Faith + Life

The evangelical movement threatened the most heavily defended bastions of white male rule, especially his home.

A Review of Christine Leigh Heyrman, Southern Cross: the Beginnings of the Bible Belt, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.

Southern Cross is a valuable work in the study of the Old South. The manner in which Dr. Heyrman ushers the reader into the cabins, parlors and camp meetings is amazing for its clarity and presence. Certainly this work deserved the 1998 Bancroft Prize¹ for its contribution to the understanding of the Baptist and Methodist move across the South.

Heyrman takes the reader on a journey to a  “South” that was not a synonym for evangelical Protestant Christianity. The news is that evangelicals struggled for decades to prosper among whites in the South. The cultural hearth of evangelicalism in the  United States wasn’t always so friendly. It takes effort for me to imagine a past that was so radically different  “It was a time when a diverse, contentious spiritual culture seemed unlikely ever to become the ‘Bible belt’…” writes Heyrman²

Personal stories to tell the story of the beginnings of the Bible Belt. A few are worthy of note even in a short review. The book starts with a woman named Mary MacDonald in South Carolina in 1814. She was so concerned about her twelve year-old daughter’s soul that she described the horror of being unsaved quite graphically.³ From emotionally provocative Christian language, the reader is ushered onward in the journey to deal with the “obnoxious” Baptists and Methodists as they torment their Anglican neighbors⁴ with the inadequacy of the rites of the Church and the need for conversion. Such confrontations follow throughout the narrative and are bolstered in the fight against evangelicalism by confrontations with the Devil himself, as experienced by the Methodist preacher William Glendinining,⁵ and with the Masters of Southern culture and economy.

Two problems that seem to plague evangelicals throughout this work are their literalism and their cultural subversiveness. Just as Brother Glendinning believed himself to be literally facing the Devil in mortal combat, so did many others in the evangelical movement. Heyrman details how some imagery and language were used to frighten the unconvinced. Some were driven to experience anxiety induced physical symptoms. These factors led to a largely emotional movement that appealed to women and slaves more than Southern white men. This element of evangelicalism, Heyrman holds, was both its masterful way of moving throughout the South and the key cause of resistance. That resistance came mostly from white men.

The evangelical movement threatened the most heavily defended bastions of white male rule. The assault on the family included the itinerant preacher’s influence upon the mistress and other women of the household. One intrusion was the traveling preacher insistence on preaching and praying within the family home. Another intrusion was his insistence on enforcing church discipline upon the household. At times, even romantic notions seemed to appear between the preacher and the women of the house. Additionally, the itinerant was seen as less than manly by cultural norms. His influence in the home added to the conflict.

The meddling continued to the slave quarters. Blacks became frequent evangelical converts. They even became preachers which further eroded the white man’s mastery of his domain. Now, Christianity was imposing a higher standard of care upon his actions toward his slaves. There was also the fear that preachers, white or black, might serve to incite revolt.

Throughout the descriptive sections this work is really quite well done. The sense of being out of place when reading about familiar places and about familiar people like the Methodists was strong enough to feel.

This book deserves to be read by anyone interested in the American South or in Christianity. Even though the work was not a “page turner,” it is a work of great value.

There is one unfulfilled expectation. It’s established by the sub-title: the Beginnings of the Bible Belt. I expected a work that more closely traced the transformation of the Christian movement in the South. There is a large gap between the book and what I recognize as Southern religion.

Heyrman does approach evangelical transformation. She discusses changes in church discipline in the family to give fewer affronts to Southern white men. She discusses the evangelical church’s reversal on slavery from a position absolutely opposing it to a position that encouraged slave compliance. She even discusses the transformation of the clergy from somewhat odd, ill-educated, and effeminate itinerants to a model that allowed clergymen to more easily integrate into Southern society as the peers of the Masters.

This work easily earns a place in my library of religious history. Its value is enormous. It is only in its ending that the strings seem to unravel.

The author did not receive any financial or material consideration for this review from any party.

____________________

heyrman, southern cross, book review, bible belt, christian history, history of the american south, old south

Similar Posts:

• Book Review: Lead Like Jesus
• Free Book by Brian Tome
• On Competition…
• Book Review: What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do
• YouVersion.com: a Video Review of a Bible Community Site