Religion
Religion in the South has long played a seminal role in the cultures of the region. Below are our last two decades' essays and features on religion and related topics. Please follow the links for easy access to any and all of this material through the Project Muse digital library. Our most recently published essays and features also are available for Kindle and Nook for only $0.99, where indicated below. We open with material we've just posted here for the first time.
"God First, You Second, Me Third"
An Exploration of "Quiet Jewishness" at Camp Wah-Kon-Dah
by Marcie Cohen Ferris
"This was an anxious time for American Jews, stung by the anti-Semitic quotas and discrimination of the interwar years and the growing horror regarding the fate of European Jewry as the Holocaust came to light in the 1940s."
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Southern Cultures, Volume 18, Number 1, Spring 2012
"For the Scrutiny of Science and the Light of Revelation"
American Blood Falls
by Tom Maxwell
"Showers of blood, however dreadful, were not news. Pliny, Cicero, Livy, and Plutarch mentioned rains of blood and flesh. Zeus makes it rain blood, ‘as a portent of slaughter,' in Homer's Iliad."
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Southern Cultures, Volume 18, Number 1, Spring 2012
Voices from the Southern Oral History Program
Mountain Feminist:
Helen Matthews Lewis, Appalachian Studies, and the Long Women's Movement
from an interview by Jessica Wilkerson
compiled and introduced by Jessica Wilkerson and David P. Cline
"They didn't take us to jail. They pulled us out individually, and the policeman said to me, ‘What would your daddy think if he saw you dancing with a nigger?'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 17, Number 3, Fall 2011: Memory
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Tara, the O'Haras, and the Irish Gone With the Wind
by Geraldine Higgins
"Mitchell cast the O'Haras as Catholic landowners in a time of predominantly Presbyterian or Scots-Irish emigration to the South. She did this both to reflect her own family history (her ancestors on both sides were Catholic) and to deploy the practices of Catholicism as a theme in the text."
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Southern Cultures, Volume 17, Number 1, Spring 2011: The Irish
Another "Lost Cause"
The Irish in the South Remember the Confederacy
by David Gleeson
"As there had been only two prominent Irish generals, and only one, Cleburne, had had a very distinguished record, the story of the common soldier was the story of the Irish Confederate. Although Cleburne was an Anglican, many Irish Catholics in the South saw him as one of their own."
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Southern Cultures, Volume 17, Number 1, Spring 2011: The Irish
Smoke 'n' Guns
A Preface to a Poem about Marginal Souths, and then the Poem
by Conor O'Callaghan
"Addressing a jubilant crowd in Belfast shortly after the declaration of the original ceasefire in 1993, Gerry Adams reminded his audience that ‘they haven't gone away, you know.' He meant that even as ‘the cause' was dwindling, its upholders-‘the boys'-were still among us. He might just as easily have been talking about the Klan."
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Southern Cultures, Volume 17, Number 1, Spring 2011: The Irish
Home of the Double-Headed Eagle
The Visionary Vernacular Architecture of Reverend H. D. Dennis and Margaret Dennis
by Ali Colleen Neff
"In the deep peripheral ravines settled by the descendants of local sharecroppers, The Home of the Double-Headed Eagle shoots up from a long row of kudzu-covered shotgun shacks and cracked pavement to entangle passersby."
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Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 4, Winter 2010
Just As I Am Not: A Poet Visits the Billy Graham Library
by Michael McFee
“Do they keep an eye out for the possible wayward soul (like, say, a middle-aged guy with scraggly graying hair who stays at the margins of the group and keeps scribbling in a little black book) and hope—no, pray—that the cheerful performance of their duties and the powerful unfolding of Billy Graham’s life and message might lead this poor lost person to accept Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior?”
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Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 2, Summer 2010: Southern Lives
Steven P. Miller
Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South (review)
reviewed by Stephen J. Whitfield
“In 1953, Graham removed the ropes separating black and white attendees at his crusade in Chattanooga, and asserted that, were segregated seating restored, “you can go on and have the revival without me.” His sympathies were with those white moderates who acknowledged the inevitability of racial equality but did not feel its urgency.”
