Religion in Southern Culture

I am teaching a course this semester on "Religion in Southern Culture." This is basically a religious history of the South, beginning with a discussion of how the South became the so-called Bible belt of America, and ending with issues related to civil rights. I'm requiring three texts for the class: Christine Leigh Heyrman's Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt, Patrick Q. Mason's The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South, and Paul Harvey's Freedom's Coming: Religious Culture and the Shaping of the South from the Civil War Through the Civil Rights Era. While the first and third are standard textbooks for a course like this, I chose Mason's book because it highlights scenes of anti-Mormon violence in Tennessee, which is the state in which I teach. Mormonism clearly is not the dominant religion in the South, either before or after the Civil War, but Mason's book is important in forcing scholars and students to include other religions into discussions on southern religion, rather than a narrow focus on Protestantism.

For the course, I require students to read the three main texts, writing one discussion question and 1/2 page answer for each of the chapters in the three books. I've required this assignment in previous courses and it seems to be effective in forcing students to do the readings and turn their work in on time, promoting good writing, and creating topics for class discussion.

I also require students to select two books to write reviews from a list of approved titles. Here are the approved titles, broken down into various categories:

General Studies of Religion in the South

· Boles, John B. The Irony of Southern Religion (Peter Lang, 1994)

· Cobb, James C. Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity (Oxford, 2007)

Religion and Women in the South

· Ashton, Dianne. Rebecca Gratz: Women and Judaism in Antebellum America (Wayne St., 1997)

· Brekus, Catherine A. Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740-1845 (UNC , 1998)

· Friedman, Jean E. The Enclosed Garden: Women and Community in the Evangelical South, 1830-1900 (UNC, 1985)

· Kierner, Cynthia A. Beyond the Household: Women’s Place in the Early South, 1700-1835 (Cornell, 1998)

· Lebsock, Suzanne. The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784-1860 (Norton, 1984)

· McDowell, John Patrick. The Social Gospel in the South: The Woman’s Home Mission Movement in the Methodist Episcopal Church South, 1886-1939 (LSU , 1982)

· Perdue, Theda. Cherokee Women: Gender and Cultural Change, 1700-1835 (Nebraska , 1998)

· Rodriguez, Jeanette. Our Lady of Guadalupe: Faith and Empowerment among Mexican-American Women (Texas , 1994)

· Turner, Elizabeth Hayes. Women, Culture, and Community: Religion and Reform in Galveston, 1880-1920 (Oxford, 1997)

Religion and Slavery in the South

· Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North Carolina (Harvard, 1998)

· Boles, John B., ed. Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord: Race and Religion in the American South, 1740-1870 (Kentucky , 1988)

· Daly, John. When Slavery Was Called Freedom: Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the Causes of the Civil War (Kentucky , 2002)

· Diouf, Sylviane A. Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas(NYU , 1998)

· Irons, Charles F. The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia (UNC, 2008)

· Morgan, Philip D. Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (UNC , 1998)

· Wood, Betty. Women’s Work, Men’s Work: The Informal Slave Economies of Lowcountry Georgia (Georgia , 1995)

Regional Studies of Religion in the South

· Clark, Erskine. Our Southern Zion: A History of Calvinism in the South Carolina Low County, 1690-1990 (Alabama, 1996)

· Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo. Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (LSU , 1992)

· Hanger, Kimberly S. Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769-1803 (Duke, 1997)

· Heaney, Jane Frances. A Century of Pioneering: A History of the Ursuline Nuns in New Orleans, 1727-1827 (Ursuline Sisters of New Orleans, 1993)

· Hoffman, Ronald. Princes of Ireland, Planters of Maryland: A Carroll Saga, 1500-1782 (UNC , 2000)

· Irons, Charles F. The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia (UNC, 2008)

· Isaac, Rhys. The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 (UNC , 1982)

· Lebsock, Suzanne. The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784-1860 (Norton, 1984)

· McCauley, Deborah Vansau. Appalachian Mountain Religion: A History (Illinois , 1995)

· Morgan, Philip D. Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (UNC , 1998)

· Nelson, John K. A Blessed Company: Parishes, Parsons, and Parishioners in Anglican Virginia, 1690-1776 (UNC, 2001)

· Owen, Christopher H. The Sacred Flame of Love: Methodism and Society in Nineteenth-Century Georgia (Georgia , 1998)

· Rogoff, Leonard. Homelands: Southern Jewish Identity in Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Alabama , 2001)

· Schweiger, Beth Barton. The Gospel Working Up: Progress and the Pulpit in Nineteenth-Century Virginia (Oxford, 2000)

· Sobel, Mechal. The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in Eighteenth-Century Virginia (Princeton, 1988)

· Sommer, Elisabeth. Serving Two Masters: Faith, Authority, and Community among the Moravian Brethren in Germany and North Carolina, 1727-1801 (Kentucky , 2000)

· Sparks, Randy J. On Jordan’s Stormy Banks: Evangelicalism in Mississippi, 1773-1876 (Georgia , 1994)

· Sutton, William R. Journeymen for Jesus: Evangelical Artisans Confront Capitalism in Jacksonian Baltimore (Penn State, 1998)

· Thorp, Daniel B. The Moravian Community in Colonial North Carolina: Pluralism on the Southern Frontier (Tennessee , 1989)

· Turner, Elizabeth Hayes. Women, Culture, and Community: Religion and Reform in Galveston, 1880-1920 (Oxford, 1997)

