Overview: Religion and the U.S. South
Charles Reagan Wilson, University of Mississippi
Essay Sections:
Reform and Reaction in Sectional Religion, 1940-2000:
World War II brought more change to the U.S. South than
any other event in its history, even the legendary Civil War. The World
War upset traditional patterns of
thought and behavior, exposing southerners to new ways of thinking, and it launched
economic developments that would overcome the long period era of poverty.
It opened a new period in which the South experienced fundamental changes
in a social system that had long shaped ideology and experience.
Changes in communication and transportation, population growth, urbanization,
the end
of
the one-party political system, consumerism, secularization — all pushed
the South toward change. Yet the South retained a self-consciousness
promoted
by
new
national acceptance of cultural identities of all shapes, by appreciation of
southern cultural traditions by a concern for tourism,
by
nostalgia, and by the functionality of southern organizations within a national
federalist framework. Black southerners became among the most energetic examiners
of the mythology of the white South, as well as of their own self-consciousness
as southerners. Appreciation of regions within the South has also grown,
seen in
the emergence of new conceptualizations of those regions, such as the Mid-South
around Memphis, Tennessee;
a
central Texas complex within the larger, traditional Southwestern region; the
Atlanta metro region; and
a
central Florida region anchored by the fantasies of Disney World. Through
all the changes, the traditionally-dominant denominations
have retained their hold. While a force for spiritual normalcy and often
disengagement
from the public sphere, religion has also been deeply involved in both liberal
and conservative political
crusades.
The civil rights movement was a central moral landmark for the South. African American church leaders, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Fred Shuttlesworth, and Ralph David Abernathy, emerged as the leading edge of reform, and local congregations provided the foot soldiers for the movement’s nonviolent protests and boycotts. The protests drew from principles of nonviolence that King learned from Indian leader Mahatmas Gandhi, but equally significant sources were Christian teachings on social justice and the heritage of the southern black church’s witness against the evils of segregation. The civil rights movement made the end of Jim Crow segregation a compelling moral challenge to the white South. In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. the Board of Education decision, major southern white denominational leaders and regional meetings counseled compliance with the call for desegregation, but most rank-and-file church members rebelled, rejecting the social changes that loomed. Some ministers used the same biblical justifications for segregation as their ancestors had used to justify slavery. Progressive clergymen who advocated acceptance of integration often lost their pulpits; ministers who ignored the issue risked moral irrelevancy. Few white religious leaders came out forcefully against the Jim Crow system. In the end, white church people reluctantly acquiesced to racial change, although their segregated churches and private schools remained retreats from those changes. Traditions of separate black and white worship were deeply held and reflected differing worship styles as well as racial divisions. Southern clergy have been among the leaders of racial reconciliation efforts in the recent South, often working through community groups to promote principles of Christian fellowship across social boundaries.
The traditional evangelical denominations, the Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians, have long been at the heart of the South's religious culture, and they retained their hold during this period of social change. Baptists continue to represent about half of the church-affiliated population of the South, Methodists about a quarter, and Presbyterians ten percent. The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has been a "folk religion of the South," and yet it has also been the largest U.S. Protestant church, thanks in part to establishing new congregations in the West, far beyond the original southern borders of the denomination in the nineteenth century. Increasingly a corporate-dominated bureaucracy, the SBC has long been closely allied with the South’s power structure, lending its conservative voice to issues of racial and social justice. Fundamentalists have taken over institutional control of the denomination since the 1980s, establishing creeds for the enforcement of orthodoxy, reshaping its educational institutions to narrow the range of teaching options, emphasizing the primacy of the inerrancy of the Bible, and moving away from traditional Baptist support for separation of church and state to support, among other government-enforced social causes, prayer in schools. Many moderates have left the SBC, weakening its numerical strength and leaving a narrow ideologically focused, leadership.
Methodists and Presbyterians also remain dominant church traditions in the contemporary South. Southern Methodists rejoined Methodists from other parts of the nation in a 1939 merger, and in 1968 the Evangelical United Brethren joined with them to form the United Methodist church. Methodists in the South represent about a quarter of the national membership. Unlike Baptists, Methodists have retained their Wesleyan stress on piety above creed. Southern Presbyterians have undergone more recent dramatic denominational change than Methodists, having reunited with their northern coreligionists in 1983. Conservatives had already broken away to form the Presbyterian Church in America because of their fears over the liberalism of mainstream southern Presbyterians, fears only confirmed by the national merger.
