Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt

Rating:
Summary: Great history. Great read.
Review: Before I finished reading this book, someone asked me what it was about. Off the cuff, I said it was about how the South got religion. I have since discovered that I was not far off the mark.

Heyrman's concern is with the transformation that overcame the South during the 18th and 19th centuries as it encountered the onslaught of evangelical religion. It seems the South was not always that bastion of "old-time religion" as is sometimes thought. Heyrman's explanation for this is as captivating as it is convincing

Rating:
Summary: The Solid South
Review: How would you feel if a visiting preacher came along and told you that the way you had been "doing church" all your life was wrong and would be radically changed? Your reaction would probably be similar to that of many whose calm and quiet lives were caught up in the frenzy of the evangelical awakenings and revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this book Christine Heyrman, a Professor of History at the University of Delaware, looks with a somewhat jaundiced eye at "the beginnings of the Bible belt" in the South of the early 1800's. The legacy of the Awakenings there was a population, many of whom had made a transition from the old, established Episcopal Church into the Baptist Church. No sooner had the effects of this jolt subsided when the region was overrun with itinerant Methodist circuit riders who raged against cards, guns, dancing, and Calvinism; in short, everything which had made the South that bastion of macho chivalraic leisure which, among the upper classes, it had become. For good measure, a smattering of Scottish Presbyterianism is thrown in to complicate the mixture. As they usually do, the flames of revival had spawned a certain amount of hysteria and superstition as people sometimes fainted, raved, and saw unearthly visions when they came under conviction of sin. Church growth outstripped oversight and discipline as new, unshepherded converts often headed for the Quaker or Shaker communities or into bizarre churches of their own devising. Heyrman's main point, however, is to show how the Southern mindset and lifestyle of today were molded and shaped by the synthesis of pre-Revival Southern mores and the evangelical preaching and style of the revivalists, especially the Methodist circuit riders. These rough, bold pioneers were actually viewed as effete and effeminate by the plantation hedonocracy because of their distaste for hunting, shooting, duelling, riding to hounds, cursing, dancing, drinking, and gambling which were the pastimes of the leisure class. Eventually a synthesis emerged, in which these practices were recognized as undesirable, but were still indulged in, producing the South of the Confederate era, holding a Bible in one hand and a rifle and a bottle of Southern Comfort in the other, the image of which has persisted to the present day. Heyrman is to be commended for embarking on the exploration of a theme, if not an era, which has been little handled previously. The American reading public still awaits a treatment of this subject from an evangelical Christian perspective--a book waiting to be written.

Rating:
Summary: The Solid South
Review: How would you feel if a visiting preacher came along and told you that the way you had been "doing church" all your life was wrong and would be radically changed? Your reaction would probably be similar to that of many whose calm and quiet lives were caught up in the frenzy of the evangelical awakenings and revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this book Christine Heyrman, a Professor of History at the University of Delaware, looks with a somewhat jaundiced eye at "the beginnings of the Bible belt" in the South of the early 1800's. The legacy of the Awakenings there was a population, many of whom had made a transition from the old, established Episcopal Church into the Baptist Church. No sooner had the effects of this jolt subsided when the region was overrun with itinerant Methodist circuit riders who raged against cards, guns, dancing, and Calvinism; in short, everything which had made the South that bastion of macho chivalraic leisure which, among the upper classes, it had become. For good measure, a smattering of Scottish Presbyterianism is thrown in to complicate the mixture. As they usually do, the flames of revival had spawned a certain amount of hysteria and superstition as people sometimes fainted, raved, and saw unearthly visions when they came under conviction of sin. Church growth outstripped oversight and discipline as new, unshepherded converts often headed for the Quaker or Shaker communities or into bizarre churches of their own devising. Heyrman's main point, however, is to show how the Southern mindset and lifestyle of today were molded and shaped by the synthesis of pre-Revival Southern mores and the evangelical preaching and style of the revivalists, especially the Methodist circuit riders. These rough, bold pioneers were actually viewed as effete and effeminate by the plantation hedonocracy because of their distaste for hunting, shooting, duelling, riding to hounds, cursing, dancing, drinking, and gambling which were the pastimes of the leisure class. Eventually a synthesis emerged, in which these practices were recognized as undesirable, but were still indulged in, producing the South of the Confederate era, holding a Bible in one hand and a rifle and a bottle of Southern Comfort in the other, the image of which has persisted to the present day. Heyrman is to be commended for embarking on the exploration of a theme, if not an era, which has been little handled previously. The American reading public still awaits a treatment of this subject from an evangelical Christian perspective--a book waiting to be written.

Rating:
Summary: Adapting evangelicalism for a southern audience
Review: In Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt, Christine Heyrman traces the difficulties encountered by 18th century evangelicals in spreading Baptist and Methodist beliefs to the South, and discusses the remedies they employed to make their faith more acceptable within southern culture. Heyrman argues that in philosophy and modes of worship, the evangelical message was often at odds with prevailing cultural norms in the South. To win converts, sects had to modify their message, in some ways rejecting important theological underpinnings in order to gain membership. While evangelical religion is now seen as one of the bastions of conservative southern values, Heyrman asserts that this was not always the case, and that only in the 19th century did the evangelicals take on the characteristics we now associate with them. To support her argument, Heyrman relies primarily on church records, the diaries and letters of itinerant preachers, and a number of secondary studies of southern culture.

Heyrman believes that a number of factors accounted for the slow growth of evangelicalism in the 18th century South, among them an unwillingness among the lower classes to upset the gentry by adopting preachers who publicly spoke out against slavery, fear of upsetting the social hierarchy, and a cultural unwillingness to accept such a deeply personal and introspective conversion process. Many potential converts were unwilling to submit to such a demanding moralism, or feared being overcome by the despondency that struck some converts. The evangelicals'use of young and tactless itinerant preachers in a culture that placed value upon maturity and deference also contributed to their unpopularity. Itinerancy itself was also an issue, since Methodist preachers were responsible for disciplining members who they did not personally know well. Additionally, the deference accorded to women and blacks within the church was offensive to white males, the churches were seen as destabilizing to family values because members were encouraged to put the church before their families, and the preachers themselves struck many as unmanly in a society that placed premiums on masculinity.

To combat these problems, the churches began in the 19th century to tone down their attacks on slavery and immoral gentry behavior. They also reduced the roles of women and blacks within the churches, and encouraged preachers to have families and exhibit more masculine characteristics. However, while the changes Heyrman cites may have made evangelicals appear less objectionable to potential converts, she never considers ways in which the churches became more inviting. She does not question why anyone would be attracted to evangelicalism, only why they might oppose it less. Because of this, the phenomenal growth that the sects did eventually come to enjoy is never explained; rather than showing the reasons why evangelical religion did become such an important part of southern life, her study only explains how it avoided oblivion.

Rating:
Summary: great informative stimulating delightful read.
Review: the work of a first class historian. i am looking forward to more books by this excellant researcher.