Overview

Revealing a surprising paradox at the heart of America's """"Bible Belt,"""" Christine Leigh Heyrman examines how the conservative religious traditions so strongly associated with the South evolved out of an evangelical Protestantism that began with very different social and political attitudes. Although the American Revolution swept away the institutional structures of the Anglican Church in the South, the itinerant evangelical preachers who subsequently flooded the region at first encountered resistance from southern whites, who were affronted by their opposition to slaveholding and traditional ideals of masculinity, their lack of respect for generational hierarchy, their encouragement of women's public involvement in church affairs, and their allowance for spiritual intimacy with blacks. As Heyrman shows, these evangelicals achieved dominance in the region over the course of a century by deliberately changing their own """"traditional values"""" and assimilating the conventional southern understandings of family relationships, masculine prerogatives, classic patriotism, and martial honor. In so doing, religious groups earlier associated with nonviolence and antislavery activity came to the defense of slavery and secession and the holy cause of upholding both by force of arms--and adopted the values we now associate with the """"Bible Belt."""" |Examines the evolution of the conservative religious tradition of the South's Bible Belt. Heyrman shows that preachers from the Anglican Church achieved dominance in the South by assimilating the values already held there.

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9780807847169

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Reviews

[F]or tackling the history of the evangelical mainstream in an innovative way, this book represents an important contribution. Koinonia This is an outstanding book, impressively saturated with primary sources, beautifully written, and spiced with pervasive wit. Kirkus Reviews F or tackling the history of the evangelical mainstream in an innovative way, this book represents an important contribution. Koinonia Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt has narrative power, unusually combining incisiveness with humanity. Times Literary Supplement An extraordinarily rich exploration of the first hundred years of evangelical faith in the South.Charles B. Dew, New York Times Book Review This is an outstanding book, impressively saturated with primary sources, beautifully written, and spiced with pervasive wit. Kirkus Reviews Indispensable for the study of Southern religion. Religious Studies Review Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt has narrative power, unusually combining incisiveness with humanity. Times Literary Supplement An extraordinarily rich exploration of the first hundred years of evangelical faith in the South.Charles B. Dew, New York Times Book Review [F]or tackling the history of the evangelical mainstream in an innovative way, this book represents an important contribution. Koinonia

An eloquent piece of narrative history that seeks to clarify one of American religion's most enduring puzzles: How did the South, once a culture highly resistant to evangelical revivalism, become the buckle of the Bible Belt? Historian Heyrman (Univ. of Delaware) has crafted a meticulous portrait of the early South in the era of the Second Great Awakening, roughly around the turn of the 19th century. She demonstrates that evangelical religion and southern culture were at first rigidly incompatible - young itinerant Methodist and Baptist preachers threatened the authority of middle-aged southern planters, while women and slaves who found outlets as evangelical exhorters challenged white male power. Evangelicalism could only triumph in the South when its evangelists were willing to make themselves over in the image of the southern male gentry. This meant that preachers had to become older, more settled, and more aggressively masculine, while women ceased to exercise public spiritual authority, retreating instead to the domestic realm. Evangelical religion, which had once demanded that its adherents sever all ties with unbelieving family members, reinvented itself as the force which held the southern family together. The South's family religion continues to this day; in the epilogue, Heyrman briefly explores the contemporary legacy of this evangelical male transformation in groups like the Promise Keepers. This is an outstanding book, impressively saturated with primary sources, beautifully written, and spiced with pervasive wit. Heyrman offers a novelist's sensitivity to the many colorful characters of her tale, with each anecdote illuminating the overall evolution of southern evangelicalism. One might wish only for more attention to slave religion, and the interplay between white and black evangelicalism. But in all, this is a remarkable book that will set a high standard for future studies of religion in the antebellum South. (Kirkus Reviews)

[F]or tackling the history of the evangelical mainstream in an innovative way, this book represents an important contribution. Koinonia Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt has narrative power, unusually combining incisiveness with humanity. Times Literary Supplement This is an outstanding book, impressively saturated with primary sources, beautifully written, and spiced with pervasive wit. Kirkus Reviews An extraordinarily rich exploration of the first hundred years of evangelical faith in the South.Charles B. Dew, New York Times Book Review YFor tackling the history of the evangelical mainstream in an innovative way, this book represents an important contribution. Koinonia Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt has narrative power, unusually combining incisiveness with humanity. Times Literary Supplement This is an outstanding book, impressively saturated with primary sources, beautifully written, and spiced with pervasive wit. Kirkus Reviews An extraordinarily rich exploration of the first hundred years of evangelical faith in the South.Charles B. Dew, New York Times Book Review [F]or tackling the history of the evangelical mainstream in an innovative way, this book represents an important contribution. Koinonia Indispensable for the study of Southern religion. Religious Studies Review

[F]or tackling the history of the evangelical mainstream in an innovative way, this book represents an important contribution. Koinonia This is an outstanding book, impressively saturated with primary sources, beautifully written, and spiced with pervasive wit. Kirkus Reviews F or tackling the history of the evangelical mainstream in an innovative way, this book represents an important contribution. Koinonia Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt has narrative power, unusually combining incisiveness with humanity. Times Literary Supplement An extraordinarily rich exploration of the first hundred years of evangelical faith in the South.Charles B. Dew, New York Times Book Review An extraordinarily rich exploration of the first hundred years of evangelical faith in the South.Charles B. Dew, New York Times Book Review [F]or tackling the history of the evangelical mainstream in an innovative way, this book represents an important contribution. Koinonia Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt has narrative power, unusually combining incisiveness with humanity. Times Literary Supplement This is an outstanding book, impressively saturated with primary sources, beautifully written, and spiced with pervasive wit. Kirkus Reviews Indispensable for the study of Southern religion. Religious Studies Review

[F]or tackling the history of the evangelical mainstream in an innovative way, this book represents an important contribution.<p> Koinonia

[F]or tackling the history of the evangelical mainstream in an innovative way, this book represents an important contribution. Koinonia F or tackling the history of the evangelical mainstream in an innovative way, this book represents an important contribution. Koinonia Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt has narrative power, unusually combining incisiveness with humanity. Times Literary Supplement This is an outstanding book, impressively saturated with primary sources, beautifully written, and spiced with pervasive wit. Kirkus Reviews An extraordinarily rich exploration of the first hundred years of evangelical faith in the South.Charles B. Dew, New York Times Book Review Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt has narrative power, unusually combining incisiveness with humanity. Times Literary Supplement This is an outstanding book, impressively saturated with primary sources, beautifully written, and spiced with pervasive wit. Kirkus Reviews An extraordinarily rich exploration of the first hundred years of evangelical faith in the South.Charles B. Dew, New York Times Book Review [F]or tackling the history of the evangelical mainstream in an innovative way, this book represents an important contribution. Koinonia Indispensable for the study of Southern religion. Religious Studies Review

[F]or tackling the history of the evangelical mainstream in an innovative way, this book represents an important contribution. Koinonia

Author Information

Christine Leigh Heyrman is professor of history at the University of Delaware.

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