In late September of last year, Tropical Storm Helene dumped up to 20 inches of water in parts of western North Carolina. In Ashe County, where Reverend Blake Smaar leads the congregation at West Jefferson United Methodist Church near Lansing, wind gusts reached up to 80 miles per hour. Smaar, whose wife was due in two weeks with their second child, spent the day pumping water out of his basement. He woke up the next day to messages from church members, one of whom wrote: “So, what are we going to do?”

For Smaar, the answer was clear. The church wasn’t damaged during the storm and within days, it became a supply and assistance hub for the community. Supplies poured in from all over the country, including a shipment from Southeast Louisiana thanking North Carolina for its help recovering from Hurricane Katrina nearly two decades earlier. 

Smaar recalled a young mother with a three-week-old baby who had no clean water or formula at home. “You could tell they had walked through mud,” he said. “She came straight to us.”  Another family – a woman, her sons, and her father – who came to the church after their trailer was washed away by floodwaters told Smaar that they had lost everything. 

In the weeks after the flood waters receded, Smaar’s church and others in the region responded to these needs, transforming into makeshift cafeterias, shelters and supply hubs. But in the year since, their work to rebuild communities and the fractured social fabric continues. 

Responding to immediate needs – like providing baby formula and a place to go – was important, Smaar noted. But the church also provided something more. “Let us [the congregation] just be here and exist in this space with you, so you don’t have to traverse it alone,” he said. “That was the most important thing we did.”

‘Churches Helping Churches Helping People’

On a hot August afternoon this past summer,  Trisha and Jamey Hart sat in the Old Orchard Creek General Store in downtown Lansing, North Carolina. Last September, the store was filled with eight feet of water. 

The Harts own and run CJ’s, the only grocery store in town. They described themselves as “lost” after the storm. “Our expectations were to feel bad and get a[nother] job on Monday because this [the store] is probably over,” said Trisha Hart. But the next day, the Harts made it to town, where they found people lined up, eager to help. “Aid just came to us…people showed up,” Hart said. 

Buffalo Baptist Church, where the Harts are members, provided volunteers and financial support. The Harts said they received checks from churches across the country, as far away as Pennsylvania. It was an informal network, said Hart, of “churches helping churches helping people.” 

The Harts’ story shows the interconnectedness of local churches and rural communities, not only in terms of individual assistance and disaster relief, but also in supporting local economies. A 2022 study of more than 80 rural North Carolina United Methodist churches showed that rural United Methodist congregations generated $944 million in economic activity in the state.

Much of that economic impact stems from the services that local churches provide, including food pantries, other forms of food assistance, and low-cost child care services. The study’s authors referred to this as a “halo” effect, one that helps protect and sustain local communities. 

That halo effect reflects the trust many community members place in local churches to care for them, according to Susan Keefe, an anthropology professor at Appalachian State University. “Being part of the larger fabric of people’s lives, this religious healing system reflects and reinforces the basic cultural values found in Appalachia,” she said. 

Keefe noted that mountain identity in Appalachia is based on qualities such as self-sufficiency, trustworthiness and community, which reflects what Trisha Hart experienced. “It’s not easy to ask for help for yourself,” she said. “Everybody held each other up…you didn’t have to stand up on your own.” 

CJ’s Market reopened on October 16th, a little over a year since the flood. 

Faith Communities: A History of Disaster Response

Faith communities have a long history of partnering with federal and state governments to carry out disaster response efforts. A recent study conducted in Appalachian Ohio, West Virginia and Virginia showed that local faith-based organizations are part of a web of trusted relationships in central Appalachia, as they are often the first organizations to respond after a disaster and remain in communities after other groups leave.

One of the study’s authors is Jamie Shinn, an assistant professor of environmental science at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. Shinn spent several weeks in 2016 in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, after that state’s devastating floods. Her research on that disaster revealed that the relief networks of faith-based groups function as a form of social capital, strengthening the resilience of local communities.

“If it wasn’t for the faith-based groups, we wouldn’t be where we are today,” Shinn said a recovery and response team member told her at the time. 

And the role of local churches as trusted entities became even more critical as disinformation and conspiracy theories — such as that disaster funds were being distributed to undocumented migrant workers — spread in the aftermath of Helene. These rumors were often spread by then-candidate Donald Trump and his allies, including billionaire Elon Musk. Then-FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said that the disinformation spread after Helene was “absolutely the worst I have ever seen.” Criswell said that rumors and disinformation were demoralizing to residents and kept them from applying for assistance. 

This is another place where clergy came in: they have also worked to debunk disinformation in the region in addition to coordinating disaster relief efforts in their communities. Rev. Ben Marsh, pastor of a theologically conservative yet “politically purple” congregation in Winston-Salem, N.C., publicly challenged disinformation and conspiracy theories even as he delivered his church’s cash donations and joined volunteer work teams to help Western North Carolina communities.

 Less than a month after the storm, 1,500 FEMA workers were on the ground in western North Carolina, and more than $1.29 billion of FEMA Individual Assistance funds had been approved for the people in Western North Carolina.

But when some residents inevitably fell through the cracks, churches were there to help. Lansing resident Karen Parsons and her husband own a home that they allow a low-income individual to live in rent-free. Due to their unique circumstances — the Parsons owned the home but didn’t live in it at the time of the storm, and the occupant didn’t pay rent — neither qualified for FEMA assistance. Instead, Parsons said she got a phone call from a member of a Moravian Church work team who told her  he was sitting in his pickup truck in front of her house. “Do y’all need help?” he said.

In the months since, Parson’s tenant has moved into a completely rebuilt home, where a photo of the work team is displayed in the freshly painted living room. “If it hadn’t been for the churches, we’d be up a creek without a paddle,” Parsons said. 

For Rev. Smaar, the church’s mission remains unchanged and prevails through the haze of disinformation and distrust. 

“We [in society]sometimes feel like we’re not the same. The world will try to tell us that. But it’s moments like that where you realize we are always in this boat together,” Smaar said.