SHSMO Center for Missouri Studies
605 Elm St.
Columbia, Mo.
When the 1930s Depression gripped the Heartland, the Evangelical and Reformed Church sent Vincent Bucher to the impoverished Ozark mountains to lead a new mission church. He ministered not just to the community’s souls, but to their hearts, minds, and livelihoods. “Just obey the commandment to love neighbors,” he taught. “When neighbors care for each other, everyone benefits.” Before President Franklin D. Roosevelt created programs to lift Americans out of poverty, Bucher was organizing cooperatives to market folk art, cream and strawberries. Working together, families could make their hard-scrabble farms productive, improve the abused forest to create jobs, and build bridges (literally) to unite isolated communities. Bucher called his approach “brotherhood economics.”
This program includes the short documentary By Heart and By Hand,” and a presentation by Don Love, who produced and narrated the film and member of the Shannondale community. Folklorist Mike Luster will also be in conversation with Love after the screening. The active church and community center is in northern Shannon County on Missouri Route 19.
About the Presenters:
Donald Love has a bachelor’s degree in Literature and Religion from Reed College in Portland, OR, and a master’s degree in teaching from Lincoln University, with stints at Eden Theological Seminary and Washington University. He’s published articles on guerrilla warfare in the Ozarks, and Ozark basketmaking. He directed the Shannondale Native Craft Workshop and became interested in how cultural exchanges through folk art enrich society. He is active in the Shannondale congregation and community, and traces its theological roots back to Paul Wobus, Walter Brueggeman and Reinhold Niebuhr.
Mike Luster is former Arkansas State Folklorist. He has a PhD in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania. Luster uses folklore as a resource for conserving communities. He organized an annual series of cultural sustainability roundtable retreats, bringing together writers and practitioners from the fields of folklore, theology, bioregionalism, and more to explore the potential of community conservation. Shannondale, he notes, is a community sustained by faith, culture, and natural resources.