Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt

by Christine Leigh Heyrman

Revealing a surprising paradox at the heart of America's "Bible Belt," Christine Leigh Heyrman examines how the conservative religious traditions so strongly associated with the South evolved out of an evangelical Protestantism that began with very different social and political attitudes.

Although the American Revolution swept away the institutional structures of the Anglican Church in the South, the itinerant evangelical preachers who subsequently flooded the region at first encountered resistance from southern whites, who were affronted by their opposition to slaveholding and traditional ideals of masculinity, their lack of respect for generational hierarchy, their encouragement of women's public involvement in church affairs, and their allowance for spiritual intimacy with blacks. As Heyrman shows, these evangelicals achieved dominance in the region over the course of a century by deliberately changing their own "traditional values" and assimilating the conventional southern understandings of family relationships, masculine prerogatives, classic patriotism, and martial honor. In so doing, religious groups earlier associated with nonviolence and antislavery activity came to the defense of slavery and secession and the holy cause of upholding both by force of arms—and adopted the values we now associate with the "Bible Belt."

Genres: History, Religion, American History, Nonfiction, Church History, Politics, Race

352 pages, Paperback

First published April 7, 1997

About the author

Christine Leigh Heyrman is the Robert W. and Shirley P. Grimble Professor of American History at the University of Delaware.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prologue: Canaan's Language

In evangelizing the early American south, evangelical religious sects such as Methodists and Baptists sought to teach the populace the language of Canaan - a biblical language of damnation and hell's horrible punishments intended to awaken them from their earthly slumber and focus them on the demands of God for the salvation of their eternal souls. Having begun the evangelical effort n the First great Awakening during the 1740s, it was not until the second great awakening almost a hundred years later that they actually made a real impact on the southern religious landscape.

And a struggle it was, not just against the deists like Jefferson but more importantly against "worldlings" who failed to see the need to forsake the pleasures of this word. Either unchurched or happy in their "lax" Episcopalian faith, they were more interested in the hunt, the tavern or the allure of the fiddle. But the evangelicals were indeed equal to the task. As Anglicans were sending their least capable ministers to the frontiers in mid 18thC south, the Baptists and Methodists were training a cadre of young shock troops ready to endure the rigorous life of evangelization. Hardly the lax negligent parents of legend, Anglicans and later Episcopalians were stern when it came to such offenses as "swearing, gossiping and lying" even if they encouraged dancing and musical instruments. And it was in their simple joyless ways that the Baptists and Methodists were a standing rebuke to the better established adherents of the COE. Many of them stood up as champions of the faith against the unregenerate elite of the southern aristocratic planter class.

But class antagonisms don't quite explain it all. Indeed, the evangelicals alienated the plain republican folk as well who sought to retain harmony in their relations with the gentry. The evangelicals were a threat to the southern culture of "conviviality and competition". They struck at the heart of the culture and offered instead the alien rituals of full-emersion baptism and public confessions of faith called "love feasts". At "class meetings" they broke out in groups segregated by groups bereft of the markings of social status and hierarchy.

With the departure of the Anglican Church after the revolution, the Episcopal Church was but a shadow of the former institution (which had its problems as well). The question we have to ask is why didn't the evangelicals rush right in to fill the gap? Just as they were trying to get the "worldlings" to speak the "language of Canaan," they needed to assimilate to the local culture as well -- to learn to speak with a southern accent. It was not just their opposition to the slavery which supported the grandees, but also their upsetting of traditional relations between parents and children, men and women, etc. Teaching the people of the south to speak the language of Canaan

would require winning humbler folk as well, by altering, often drastically, many earlier evangelical teachings and practices concerning the proper roles of men and women, old and young, white and black, as well as their position on the relationship between the church and the family and between Christianity and other forms of supernaturalism. (p. 27)

Chapter 3: Family Values

Drawing on personal letters and journals of evangelists, Heyrman is a able to reconstruct the family saga that was at the heart of much of southern evangelicals' early trials and tribulations. Recounting the conversion of the Mead family of Georgia to the Methodist faith, she relates the conversion experience in 1789 of Stith Mead in Virginia and the history of his subsequent struggles to evangelize his family -- including William Mead, the family's patriarch. After his conversion Stith was tireless in his efforts to convert his family. When one backsliding brother's attendance at a dance seemed linked to his death shortly thereafter, Stith blamed William for sending this brother to hell.

