Strangers and Friends at the Welcome Table
Contemporary Christianities in the American South
James Hudnut-Beumler
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 03/2018
Pages: 288
Subject: Religion, History
| University of North Carolina
Print ISBN: 9781469640372
eBook ISBN: 9781469640389
DESCRIPTION
True, outside of a few spots, no non-Christian group forms more than six-tenths of one percent of a state's population in what Hudnut-Beumler calls the Now South. Drilling deeper, however, he discovers an unexpected, blossoming diversity in theology, practice, and outlook among southern Christians. He finds, alongside traditional Baptists, black and white, growing numbers of Christians exemplifying changes that no one could have predicted even just forty years ago, from congregations of LGBT-supportive evangelicals and Spanish-language church services to a Christian homeschooling movement so robust in some places that it may rival public education in terms of acceptance. He also finds sharp struggles and political divisions among those trying to reconcile such Christian values as morality and forgiveness—the aftermath of the mass shooting at Charleston's Emanuel A.M.E. Church in 2015 forming just one example. This book makes clear that understanding the twenty-first-century South means recognizing many kinds of southern Christianities.