· Van Voorst, Carol. The Anglican Clergy in Maryland, 1692-1776 (New York, 1989)

· Wood, Betty. Women’s Work, Men’s Work: The Informal Slave Economies of Lowcountry Georgia (Georgia , 1995)

African American Religion in the South

· Frey, Sylvia R. and Betty Wood. Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to 1830 (UNC , 1998)

· Gomez, Michael A. Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (UNC , 1998)

· Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo. Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (LSU , 1992)

· Hanger, Kimberly S. Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769-1803 (Duke, 1997)

· Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement I the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Harvard, 1993)

· Hinson, Glenn. Fire in My Bones: Transcendence and the Holy Spirit in African American Gospel (Pennsylvania , 2000)

· McMillen, Sally G. To Raise Up the South: Sunday Schools in Black and White Churches, 1865-1915 (LSU , 2001)

· Morgan, Philip D. Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (UNC , 1998)

· Morrow, Diane Batts. Persons of Color and Religious at the Same Time: The Oblate Sisters of Providence, 1821-1860 (UNC , 2002)

· Sobel, Mechal. Trabelin’ On: The Slave Journey to an Afro-Baptist Faith (Princeton, 1988)

Baptists in the South

· Harvey, Paul. Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925 (UNC , 1997)

· Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement I the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Harvard, 1993)

· Morrow, Diane Batts. Persons of Color and Religious at the Same Time: The Oblate Sisters of Providence, 1821-1860 (UNC , 2002)

· Sobel, Mechal. Trabelin’ On: The Slave Journey to an Afro-Baptist Faith (PUP, 1988)

· Wills, Gregory A. Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority, and Church Discipline in the Baptist South, 1785-1900 (Oxford, 1996)

Methodism in the South

· Lyerly, Cynthia Lynn. Methodism and the Southern Mind, 1770-1810 (Oxford, 1998)

· McDowell, John Patrick. The Social Gospel in the South: The Woman’s Home Mission Movement in the Methodist Episcopal Church South, 1886-1939 (LSU , 1982)

· Owen, Christopher H. The Sacred Flame of Love: Methodism and Society in Nineteenth-Century Georgia (Georgia , 1998)

· Schneider, Gregory A. The Way of the Cross Leads Home: The Domestication of American Methodism (Indiana , 1993)

Evangelicalism in the South

· Boles, John B. The Great Revival, 1787-1805: The Origins of the Southern Evangelical Mind (Kentucky, 1972)

· Dochuk, Darren. From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatisim (Norton, 2011)

· Calhoon, Robert M. Evangelicals and Conservatives in the Early South, 1740-1861 (South Carolina, 1989)

· Eslinger, Ellen. Citizens of Zion: The Social Origins of Camp Meeting Revivalism (Texas, 1999)

· Fea, John. The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America (Pennsylvania, 2009)

· Barry Hankins, God’s Rascal: J. Frank Norris and the Beginnings of Southern Fundamentalism (Kentucky, 2010)

· Mulder, Philip N. A Controversial Spirit: Evangelical Awakenings in the South (Oxford, 2002)

· Sparks, Randy J. On Jordan’s Stormy Banks: Evangelicalism in Mississippi, 1773-1876 (Georgia, 1994)

Catholicism in the South

· Gannon, Michael V. The Cross in the Sand: The Early Catholic Church in Florida, 1513-1870 (Florida, 1967)

· Heaney, Jane Frances. A Century of Pioneering: A History of the Ursuline Nuns in New Orleans, 1727-1827 (Ursuline Sisters of New Orleans, 1993)

· Morrow, Diane Batts. Persons of Color and Religious at the Same Time: The Oblate Sisters of Providence, 1821-1860 (UNC , 2002)

Religion and Judaism in the South

· Evans, Eli N. The Lonely Days Were Sundays: Reflections of a Jewish Southerner (Mississippi, 1994)

· Rogoff, Leonard. Homelands: Southern Jewish Identity in Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Alabama , 2001)

· Rubin, Louis D. My Father’s People: A Family of Southern Jews (LSU , 2002)

Theology in the South

· Holifield, E. Brooks. Gentleman Theologians: American Theology in Southern Culture, 1790-1860 (Duke, 1978)

Religion and Civil War in the South

· Daly, John. When Slavery Was Called Freedom: Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the Causes of the Civil War (Kentucky , 2002)

· Goen, C. C. Broken churches, Broken Nation: Denominational Schisms and the Coming of the Civil War (Mercer, 1985)

· Hill, Samuel S. The South and the North in American Religion (Georgia , 1980)

· Hill, Samuel S. Southern Churches in Crisis Revisited (Alabama, 1999)

· McPherson, James. For Cause and Comrade: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (Oxford, 1997)

· Shattuck, Gardiner. A Shield and Hiding Place: The Religious Life of the Civil War Armies (Mercer, 1987)

· Snay, Mitchell. Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separatism in the Antebellum South (Cambridge, 1993)

· Woodworth, Steven E. While God Is Marching On: The Religious World of the Civil War Soldiers (Kansas , 2001)

Special Topics on Religion in the South

· Ownby, Ted. Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865-1920 (UNC , 1990)

· Tolnay, Stewart E. and E. M. Beck, Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930 (Illinois, 1995)

· Wilson, Charles Reagan. Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920 (Georgia, 1980)

If you have additional titles that I should consider adding, please feel free to contact me.

Jonathan Yeager