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Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 1, Spring 2010: Southern Lives
Keeping Sin From Sacred Spaces: Southern Evangelicals and the Socio-Legal Control of Alcohol, 1865–1915
by Michael Lewis
“‘Alcohol undermines the health, enfeebles the will, makes the mind coarse and the tongue vulgar, brings discord to the family, deprives children of their rights, lowers the standard of morals, corrupts politics, fills prisons and asylums with human wrecks, mocks religion and ruins immortal souls.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 2, Summer 2009
On Being Asked to Pray for a Van and Snapper
poetry by Michael Chitwood
“It’s a kind of monster,
cobbled from parts of other creatures—”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 2, Summer 2009
Gordon Harvey, Richard Starnes, and Glenn Feldman, editors
History and Hope in the Heart of Dixie:
Scholarship, Activism, and Wayne Flynt (review)
reviewed by Charles W. Eagles
"As a scholar and as a Christian, Flynt advocated reform of Alabama’s regressive tax system, helped found Alabama Citizens for Constitutional Reform, supported better and equal funding for public schools, served on the board of directors of the Alabama Poverty Project, and spoke out against powerful special interests."
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2009
The “Golden” Era of Civil Rights:
Consequences of The Carolina Israelite
by Stephen J. Whitfield
Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 3, Fall 2008: Civil Rights
Wendy Reed and Jennifer Horne, Editors
All Out of Faith: Southern Women on Spirituality (review)
reviewed by Barbara Brown Taylor
"'Every Southerner has been shaped by religion in some form or fashion.'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 2008
Marcie Cohen Ferris Mark I. Greenberg, Editors
Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History (review)
reviewed by Leonard Rogoff
"'The study of southern Jewish life has now come of age.'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 2008
"Just a Little Talk with Jesus": Elvis Presley, Religious Music, and Southern Spirituality
by Charles Reagan Wilson
"Presley faced criticism from ministers about his lewd performances."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 4, Winter 2006: Music I
"A Blessing to People": Dorsey Dixon and His Sacred Mission of Song
by Patrick Huber
"Songwriter and singer Dorsey Dixon was never supposed to live."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 4, Winter 2006: Music I
Paul Harvey
Freedom's Coming
Religious Culture and the Shaping of the South from the Civil War through the Civil Rights Era, (review)
reviewed by Matt J. Zacharias Harper
"If you think you understand how religion and race work in the South, then obviously no one has explained it to you properly."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 3, Fall 2006
Marcie Cohen Ferris
Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South (review)
reviewed by Dale Volberg Reed
"Take Jewish studies and southern studies, add study of southern foodways, throw in oral history, and you getMatzoh Ball Gumbo, the book Marcie Ferris was born to write."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 3, Fall 2006
Andrew Burstein
Jefferson's Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello (review)
reviewed by Kristofer Ray
"Jefferson certainly cared for Hemings, argues Burstein, much as an English nobleman cared for an employee mistress—but they did not (and could not) share a long-term, loving partnership."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 2, Summer 2006: Tobacco
Robert F. Pace
Halls of Honor: College Men in the Old South (review)
reviewed by Peter S. Carmichael
"These young men, facing an unpredictable future, were wrought with anxiety and desperate for their families and friends to see them as men."