Heyrman puts this individual narrative within the broader perspective of the social change happening at the time. Migration to the frontier often broke up families and disrupted larger kinship networks, leaving people unsettled and anxious about family ties. The evangelicals succeeded in part by constructing "little families" where pastors were called father or "daddy" and the itinerate preachers called each other brothers in Christ. They even likened heaven to an eternal family reunion in the hereafter. But it was hard to make the case that itinerate young men who shunned kith and kin to live the celibate life were exemplars of the value of family. Constantly warring against the flesh and the temptations of the road, young itinerates were often suspected of licentious behavior. Even when they started to "locate" Methodist ministers provided poorly for their wives and offspring, evoking doubts about their masculinity in the population at large. They also unsettled the privacy of the home by their public sharing of inner religious conflicts as well as the details of their private sins. Their inveighing against slavery endangered the prosperity of future generations. Their encouragement of godly women to damn unregenerate spouses upset familial relations in the most immediate way, along with their encouragement of daughters to marry for reasons of spiritual and romantic compatibility. In all of this they were seen by the majority of white southerners as far too close to indian tribes, Shakers and Quakers.

In order for them to cast of this image of being associated with the lunatic fringe, they needed to abandon their anti-slavery agitation, moderate their views on mixed-faith marriages. They did this by increasingly supporting the patriarchy of the "traditional" Southern family. As they shifted to a more professionalized clergy, they also began to require married ministers with families. Yielding oversight of families to male heads of households, they rendered themselves respectable. The cult of domesticity began to overtake the godly women of the south as various justifications for slavery were proffered and accepted. Women and blacks were sacrificed on the alter of respectability ...

Epilogue

In her epilogue, she turns to the ways in which family values have entered the political debate in the late 20th C. Historiographically, there are basically two options -- evangelical religion either advanced democratization through the promotion of individualistic faith or it substituted patriarchy for the empowerment of all of God's children. Evangelical religion, then and now, holds the mutually contradictory possibilities within it for progressive and traditionalistic outcomes. Curiously, she sees the rise of the Promise Keepers as a return to the earlier days of Stith Mead. One would have thought that she would cast them as an example of the triumph of patriarchy in the late 20th C ... That is, at least how they appear to me...

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Think the South has pretty much always been evangelical? Think evangelicalism has always been about traditional family values? Not so much. According to Heyrman, in the story of Southern religion, the fact that evangelicalism triumphed is the twist ending. Originally a fringe movement that appealed primarily to women, slaves, and children, evangelicalism was still struggling for the souls of Southerners a century after evangelicals started proselytizing in the region. It was only through accommodating to the male patriarchal (and slave-holding) society of the time that evangelicalism emerged as a respectable—and formidable—religious movement.

Fascinating subject, well-written, and full of hilarious (and slightly risqué) anecdotes. Sadly, she leaves the Presbyterians out of her history entirely, but it makes sense, as the Baptists and Methodists were by far the more influential groups. My other beef was that she was often too quick to blame Southern men for rules that are actually in the Bible (i.e. prohibitions against women pastors, etc.) But still...if you want to know where the Bible Belt came from, check out Heyrman.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful cultural history of how the Bible belt became the Bible belt ... provided me some helpful historical insights as to how the South can "look" so Christian-y and Bible-y and yet seem so impervious to the message of the gospel. It gave historic background to a friend's comment regarding the difficulty of gospel ministry in the South: "You gotta get 'em lost before you can get 'em saved." At the same time, the book reads like a barely edited Ph.D. dissertation ... not exactly summer beach reading. Now on to "Our Southern Zion: a History of Calvinism in the South Carolina Low Country, 1690-1990." ;-)