Black Christianity has also remained a powerful spiritual force in the latest South. The clerical role in leading the civil rights movement gave churches considerable moral authority, buttressing their historic and continuing efforts in providing fellowship, social services, recreation, sanctuary from the larger society, and a gospel of hope to oppressed people. They have long given a prophetic dimension that few other religious institutions have provided. The National Baptist Convention remains the largest black Baptist group, and the African Methodist Episcopal church is the leading black Methodist body. The movement for a specifically black theology has also had its adherents in the South, dating back to the call for black power in the late 1960s. African American ministers within predominantly white denominations particularly championed black theology as a sometimes militant demand for true spiritual integration. The United Methodist church struggled into the 1970s to desegregate the central jurisdiction into the church’s overall ecclesiastical system, and its failure to adequately do so allowed black Methodist clergymen to exploit the guilt and moral indecisions of white Methodists.
Secularization slowly loosened the hold of religious ideology upon public morals. The new right political movement that began in the 1980s with the Moral Majority saw the rise of the Religious Roundtable and the Christian Coalition, and received a new boost through the presidency of George W. Bush, has attempted to address this slippage. While a national movement, the religious right hopes to impose on society and church institutions a discipline that adherents believe once existed in the small towns and rural society of the earlier South before becoming besieged in the dramatic social changes of the 1960s. The religious right aims to anchor the nation’s political direction in a moral outlook grounded in its biblical interpretation. National leaders of the movement have included many southern figures, such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Ralph Reed. The religious right engages those issues it sees as part of an agenda of “traditional values,” including issues related to family definition, as well as abortion, pornography, prayer in schools, and before its defeat, the Equal Rights Amendment. Concern for prohibition of the sale, or even consumption, of alcoholic beverages is not a part of this political agenda, a major departure from the traditional southern ethics of the churches. The new agenda represents, then, a continued belief that fundamentalist, evangelical churches must impose their moral code upon a society in need of discipline.
Religion continues to define the U.S. South as a distinctive part of the United States. It contributes to defining debates on public policy issues and provides on-going organizational bases for political campaigns across the ideological spectrum. It supports a needed infrastructure of social services and educational institutions in southern regions where public agencies are underfunded. It offers a still compelling worldview to the majority of the South’s Christians, giving meaning in troubled times and empowering the poor and marginalized. Southern religion has supported a peculiar variety of religious pluralism within the United States, allowing for religious minorities to flourish. Forms of religion identified with the South—evangelicalism, fundamentalism, pentecostalism—have traveled throughout the nation, a prime example of the “southernization of the United States.” Meanwhile, southerners themselves live in places that often cannot be seen as southernso much as parts of a national or even global network. Recent immigration, especially the arrival of Hispanics in record numbers, has increased the Roman Catholic role in the South. Americans moving southward since the 1970s have brought denominations and traditions once seldom seen in the South, adding to its religious diversity.
The civil rights movement was a central moral landmark for the South. African American church leaders, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Fred Shuttlesworth, and Ralph David Abernathy, emerged as the leading edge of reform, and local congregations provided the foot soldiers for the movement’s nonviolent protests and boycotts. The protests drew from principles of nonviolence that King learned from Indian leader Mahatmas Gandhi, but equally significant sources were Christian teachings on social justice and the heritage of the southern black church’s witness against the evils of segregation. The civil rights movement made the end of Jim Crow segregation a compelling moral challenge to the white South. In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. the Board of Education decision, major southern white denominational leaders and regional meetings counseled compliance with the call for desegregation, but most rank-and-file church members rebelled, rejecting the social changes that loomed. Some ministers used the same biblical justifications for segregation as their ancestors had used to justify slavery. Progressive clergymen who advocated acceptance of integration often lost their pulpits; ministers who ignored the issue risked moral irrelevancy. Few white religious leaders came out forcefully against the Jim Crow system. In the end, white church people reluctantly acquiesced to racial change, although their segregated churches and private schools remained retreats from those changes. Traditions of separate black and white worship were deeply held and reflected differing worship styles as well as racial divisions. Southern clergy have been among the leaders of racial reconciliation efforts in the recent South, often working through community groups to promote principles of Christian fellowship across social boundaries.
