The Color of Christ

I have been hearing a lot about Ed Blum's and Paul Harvey's The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America. I decided to order it after watching a video clip posted on YouTube in which Joanna Brooks interviews Blum. The book sounds fascinating. I can't wait to read it, and possibly incorporate it in one of my courses.

How Do They Do It?

How do they do it? It seems that individual authors are pumping out more and more books these days. Mark Noll is one of the best examples of this trend. For years he has consistently churned out such academic titles as Christians in the American Revolution (1977), one of my favorites, Princeton and the Republic (1989), Religion and American Politics (1989), A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (1992), his best-seller, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (1994), Turning Points (2001), The Princeton Theology, 1812-1921 (2001), The Old Religion in a New World (2001), the "magisterial" America's God (2002), The Rise of Evangelicalism (2004), Is the Reformation Over? (2005), God and Race in American Politics (2008), and The New Shape of World Christianity (2009). His Clouds of Witnesses came out in March 2011, and was quickly followed by Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind in July 2011, which came out only a few months before his Protestantism: A Very Short Introduction. I recall Bruce Hindmarsh quipping that he could not read as many books as Noll produced in a year!

Other examples abound. After publishing his PhD dissertation as The Protestant Interest in 2004, Thomas Kidd went on to write a series of impressive texts including, The Great Awakening (2007), American Christians and Islam (2008), God of Liberty (2010), and Patrick Henry (2011). He is on target to complete a biography of George Whitefield by 2014, the 300th anniversary of the Grand Itinerant's birthday. The list continues. The religious historian Paul Harvey, author of Freedom's Coming, has published Through the Storm, Through the Night as well as Moses, Jesus, and the Trickster in the Evangelical South in 2011. His fellow "blogmeister," Randall Stephens, published The Fire Spreads in 2008, and has co-authored the much-talked about The Anointed at the end of 2011. John Fea turned his dissertation into The Way of Improvement Leads Home in 2008, helped to edit Confessing History at the end of 2010, and only months later released Was America Founded As a Christian Nation? How do they do it?

In fairness, many of these books are offshoots of the research done on previous projects. But still, it is remarkable how efficient these scholarly are. Rick Sher once told me that it took him ten years to revise his Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment (1985), and in the preface of his award-winning, The Enlightenment and the Book (2007), he states that he began research for the book in the early 1990s. I think John Wigger said something similar, that it took him about a decade to write American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists (2009).

What I find interesting is that some authors do not need to write multiple monographs to become leaders in their field. Rick Sher, John Wigger, and George Marsden serve as evidence of this fact. Sometimes, all that is needed is one ground-breaking book to catapult a person to literary stardom. Marsden's Fundamentalism and American Culture was a runaway success that permanently etched his name into the annals of Christian scholarship. A second example is Nathan Hatch's The Democratization of American Christianity, which has been cited as one of the best monographs on religious history in America. The lesson to me is: although it is impressive to produce multiple books in a decade, it only takes one seminal monograph to make a dramatic impact in the academy.

Jonathan Yeager

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