[Jewels · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to read this book as part of my current history course in college. At the time, it seemed like the least evil among the list that the professor gave us to choose from for book reviews. I honestly am of two minds on the discussion in the volume. Having come from a Baptist background (and no longer embracing it), I was quite familiar with some of the more outlandish and offending ideals that evangelicals espouse. It amused me how much they kept changing in order to appeal to the white Protestant male, and how they seem to have come full circle back to what they initially preached. It put me off that despite decades of trial and error, they still don't seem to have it right. Keeping women, youths, and minorities from living up to their full potential and feelings of being called -- and those that want to stay in the church, submitting to it -- stirs up that old bitterness and anger from the time that I quit.

The book itself seems well written and researched, and I give kudos to Heyrman for not sugar coating anything to appease anyone.

[Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book challenges the perception that there has ever been such a thing as "an evangelical South" that provided a single, unifying vision for appropriate living. Heyrman shows how various evangelical strains competed for converts, how evangelicalism changed from the Great Awakening to the Second Great Awakening, how evangelicals had to adopt their northern sensibilities when the encountered southern planters who had not yet experienced industrialization, and why white males in the South rejected evangelicalism for decades. When evangelical preachers adjusted their doctrines to accommodate southern mores in the national period--especially concerning slavery, women's rights, and masculinity--they were much more successful in gaining converts. Whereas Harry Stout claims that Puritanism forms the basis of Protestantism in 21st-century America, Heyrman claims this laurel for evangelicalism.

[Olivia · Rating 1 out of 5]

My opinion on this book, is the same that one has when they try a new food and discover that they do not enjoy it in the least, wrinkled nose and all. The reason that I was not very fond of this book was the way that it was written. There would be moments when it sounded very narrative, but then suddenly there would be a surge of information that would leave me lost. Resulting in pages being reread at least four or five times. However, this book is important and I can understand why it was assigned to us to read in my American Religion through 1800.
Southern Cross, is an excellent book for showing how religion in the American South sprang in to life, spread, and evolved. Heyrman’s book shows that while today we are left with these conservative religious traditions, they all (or a least a vast majority of them) have their roots in evangelical Protestantism which had very different political and social positions.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Using memoirs and diaries of late 18th and ealy 19th century Methodist and Baptist preachers in the South, Heyman constructs a social history of the introduction of evangelical religion into what is now the Bible Belt. She demonstrates that it was not a simple process, but a complex interaction between the existing culture of the South and these radically new forms of Christianity. Initially largely rejected, particularly by white men, the denominations accommodated themselves, giving up much of what made them radical, to fit into the patriarchal, slave holding society. She ends with a brief discussion of contemporary evangelical religions and Southern society. This is a wonderfully rich history and I had no trouble appreciating why it was awarded the Bancroft pirze.

[Kaylin Verbrugge]

It wasn’t until I read this book that I began to appreciate the brilliance of Dr. Griffith’s syllabus, masterfully crafted. Southern Cross connects Du Mez’s historical presentation of modern evangelicalism with our study of the early revivalist evangelical tradition, tracing how evangelical preachers strategically assimilated their beliefs with southern culture to create what is now known as the “Bible belt.” This class is wild, but so helpful.

[Bob Wheeler]

Excellent work describing the making of the Bible Belt, particularly the resulting religious changes after the Second Great Awakening. Anyone with an interest in the Antebellum South will enjoy this book.