Southern Cultures, Volume 11, Number 3, Fall 2005
Praying with George Herbert in Late Winter
poetry by Tom Andrews
“Outside, light swarms
and particularizes the snow …”
Southern Cultures, Volume 11, Number 2, Summer 2005
Jazz Funeral: A Living Tradition
by Angelo P. Coclanis and Peter A. Coclanis
“On a sweaty Saturday morning in late October 2004, a jazz funeral was held in New Orleans. Lloyd Washington had performed off and on in the postwar period in one of the many groups known as the Ink Spots that grew out of the original 1930s group of that name.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 11, Number 2, Summer 2005
Michael O’Brien
Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860 (review)
reviewed by Paul D. H. Quigley
"If all of this proves anything, it is that there was no one 'mind of the South.'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 11, Number 2, Summer 2005
William F. Powers
Tar Heel Catholics (review)
reviewed by John Quinterno
“John Monk, a physician from Newton Grove, converted to Catholicism after receiving a package of medical supplies wrapped in a copy of a sermon given by the Archbishop of New York, and went on to become the state’s most effective evangelist.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 4, Winter 2004
King Solomon’s Dilemma—and the Confederacy’s
by Eugene D. Genovese
“If southerners did not live up to Christian standards in their daily lives and, in particular, bring slavery up to Abramic standards, they warned, a wrathful God would use the heathen Yankees, as He had used heathens of yore, to smite his Chosen People.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 4, Winter 2004
A Cajun Traiteur: Faith Healing on the Bayou
by Karen Yochim
“In southwestern Louisiana, where the slow running, gumbo-colored bayous and the incredibly wide-spreading mythical oaks mingle with the soft, sultry air to protect and comfort the spirit, it’s easy to believe in faith healing.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 4, Winter 2004
"Fighting Whiskey and Immorality" at Auburn: The Politics of Southern Football, 1919-1927
by Andrew Doyle
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 3, Fall 2004
Feeding the Jewish Soul in the Delta Diaspora
by Marcie Cohen Ferris
“Throughout the nation food strongly defines ethnic and regional identity. But in the South, and especially in the Delta, a region scarred by war, slavery, and the aftermath of reconstruction and segregation, food is especially important.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 3, Fall 2004
Aspiration and Varieties of Religious Experience
poetry by Lynn Powell
“I saw God, my son once told me. He lives in a field of snow.
What could you see? Just snow. And footprints.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 2, Summer 2004
James R. Goff Jr.
Close Harmony: A History of Southern Gospel (review)
reviewed by James Parrish
“Southern gospel is as important to America’s musical and cultural heritage as are jazz, blues, and country.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 2004
"All Wrought Up”: The Apocalyptic South of McKendree Robbins Long
by Lee Smith and Hal Crowther
with a poem by Robert Hill Long
“We often had dates for the revival, since there wasn’t anything else to do in that town, or anyplace else to go, and that oftentimes your date would be holding your hand while you both got all wrought up together. So there was a sexual thing going on there, too.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 2004
"Lord, Have Mercy on my Soul": Sin, Salvation, and Southern Rock
by J. Michael Butler
"The band delighted in sharing their bottle of Jack Daniels with a chimpanzee."
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 4, Winter 2003
To the Land I Am Bound: A Journey into Sacred Harp
by David Carlton
“As I found myself climbing over clay and gravel, negotiating switchbacks and sudden steep upgrades, I found myself thanking God for the weather and myself for my brand new transmission."
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 2, Summer 2003
Quoting, Merging, and Sampling the Dream:
Martin Luther King and Vernon Johns
by Ralph Luker
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 2, Summer 2003
Randy J. Sparks
Religion in Mississippi (review)
reviewed by David Edwin Harrell
“‘Attacked by right-wing segregationists for being too liberal and almost equally denounced by their coreligionists outside the region for being too conservative, white religious leaders across the state were virtually paralyzed.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 1, Spring 2003
Clive Webb
Fight Against Fear: Southern Jews and Black Civil Rights (review)
reviewed by Eliza R. L. McGraw
“‘There is only one word to describe their madness—Godlessness.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 4, Winter 2002: Ghosts
The Dulcet Tones of Christian Disputation in the Democratic Up-Country
by Eugene D. Genovese
“Brownlow was ‘a Methodist preacher, who once preached with a pistol and a bowie-knife on the Bible before him . . . . ready to gouge any fellow creature.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 4, Winter 2002: Ghosts
“God Giveth the Increase”:
Lurline Stokes Murray’s Narrative of Farming and Faith
by Lu Ann Jones
“‘Honey, in our way of life, there ain’t no banker’s hours, and I don’t find in the Bible there’s no such thing as an eight-hour day.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 3, Fall 2002: Biography
Our Lady of Guadeloupe Visits the Confederate Memorial
by Thomas A. Tweed
“Some observers have trumpeted the South as the last stronghold of faithful Christian witness; H.L. Mencken dismissed it as ‘the bunghole of the United States, a cesspool of Baptists, a miasma of Methodism, snake-charmers, phony real-estate operators, and syphilitic evangelists.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 2002
Driving Miss Daisy:
Southern Jewishness on the Big Screen
by Eliza Russi Lowen McGraw
“‘Now, Miss Daisy, somebody done bomb that temple back yonder, and you know it.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 7, Number 2, Summer 2001
The Raney Controversy: Clyde Edgerton's Fight for Creative Freedom
by George Hovis
“‘There were a lot of people who supported Clyde, but they just did not feel comfortable voicing any kind of support. There was this element of fear.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 7, Number 2, Summer 2001
An Episcopalian Imagination
by Michael O’Brien
“It is the illusion of his style that Reed is a sort of good old boy, sitting on his porch, swigging his whiskey, going out the back to shoot hapless mammals.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 7, Number 1, Spring 2001: Reed
Eugene Genovese's
A Consuming Fire
The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South
reviewed by Annette Laing
"Poor God. He must find it thoroughly tiresome to be constantly called upon to endorse all sorts of peculiar causes."
