Southern Religion

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Southern Religion

Southern religion is a distinctive cultural religious system that emerged as a result of various historical, demographic, political, and religious developments in the southeastern region of the United States. Although a multitude of new religious communities found a home in this area in the last decades of the twentieth century, a specific religious ethos, linked primarily to evangelical Christianity, developed over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and has continued to shape the cultural landscape into the twenty-first. Just as other regions have exhibited fairly homogeneous cultural forms—the Puritans in New England the Mormons in and around the Salt Lake Basin, and the Lutherans in the upper Midwest—the power of southern religion depends on a vast majority of like-minded people from the same region agreeing on certain key values, meanings, and practices.

More than any other region of the United States, however, matters of race and church intermingled in the production of a peculiar religious identity. Indeed, the dividing lines between black and white contributed to the texture and tenor of southern religion, and the difficult task of maintaining boundaries helped determine many crucial ritual patterns and theological positions. Despite the very urgent concern with race relations and communal standards of conduct, at its core southern religion relies on strong, personal pieties and commitments that keep the individual securely wedded to a southern identity.

Historically, the contours of this religious system are fairly easy to trace. Although forged during a period of rapid denominational change, the evolution of a southern religion was not solely dependent on church affiliation. In other words, southern religion is not simply confined by doctrine and denomination but, as an example of a cultural religion, is the product of religious sensibilities spilling over into the larger social ecology of the South. For this reason it is essential to briefly describe the history and distinctive flavor of the key religious tradition that came to dominate the region: evangelical Protestantism.

Before evangelicalism swept through the region in the early nineteenth century, Christian explorers and settlers, as well as African slaves, were in the process of transforming the religious landscape. In the sixteenth century Catholic missionaries from Spain and France encountered—and looked for ways to destroy—indigenous religious cultures. Accompanying soldiers and explorers, missionaries brought a Christian message to the Calusa, Timucuans, Apalachee, and a variety of other native groups. This message of civilization and salvation made an impression on the local populations—in its name entire communities were chased out of their homes or wiped out, and religious expression of indigenous views became a mortal danger. In the wake of these changes, a radically new structure appeared, permanently transforming the religious environment: the Church.

In the colonial era the established Church of England attempted to dominate the religious culture of settlers, slaves and freed Africans, and native peoples in the region. During this period Anglicanism primarily served the upper classes and never gained a foothold in other communities. The ascendency of Christianity, however, was not threatened by the failures of Anglican leaders. Indeed, Christian principles were expressed by deists in government, backcountry Presbyterian ministers, and converted African slaves. After the Revolution and a perceived period of religious decline, however, the soil was ripe for spreading a distinctive Christian message, especially to the margins of southern society: poor, often isolated white families, blacks suffering under the weight of slavery, Indians whose lives were being turned upside down, and others trying to makes sense of life in the New World.

An evangelical hegemony emerged in the South in the antebellum period, thanks in large part to the enormous successes of Baptists and Methodists. Sparked by a series of revival meetings in the early nineteenth century, evangelicals developed methods to reach out across class lines and the racial divide and bring the individual, emotional experience of salvation to the forefront of religious life. The dedication, mobility, and unpretentious backgrounds of many evangelical preachers looking to save individual souls won over the majority of southerners in towns and villages throughout the region; their emphasis on a personal, saving relationship with Jesus Christ, however, did not weaken the collective commitment to maintaining a cruel social order based on slavery. The persuasive—and pliable—power of the evangelical message also spread among slaves as well, who not only reshaped it to fit their own circumstances but also influenced its expression in white churches.