[Denise Ballentine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not light reading, but fascinating in its own way. This is a historical documented record of the development of Evangelical Christian faith in the South.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

It just wasn't nearly as interesting or as engaging as I'd hoped. :(

[Larry Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

written by the most brilliant religion historian living today

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting perspective on evangelicals during the period 1776-1820, especially Baptist and Methodists, along with Presbyterians.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perfect exploration into the development of religion in american slavery

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems like the predominant narrative of American history is quickly becoming "We once had inclusive practices. We once were experimental with how we engaged with each other. Then white men got scared, and we had to step all the way back into the stone age." Such is part of the key trajectory of Heyrman's book, which traces the evolution of evangelical Christianity in the South from the late 18th century into the early-mid 19th century (essentially up into the 1840s). Once Christianity in the United States began to emerge from under the cloud of the Anglican church, the key practices of Baptists and Methodists seemed, at least initially, to engage fully in the particular anxieties and emerging principles of the new republic. Early evangelism didn’t shy away from the emotive power that came with fearing the devil or pursuing salvation, or locating one’s religious experience in full bodily experience. Read from a distance, the practice of speaking in tongues or feeling the spirit pass through you, as it would have been seen at tent revivals and in evangelical congregations, would have been frightening, but powerfully connected to spiritual life. Located at the core of this is the notion that religion was part of lived experience—young ministers hired to pursue younger and larger congregations learned by rotating between communities, by living with congregants, by engaging regularly with the expertise of women, African Americans, and youth culture. Most importantly, evangelists promoted the individual over the family as the source of salvation, that it was up to each and every person to secure their own salvation, even if it meant estranging those around them. These tenets destabilized the fundamental parameters of Southern culture—the patriarchal family model that ruled spiritually and materially over every other actor in the homestead. So over time, Heyrman argues, such practices had to be rolled back to the “traditional” evangelical Christianity that we see today, asserting obedience to one’s father and upholding antiquated mores of sexuality, piety, militaristic dignity and feminine docility. This is a well-argued and well-researched book—my only complaint is that sometimes Heyrman writes so well in the tone of the period she researches that I had trouble actually following her sentence structure. (It is very rich, but very florid, writing, better read slowly and deliberately than in a standard academic model.)

[Jim Gallen · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Southern Cross” is a deeply researched study of the rise of Protestant churches in the American South from Revolutionary times to the approach of the Civil War. The primary denominations examined are Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian.

Chapters address the language, influence of the devil, the changing ages of the clergy and faithful, the role of families, women and religious influences on society as a whole and society’s influence on the churches.

To readers raised in Southern Protestant traditions, this book would provide insight into how those traditions evolved. Being Catholic, this was not my story, but one in which I felt I should have interest to aid in understanding the history and culture of a large region of our country. Author Christine Leigh Heyrman relates her topic to broader history, such as in the observation that opportunities for Baptist, Presbyterian and Methodist sects were opened by the retreat of Anglican clergy to England after the Revolution. I found this work to be a bit tedious at times, while recognizing that, had this documented the development of the Catholic Church in America, I may have hung on every word. I value this as a worthwhile historical study and, for those oriented toward its topic, an edifying and enjoyable read.

[Diane Jeske · Rating 4 out of 5]

How has evangelicalism come to dominate the American South? In the 18th century evangelical preachers condemned slavery and gave voice to the young, women, and Blacks. But by the early 19th century it admitted slave holders into its churches, stopped condemning slavery, reasserted patriarchal prerogatives- over both women and Blacks- and was led by middle-aged married white men rather than by young single itinerants.

Heyrman shows how this change resulted from a competition to attract adherents and the desires of evangelical leaders to appear manly by conventional Southern standards. Within a relatively short time a religious movement that started as a perceived threat to the established social order had become mainstream and a reflection of that social order. And so it has remained to this day.

This is an interesting book and sheds light on how evangelical religion has become such a force in the US, particularly in the South. I did find that it got a bit repetitive, discussing too many sources to make a point. Nonetheless, it’s a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the conservative evangelical movement and its place in US history.

[Danny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well written examination of the elasticity of religion and culture(for good and mostly for ill) in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, specifically looking at the U.S. South.

[Melissa]

Kevin Deyoung