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 3, Fall 2000
Kenneth Moore Startup's
The Root of All Evil
The Protestant Clergy and the Economic Mind of the Old South
reviewed by Robert M. Calhoon
"‘Nothing can be more mortifying and grieving to a man than to select out some of his Negroes to be sold.'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 3, Fall 2000
Tracy Elaine K'Meyer's
Interracialism and Christian Community in the Postwar South: The Story of Koinonia Farm
reviewed by W. Fitzhugh Brundage
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 1, Spring 1999
Olmsted's Cracker Preacher
by Eugene D. Genovese
The author recounts an outsider's views of backcountry religion in the Old South.
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 2, Fall 1998
Christine Leigh Heyrman's
Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt
reviewed by Gaines M. Foster
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 2, Fall 1998
Vernon Chadwick, editor
In Search of Elvis: Music, Race, Art, and Religion
reviewed by William McCranor Henderson
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 1998
David T. Morgan's
The New Crusades, the New Holy Land: Conflict in the Southern Baptist Convention, 1969-1991
reviewed by James L. Peacock
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 1998
Mule Train: A Thirty-Year Perspective on the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's Poor People's Campaign of 1968
photography by Roland L. Freeman
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 1998
Margaret Earley Whitt's
Understanding Flannery O'Connor
Ted R. Spivey's
Flannery O'Connor: The Woman, the Thinker, the Visionary
Joanne Halleran McMullen's
Writing against God: Language as Message in the Literature of Flannery O'Connor
reviewed by Rachel V. Mills
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Number 4, Winter 1997
Samuel S. Hill's
One Name but Several Faces: Variety in Popular Christian Denominations in Southern History
reviewed by Kathleen Joyce
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Number 3, Fall 1997
The Resurrection of Christ
by David Sedaris
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Number 2, Summer 1997: Writers on Art
Sense of Place: Blacks, Jews, and White Gentiles in the American South
by David Goldfield
Though their relationship with the South has often been ambiguous, Jews have made a home for themselves in the region.
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 1997
The Sanctified South: John Lakin Brasher and the Holiness Movement
by J. Lawrence Brasher
reviewed by Donald G. Mathews
Southern Cultures, Volume 2, Number 1, Fall 1995
Saturday Night in Country Music: The Gospel According to Juke
by Stephen A. Smith and Jimmie N. Rogers
Southern Cultures, Volume 1, Number 2, Winter 1995
Southern Baptists Observed: Multiple Perspectives on a Changing Denomination
by Nancy Tatom Ammerman, editor
reviewed by Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp
Southern Cultures, Volume 1, Number 2, Winter 1995
The Airwaves of Zion: Radio and Religion in Appalachia
by Howard Dorgan
reviewed by Ben Steelman
Southern Cultures, Volume 1, Number 4, Summer 1995: Humor
The Old Ship of Zion: The Afro-Baptist Ritual in the African Diaspora
by Walter F. Pitts
reviewed by Jerrilyn McGregory
Southern Cultures, Volume 1, Number 3, Spring 1995