| 19th Century |
| United States |
| Christian Ministry |
| Evangelism |
| Religion |
| History |
| State & Local - South |
Summary
Summary
Most histories of the American South describe the conflict between evangelical religion and honor culture as one of the defining features of southern life before the Civil War. The story is usually told as a battle of clashing worldviews, but in this book, Robert Elder challenges this interpretation by illuminating just how deeply evangelicalism in Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian churches was interwoven with traditional southern culture, arguing that evangelicals owed much of their success to their ability to appeal to people steeped in southern honor culture. Previous accounts of the rise of evangelicalism in the South have told this tale as a tragedy in which evangelicals eventually adopted many of the central tenets of southern society in order to win souls and garner influence. But through an examination of evangelical language and practices, Elder shows that evangelicals always shared honor's most basic assumptions.
Making use of original sources such as diaries, correspondence, periodicals, and church records, Elder recasts the relationship between evangelicalism and secular honor in the South, proving the two concepts are connected in much deeper ways than have ever been previously understood.
Reviews (1)
Choice Review
This study of white evangelical beliefs and practices coexisting with and complementing the secular during the early republic and antebellum periods convincingly challenges the historiography. Confining his study to South Carolina, a hotbed of honor culture, and Georgia, Elder (history, Valparaiso Univ.) shows that evangelical rhetoric and practice shaped how southern white evangelicals used honor culture to encourage behavior that would honor God and enhance the reputation of the Gospel. Far from representing a dichotomous individualism that challenged the concept of the community administration of honor-based patriarchy, evangelicals used the community of believers to enforce shame and guilt amid the restorative concept of confession and repentance in order to ameliorate social ills like drunkenness, physical violence, and sexual license among its adherents. Elder shows how evangelicalism justified the practice of slavery while giving enslaved people claims on white evangelicals as beings equal before God, a tension ultimately reconciled with emancipation. Evangelicalism actually mediated between the communally oriented world and the emerging capitalistic world characterized by individualism, measured over time by churches expelling fewer individual members. Both conserving and transforming, evangelicalism helped change premodern southern honor into vestigial forms. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. --Edward R. Crowther, Adams State University
