This collection of essays examines religion in the American South across three centuries — from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The first collection published on the subject in fifteen years, Religion in the American South builds upon a new generation of scholarship to push scholarly conversation about the field to a new level of sophistication by complicating “southern religion” geographically, chronologically, and thematically and by challenging the interpretive hegemony of the “Bible belt.”

Contributors demonstrate the importance of religion in the South not only to American religious history but also to the history of the nation as a whole. They show that religion touched every corner of society — from the nightclub to the lynching tree, from the church sanctuary to the kitchen hearth.

These essays will stimulate discussions of a wide variety of subjects, including eighteenth-century religious history, conversion narratives, religion and violence, the cultural power of prayer, the importance of women in exploiting religious contexts in innovative ways, and the interracialism of southern religious history.

Contributors:
Kurt O. Berends, University of Notre Dame
Emily Bingham, Louisville, Kentucky
Anthea D. Butler, Loyola Marymount University
Paul Harvey, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
Jerma Jackson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Lynn Lyerly, Boston College
Donald G. Mathews, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Jon F. Sensbach, University of Florida
Beth Barton Schweiger, University of Arkansas
Daniel Woods, Ferrum College