The Sacred Mirror
Evangelicalism, Honor, and Identity in the Deep South, 1790-1860
Robert Elder
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 03/2016
Pages: 288
Subject: Religion, History
| University of North Carolina
Print ISBN: 9780000000000
eBook ISBN: 9781469627588
DESCRIPTION
Most histories of the American South describe the conflict between
evangelical religion and honor culture as one of the defining
features of southern life before the Civil War. The story is
usually told as a battle of clashing worldviews, but in this book,
Robert Elder challenges this interpretation by illuminating just
how deeply evangelicalism in Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian
churches was interwoven with traditional southern culture, arguing
that evangelicals owed much of their success to their ability to
appeal to people steeped in southern honor culture. Previous
accounts of the rise of evangelicalism in the South have told this
tale as a tragedy in which evangelicals eventually adopted many of
the central tenets of southern society in order to win souls and
garner influence. But through an examination of evangelical
language and practices, Elder shows that evangelicals always shared
honor's most basic assumptions.
Making use of original sources such as diaries, correspondence,
periodicals, and church records, Elder recasts the relationship
between evangelicalism and secular honor in the South, proving the
two concepts are connected in much deeper ways than have ever been
previously understood.