Faith in the Shadow of the Revival Tent

It was after midnight at the dawn of the 1960s. Donna Johnson was 3, her brother 1, her father gone. Her mother had sold everything — “knickknacks, flatware, all of her slacks” — to join a traveling caravan of evangelists led by the preacher Brother David Terrell. Holding tent revivals in a new town every few weeks, they were essentially carnies, but instead of hawking funnel cakes, they were selling God.