The Civil War marks an important turning point in the history of southern religion. On the one hand, the denominational makeup of the United States changed dramatically, with southern and northern Protestant churches breaking apart over the slavery question. Reconciliation between churches occurred after the war, except for the Southern Baptists, whose enduring presence in the South remains a key component of southern religion. On the other hand, evangelicalism acted as an unofficial "state" religion for secession-minded southerners. Indeed, it permeated the cultural and political landscape of the Confederacy, overflowing the denominational boundaries that separated Methodist from Baptist or Presbyterian from Disciples of Christ; the class boundaries that separated poor white laborers from plantation-owning slaveholders; and gender boundaries separating men from women. Most important, it provided religious legitimacy to a peculiar southern identity that flourished in the aftermath of defeat. Southerners relied on evangelical language and rituals to make sense of their loss, transcend the morally destructive forces confronting them, and reaffirm their special place in the cosmos.

From the end of the nineteenth century to the 1960s, evangelicals, and particularly Southern Baptists, continued to dominate the social scene in the southern states, even though internal changes and diversification emerged as a result of class divisions, theological debate, and the development of separate black churches. Throughout the region individual and public morality, the centrality of the family in social life, and commitment to orthodox Protestant principles all were stimulated by the culturally entrenched evangelical ethos. In addition, the ongoing process of remembering the war proved to be a critical ingredient in the cultural religion emerging in the South. For whites, Confederate ideals were commemorated in a variety of rituals and sacred myths that grounded personal and collective identity in a distinctly southern system of meaning. For blacks, on the other hand, the Confederate defeat signaled the promise of America fulfilling its enshrined ideals of liberty, democracy, and justice and placed a special burden on southern African Americans to help achieve this goal.

Despite vast differences in interpretation, the meanings established for the Civil War heightened regional identification and, combined with shared evangelical views, solidified the central position of southern religion in the South. The coherence and stability of southern religion can be attributed to the fairly uniform beliefs and practices that emerged as a result of these historical developments and established a popular religious system that undergirds the strong commitments southerners have to their regional identity. Some of the key components of this religious system are that literal truth is contained in the Bible, which is the foundation for living a good Christian life; that a personal relationship with God is available to every human; that individual morality in conformity with Christian values is the basis for ensuring social order, though black evangelicals tempered individualistic tendencies by foregrounding congregational life; that baptism is a crucial life experience, indicating a symbolic death and rebirth into the Christian community; that spreading the message and converting lost souls is a top priority; that the family and the church are two sacred institutions that mediate private faithfulness and public behavior; and that external forces that threaten social stability must be met with righteous, Christ-centered actions.

From the 1960s to the closing decades of the twentieth century, southern religion continued to dominate the region. The rise of the religious right, the growing influence of fundamentalism, the election of Jimmy Carter, the popularization of the term born-again, the notoriety of southern televangelists—all brought attention to the peculiarity of the religious South and the conservative flavor of southern religion. The fact that southerners go to church more often than nonsoutherners, are more solidly evangelical in their theology, and tend to believe that religion is the primary answer to the ills of American society reinforces the notion that a cultural religious system outside denominational lines is a great source of meaning in everyday life.

On the other hand, it is important to note that southern religion is no longer contained within the confines of the South. Many have argued that, with the increasing national prominence of evangelicalism and the movement of southerners out of the region in the 1970s and 1980s, a process identified as the "southernization" of American religion and culture was taking place. If indeed southern religion is spreading beyond the bounds of the southern United States and helping to mold a national cultural religion, the priority of identifying with the South and its history may be diminishing as an important characteristic of this religious system.

Additionally, just as southerners have exported a particular cultural religion to the rest of the nation, the last few decades of the century have witnessed the importation of a variety of religious traditions into the region. Although Jewish and Catholic communities have played an important role in the history of religious life in the South, a new religious diversity is radically changing the landscape. The reasons for this diversification are numerous but include increased attention to and experimentation with alternative religious systems outside of Christianity in some of the larger cities; substantial economic growth in certain regions of the South that have attracted job seekers from around the nation; and a surge in the number of immigrants from other countries who have made the South their new home. These recent religious communities are being shaped by and have to respond to the reigning southern religion they encounter in their neighborhoods and places of business. The real question that has not yet been answered is, how will the presence of these diverse religious communities affect southern religion?