The traditional evangelical denominations, the Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians, have long been at the heart of the South's religious culture, and they retained their hold during this period of social change. Baptists continue to represent about half of the church-affiliated population of the South, Methodists about a quarter, and Presbyterians ten percent. The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has been a "folk religion of the South," and yet it has also been the largest U.S. Protestant church, thanks in part to establishing new congregations in the West, far beyond the original southern borders of the denomination in the nineteenth century. Increasingly a corporate-dominated bureaucracy, the SBC has long been closely allied with the South’s power structure, lending its conservative voice to issues of racial and social justice. Fundamentalists have taken over institutional control of the denomination since the 1980s, establishing creeds for the enforcement of orthodoxy, reshaping its educational institutions to narrow the range of teaching options, emphasizing the primacy of the inerrancy of the Bible, and moving away from traditional Baptist support for separation of church and state to support, among other government-enforced social causes, prayer in schools. Many moderates have left the SBC, weakening its numerical strength and leaving a narrow ideologically focused, leadership.
Methodists and Presbyterians also remain dominant church traditions in the contemporary South. Southern Methodists rejoined Methodists from other parts of the nation in a 1939 merger, and in 1968 the Evangelical United Brethren joined with them to form the United Methodist church. Methodists in the South represent about a quarter of the national membership. Unlike Baptists, Methodists have retained their Wesleyan stress on piety above creed. Southern Presbyterians have undergone more recent dramatic denominational change than Methodists, having reunited with their northern coreligionists in 1983. Conservatives had already broken away to form the Presbyterian Church in America because of their fears over the liberalism of mainstream southern Presbyterians, fears only confirmed by the national merger.
Black Christianity has also remained a powerful spiritual force in the latest South. The clerical role in leading the civil rights movement gave churches considerable moral authority, buttressing their historic and continuing efforts in providing fellowship, social services, recreation, sanctuary from the larger society, and a gospel of hope to oppressed people. They have long given a prophetic dimension that few other religious institutions have provided. The National Baptist Convention remains the largest black Baptist group, and the African Methodist Episcopal church is the leading black Methodist body. The movement for a specifically black theology has also had its adherents in the South, dating back to the call for black power in the late 1960s. African American ministers within predominantly white denominations particularly championed black theology as a sometimes militant demand for true spiritual integration. The United Methodist church struggled into the 1970s to desegregate the central jurisdiction into the church’s overall ecclesiastical system, and its failure to adequately do so allowed black Methodist clergymen to exploit the guilt and moral indecisions of white Methodists.
Secularization slowly loosened the hold of religious ideology upon public morals. The new right political movement that began in the 1980s with the Moral Majority saw the rise of the Religious Roundtable and the Christian Coalition, and received a new boost through the presidency of George W. Bush, has attempted to address this slippage. While a national movement, the religious right hopes to impose on society and church institutions a discipline that adherents believe once existed in the small towns and rural society of the earlier South before becoming besieged in the dramatic social changes of the 1960s. The religious right aims to anchor the nation’s political direction in a moral outlook grounded in its biblical interpretation. National leaders of the movement have included many southern figures, such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Ralph Reed. The religious right engages those issues it sees as part of an agenda of “traditional values,” including issues related to family definition, as well as abortion, pornography, prayer in schools, and before its defeat, the Equal Rights Amendment. Concern for prohibition of the sale, or even consumption, of alcoholic beverages is not a part of this political agenda, a major departure from the traditional southern ethics of the churches. The new agenda represents, then, a continued belief that fundamentalist, evangelical churches must impose their moral code upon a society in need of discipline.
Religion continues to define the U.S. South as a distinctive part of the United States. It contributes to defining debates on public policy issues and provides on-going organizational bases for political campaigns across the ideological spectrum. It supports a needed infrastructure of social services and educational institutions in southern regions where public agencies are underfunded. It offers a still compelling worldview to the majority of the South’s Christians, giving meaning in troubled times and empowering the poor and marginalized. Southern religion has supported a peculiar variety of religious pluralism within the United States, allowing for religious minorities to flourish. Forms of religion identified with the South—evangelicalism, fundamentalism, pentecostalism—have traveled throughout the nation, a prime example of the “southernization of the United States.” Meanwhile, southerners themselves live in places that often cannot be seen as southernso much as parts of a national or even global network. Recent immigration, especially the arrival of Hispanics in record numbers, has increased the Roman Catholic role in the South. Americans moving southward since the 1970s have brought denominations and traditions once seldom seen in the South, adding to its religious diversity.
Essay Sections:
Originally Published: 16 March 2004 | Last
Revised: 14 June 2005| Revision History
© 2005 Charles Reagan Wilson and Southern Spaces
© 2005 Charles Reagan Wilson and Southern Spaces
