Thanksgiving Break!

The fall semester is finally over. I have graded the last papers and exams, just in time to enjoy Thanksgiving and the holidays.

In my last classes, I asked the students to evaluate each course and to give me feedback on the textbooks that we used. In my "Religion in Southern Culture" class, the students unanimously approved of Christine Heyrman's Southern Cross: The Beginning of the Bible Belt, and most liked Randall Stephens's The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South. But there were mixed opinions on Albert Raboteau's Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South and Charles Reagan Wilson's Judgment and Grace in Dixie: Southern Faiths from Faulkner to Elvis. The issue with Raboteau's book had mostly to do with chapter two, which features extensive details on a debate between the sociologist Franklin Frazier and the anthropologist Melville Herskovitz on the retention of African rituals among the American slave population. Some students also complained that we didn't spend enough time studying the Civil War, and would have liked to read a book devoted specifically to that topic. I was surprised that not everyone approved Judgment and Grace in Dixie. The problem with this book, apparently had to do with the difficulty of the assignment that I gave them to find the thesis and two supporting evidences for each chapter. Since Wilson's chapters are so brief, students often struggled to find specific examples as evidence of the thesis.

In my final class on "The History of Evangelicalism," students raved about Barry Hankins's Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism: A Documentary Reader. They found many of the excerpts to be humorous, especially the last few that we read on anti-Catholicism, and liked the contemporary nature of the primary sources and subsequent discussion in class on those topics. I was surprised that there were mixed opinions about Mark Noll's The Rise of Evangelicalism and David Bebbington's The Dominance of Evangelicalism (out of fear, I didn't ask students about my own Early Evangelicalism: A Reader!). While I thoroughly enjoyed the books by Noll and Bebbington when I read them for the first time, many found these texts to be too dense and overwhelming, in terms of details. I didn't receive any substantial feedback on Brian Stanley's The Global Diffusion of Evangelicalism. Both classes allowed me the opportunity to review the contents of my fall courses with fresh eyes so that I could think about potential changes that I may make if I teach them in the future.

During the past several weeks I have been reading a lot about colonial Boston. For those of you interested in the early Congregationalist churches in Boston, I highly recommend Mark Peterson's The Price of Redemption: The Spiritual Economy of Puritan New England. More than any other author, Peterson presents a detailed evaluation of the tensions among members of Boston's first churches. I have also been reading older books on Boston, such as Nathaniel Shurtleff's A Topographical Historical Description of Boston.

For my "fun" reading, I recently finished Eileen Bebbington's biography of her husband, A Patterned Life: Faith, History, and David Bebbington. As a former Bebbington student, I found the book to be very interesting and entertaining. It provided me insight on understanding Bebbington's quirky mannerisms, showing how much of his life is "patterned" into a disciplined regiment. During the Thanksgiving and holiday break, I intend to start reading Grant Wacker's new biography of Billy Graham.

The Beginning of Summer Break

Having administered and graded my last final exam yesterday, I am now officially on Summer break! My immediate plan is to work on my upcoming Fall 2014 course, "Religion in Southern Culture," before I travel to Worcester, MA for a month fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society.

For the past week, I have been reading several great books for "Religion in Southern Culture." I have taught this course once before at UTC, but I want to make some substantial revisions. While I hope to have lots of good discussion on various topics pertaining to religious life in the South, I determined that I should give some lectures that will complement the class reading list. 

So far, I have narrowed down the required reading list to the following books: Christine Heyrman's Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt, Albert Raboteau's Slave Religion: The 'Invisible Institution' in the Antebellum South, Randall Stephens's The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South, Charles Reagan Wilson's Judgment and Grace in Dixie: Southern Faiths from Faulkner to Elvis, and The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, edited by Samuel Hill.  I am also considering Mark Noll's The Civil War as a Theological Crisis and Charles Marsh's God's Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed reading the entries in The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. I liked the idea of having the students learn several topics and key people who have influenced religion in the South. I have yet to figure out, however, how to use this book in my course. I may create online quizzes for each of the entries and require the students to complete these during stages in the course, and/or have them choose a topic in the New Encyclopedia and write a research paper and/or present on that subject.

I had a difficult time choosing among so many excellent books on Religion in the South. I love Cynthia Lynn Lyerly's Methodism and the Southern Mind, 1770-1810, but ultimately concluded that it would be best to integrate the material in this book, and related information on the Baptists in the South, into some lectures that correspond with readings from Heyrman's Southern Cross. I had a similar problem when considering whether to choose Stephens's The Fire Spreads or Ralph Hood's Them That Believe: The Power and Meaning of the Christian Serpent-Handling Tradition. Hood teaches at UTC, is an expert on the snake handling tradition in the Appalachian region, and has appeared on several documentaries. Although the snake handling tradition has roots in the Chattanooga area, and may be more exciting to students than a general study of Pentecostalism in the South, I decided that it would be better to have them read Stephens's engaging book, and to limit our discussion to snake handling in the South to a single lecture.

On African Americans in the South, I struggled again to limit the class reading to one book. I debated using Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to 1830, by Sylvia Frey and Betty Wood, as well as Paul Harvey's new book, Through the Storm, Through the Night: A History of African American Christianity. But I decided to go with Raboteau's Slave Religion, and use the material in Frey, Wood, and Harvey for complementary lectures on the subject of African American religion in the South.

I found the essays in Wilson's Judgment and Grace in Dixie incredibly interesting, and so I couldn't resist adding this book to the required reading list. The variety of essays that he offers on topics ranging from the "Lost Cause" myth to the subject of "Sacred Southern Space" appealed to me. I found his chapter on "The Death of Bear Bryant" particularly interesting.

Finally, I want to heed the advice of ESRH commentators and consider incorporating Erik Gellman's and Jarod Rolls's The Gospel of the Working Class, essays in Mike Pasquier's edited volume, Gods of the Mississippi, Tracy Thompson's The New Mind of the South, as well as various essays in the Journal of Southern Religion.

As one can see, I have a lot of work to do in the next month. Hopefully, in the next few weeks, I will have a good idea of how to teach "Religion in Southern Culture" this Fall.