GEORGIA & ALABAMA · SIX REMARKABLE STORIES
Faith close to home
A song born through grief. A medic who kept returning for the wounded. A congregation that learned to help others after its own terrible loss. Begin close to Haralson County, then follow these lives across Georgia and Alabama.
Villa Rica, Georgia
The Villa Rica boy behind “Precious Lord”
Thomas A. Dorsey carried the sound of a Georgia church into American music. After losing his wife and baby, he found words that helped others pray through grief.
Cartersville & Van Wert, Georgia
The Cartersville preacher behind the Ryman
A broken law career, a promise to a dying father, and a revival sermon connect northwest Georgia to one of America's best-known stages.
Near Piedmont, Alabama
After the tornado, Goshen kept gathering
Near Piedmont, Alabama, twenty people died during Palm Sunday worship in 1994. The congregation’s story continued through grief, rebuilding, and service to other storm survivors.
Piedmont, Alabama & Rising Fawn, Georgia
The unarmed medic who kept going back
Desmond Doss rescued wounded soldiers under fire at Okinawa. The man behind that extraordinary record later made his home in northwest Georgia and Piedmont, Alabama.
New Echota & near Rome, Georgia
Sentenced to four years for refusing to leave
A Cherokee prisoner charged with digging gold, a refused worship request and a prison-made box bring the Worcester and Butler story closer to the people who lived it.
Birmingham, Alabama
The Christmas bomb that did not stop Fred Shuttlesworth
In Birmingham in 1956, a bomb destroyed a Baptist pastor’s home. He survived—and went ahead with the next day’s challenge to segregated buses.
Read another local story
- From Old Camp to Japan: William Turner’s letters home
- Sarah Murphy and the children she made room for
- Prayer in the Grove: Old Camp, Shiloh, and West Georgia’s revival story
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