Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863-1877Both the North and the South viewed the Civil War in Christian terms. Each side believed that its fight was just, that God favored its cause. Rebuilding Zion is the first study to explore simultaneously the reaction of southern white evangelicals, northern white evangelicals, and Christian freedpeople to Confederate defeat. As white southerners struggled to assure themselves that the collapse of the Confederacy was not an indication of God's stern judgment, white northerners and freedpeople were certain that it was. Author Daniel W. Stowell tells the story of the religious reconstruction of the South following the war, a bitter contest between southern and northern evangelicals, at the heart of which was the fate of the freedpeople's souls and the southern effort to maintain a sense of sectional identity. Central to the southern churches' vision of the Civil War was the idea that God had not abandoned the South; defeat was a Father's stern chastisement. Secession and slavery had not been sinful; rather, it was the radicalism of the northern denominations that threatened the purity of the Gospel. Northern evangelicals, armed with a vastly different vision of the meaning of the war and their call to Christian duty, entered the post-war South intending to save white southerner and ex-slave alike. The freedpeople, however, drew their own providential meaning from the war and its outcome. The goal for blacks in the postwar period was to establish churches for themselves separate from the control of their former masters. Stowell plots the conflicts that resulted from these competing visions of the religious reconstruction of the South. By demonstrating how the southern vision eventually came to predominate over, but not eradicate, the northern and freedpeople's visions for the religious life of the South, he shows how the southern churches became one of the principal bulwarks of the New South, a region marked by intense piety and intense racism throughout the twentieth century. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 79
Page 3
... Thomas J. " Stonewall " Jackson , a few of Ohis officers , and several couriers rode beyond Confederate lines to reconnoiter the Federal forces along the Plank Road near Chancellorsville , Virginia . Jackson was planning a night attack ...
... Thomas J. " Stonewall " Jackson , a few of Ohis officers , and several couriers rode beyond Confederate lines to reconnoiter the Federal forces along the Plank Road near Chancellorsville , Virginia . Jackson was planning a night attack ...
Page 4
... Thomas Coleman Chandler at Guiney's Station , ten miles south of Fredericksburg . There he showed signs of recovering from the amputation , but two days later he developed pneumonia . His wife Mary Anna and their infant daughter , Julia ...
... Thomas Coleman Chandler at Guiney's Station , ten miles south of Fredericksburg . There he showed signs of recovering from the amputation , but two days later he developed pneumonia . His wife Mary Anna and their infant daughter , Julia ...
Page 9
... Thomas Hooke McCallie was pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Cleveland , Tennessee , when that state left the Union in May of 1861. Born in eastern Tennessee in 1837 , McCallie's family moved to Chattanooga when he was four years old ...
... Thomas Hooke McCallie was pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Cleveland , Tennessee , when that state left the Union in May of 1861. Born in eastern Tennessee in 1837 , McCallie's family moved to Chattanooga when he was four years old ...
Page 17
... Thomas H. McCallie , who had accepted the pastorate of the Chattanooga Presbyterian Church in January 1862 , preached to a congregation composed of local citizens and Confederate soldiers . On September 9 , Union troops entered ...
... Thomas H. McCallie , who had accepted the pastorate of the Chattanooga Presbyterian Church in January 1862 , preached to a congregation composed of local citizens and Confederate soldiers . On September 9 , Union troops entered ...
Page 20
... Thomas Carlton , the treasurer of the northern Methodist Missionary Society , honored some large drafts for the southern Methodist China mission . This obligation and others left the southern Methodist Foreign Mis- sion Board with ...
... Thomas Carlton , the treasurer of the northern Methodist Missionary Society , honored some large drafts for the southern Methodist China mission . This obligation and others left the southern Methodist Foreign Mis- sion Board with ...
Contents
3 | |
15 | |
The Confederate Understanding of the Civil War | 33 |
The Northern Understanding of the Civil War | 49 |
The Freedpeoples Understanding of the Civil War | 65 |
The Black Quest for Religious Autonomy | 80 |
Denominational Structures | 100 |
Sunday Schools | 114 |
Northern Missionary Efforts in the South | 130 |
Religion and Politics in the Reconstruction South | 146 |
Other editions - View all
Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863-1877 Daniel W. Stowell Limited preview - 2001 |
Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863-1877 Daniel W. Stowell Limited preview - 2001 |
Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863-1877 Daniel W. Stowell Limited preview - 1998 |
Common terms and phrases
ABHMS Alabama AME Church AMEZ Annual Conference MECS antebellum April armies Assembly Atlanta August Baptist Association Baptist Church Baton Rouge Bishop black Baptist black churches black members Brownlow Caldwell Chattanooga Christian Index Civil CME Church College colored committee Confederacy Confederate congregations Cumberland Presbyterian declared Emory Freedmen's freedpeople George Foster Pierce Georgia Annual Conference Georgia Baptist Convention Georgia Conference God's Henry McNeal Turner History Holsey James John Knoxville Louisiana State University Macon McCallie membership Memphis Mercer University Methodist Episcopal Church Minutes Nashville Negro North Carolina Northern and Southern northern black northern denominations northern missionaries organized pastor PCUSA political preach preachers Presbyterian Church quotation Religion religious reconstruction religious scalawags reunion secession slavery slaves South Southern Baptist Convention Southern Baptists southern churches southern evangelicals Southern Presbyterian southern white Sunday school Tennessee Baptist Convention Thomas tion Turner Union United University of Georgia University Press white southerners wrote York Zion
Popular passages
Page 40 - My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.
Page 65 - And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call.
Page 179 - Then said I unto them, Ye see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire : come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach.
Page 186 - Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.
Page 15 - And the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee : for in My wrath I smote thee, but in My favour have I had mercy on thee.
Page 114 - Walk about Zion, and go round about her : Tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, Consider her palaces ; That ye may tell it to the generation following : For this God is our God for ever and ever : He will be our guide even unto death.
Page 3 - THE righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: And merciful men are taken away, none considering That the righteous is taken away from the evil to come.
Page 49 - For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
Page 130 - God; to comfort all that mourn; To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.
Page 70 - For the king of the north shall return, and shall set forth a multitude greater than the former, and shall certainly come after certain years with a great army and with much riches.