settings, steepled churches with trees whose leaves were turning golden autumn colors (Figures 1 & 2).
The fans are an example of religious ephemera that has been common in the South, an important part of a Southern religious visual culture that is often overlooked in our focus on the strong oral orientation of religion in the South. To be sure, the South is an oral culture, with the Gospel Word passed on through songs, prayers, and sermons that often energize congregants. The religious visual culture, though, includes roadside signs with their evangelical messages-"Get Right with God," "Jesus Saves," "Prepare to Meet Your God." It includes painted baptismal scenes, often with images of Jesus's burial in the River Jordan. The images on church fans also illustrate important points about Southern religiosity.
Evangelical Protestantism has been the faith that has dominated the South since the early nineteenth century, and its scenes of revivals, baptisms, inspired preaching, and prayerful kneeling reflect an orientation toward conversion. It is a religion of sin and salvation, valuing religious experience. The faithful prioritize Christ's Great Commission of going into the world to preach the need for redemption, with the resulting tendency to witness for the faith, to testify, to proselytize, resulting not only in oral transmission of the Gospel imperative but also in the production of religious signs, placards, leaflets, brochures, and church fans. Southern Protestants did inherit traditional Protestant suspicions of graven images, but this sentiment did not prevent appreciation of sacred images and artifacts in homes, businesses,...