Religion In Mississippi

Author : Randy J. Sparks
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 9781617035807
Total Pages : 412 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Religion in Mississippi written by Randy J. Sparks and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2011-09-23 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1600s Colonial French settlers brought Christianity into the lands that are now the state of Mississippi. Throughout the period of French rule and the period of Spanish dominion that followed, Roman Catholicism remained the principal religion. By the time that statehood was achieved in 1817, Mississippi was attracting Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and other Protestant evangelical faiths at a remarkable pace, and by the twentieth century, religion in Mississippi was dominantly Protestant and evangelical. In this book, Randy J. Sparks traces the roots of evangelical Christianity in the state and shows how the evangelicals became a force of cultural revolution. They embraced the poorer segments of society, welcomed high populations of both women and African Americans, and deeply influenced ritual and belief in the state's vision of Christianity. In the 1830s as the Mississippi economy boomed, so did evangelicalism. As Protestant faiths became wedded to patriarchal standards, slaveholding, and southern political tradition, seeds were sown for the war that would erupt three decades later. Until Reconstruction many Mississippi churches comprised biracial congregations and featured women in prominent roles, but as the Civil War and the racial split cooled the evangelicals' liberal fervor and drastically changed the democratic character of their religion into arch-conservatism, a strong but separate black church emerged. As dominance by Protestant conservatives solidified, Jews, Catholics, and Mormons struggled to retain their religious identities while conforming to standards set by white Protestant society. As Sparks explores the dissonance between the state's powerful evangelical voice and Mississippi's social and cultural mores, he reveals the striking irony of faith and society in conflict. By the time of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, religion, formerly a liberal force, had become one of the leading proponents of segregation, gender inequality, and ethnic animosity among whites in the Magnolia State. Among blacks, however, the churches were bastions of racial pride and resistance to the forces of oppression.

Author : Michael Pasquier
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253008034
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Gods of the Mississippi written by Michael Pasquier and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-27 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the colonial period to the present, the Mississippi River has impacted religious communities from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. Exploring the religious landscape along the 2,530 miles of the largest river system in North America, the essays in Gods of the Mississippi make a compelling case for American religion in motion—not just from east to west, but also from north to south. With discussion of topics such as the religions of the Black Atlantic, religion and empire, antebellum religious movements, the Mormons at Nauvoo, black religion in the delta, Catholicism in the Deep South, and Johnny Cash and religion, this volume contributes to a richer understanding of this diverse, dynamic, and fluid religious world.

Author : Carolyn Renée Dupont
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 0814708412
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Mississippi Praying written by Carolyn Renée Dupont and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2013-08-23 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mississippi Praying examines the faith communities at ground-zero of the racial revolution that rocked America. This religious history of white Mississippians in the civil rights era shows how Mississippians’ intense religious commitments played critical, rather than incidental, roles in their response to the movement for black equality. During the civil rights movement and since, it has perplexed many Americans that unabashedly Christian Mississippi could also unapologetically oppress its black population. Yet, as Carolyn Renée Dupont richly details, white southerners’ evangelical religion gave them no conceptual tools for understanding segregation as a moral evil, and many believed that God had ordained the racial hierarchy. Challenging previous scholarship that depicts southern religious support for segregation as weak, Dupont shows how people of faith in Mississippi rejected the religious argument for black equality and actively supported the effort to thwart the civil rights movement. At the same time, faith motivated a small number of white Mississippians to challenge the methods and tactics of do-or-die segregationists. Racial turmoil profoundly destabilized Mississippi’s religious communities and turned them into battlegrounds over the issue of black equality. Though Mississippi’s evangelicals lost the battle to preserve segregation, they won important struggles to preserve the theology that had sustained the racial hierarchy. Ultimately, this history sheds light on the eventual rise of the religious right by elaborating the connections between the pre- and post-civil rights South. Carolyn Renée Dupont is Assistant Professor of History at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, KY.

Author : Joseph T. Reiff
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0190246812
Total Pages : 409 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Born of Conviction written by Joseph T. Reiff and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2016 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In 1963 ... 28 native-born Mississippi Methodist ministers signed a formal declaration decrying the racism that made Mississippi the poster child of white supremacy. This powerful monograph by Reiff (religion, Emory and Henry College) contextualizes the declaration in the world of Mississippi's white Methodism, dominated by ministerial conservative Willard Leggett and segregationist John Satterfield. Reiff follows the 28 signatories, some of whom were forced to abandon the pulpits, some of whom chose exodus, and some of whom stayed behind. He explores the significance of the "Born of Conviction" statement as a prophetic challenge to the closed society of 1960s Mississippi, especially its power to shape Mississippi Methodism's evolving but incomplete struggle to overcome racism. ... This monograph adds to the literature about civil rights era Methodists, highlighting the role of racial moderates and their struggles to live out the dictates of their faith in a society ravaged by its tragic history"--Choice Reviews.

Author : Frank Newport
Publisher : Grand Central Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0759511764
Total Pages : 205 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Polling Matters written by Frank Newport and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2004-07-30 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From The Gallup Organization-the most respected source on the subject-comes a fascinating look at the importance of measuring public opinion in modern society. For years, public-opinion polls have been a valuable tool for gauging the positions of American citizens on a wide variety of topics. Polling applies scientific principles to understanding and anticipating the insights, emotions, and attitudes of society. Now in POLLING MATTERS: Why Leaders Must Listen to the Wisdom of the People, The Gallup Organization reveals: What polls really are and how they are conducted Why the information polls provide is so vitally important to modern society today How this valuable information can be used more effectively and more...

Author : Darren E. Grem
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496820487
Total Pages : 162 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Southern Religion, Southern Culture written by Darren E. Grem and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2018-12-18 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributions by Ryan L. Fletcher, Darren E. Grem, Paul Harvey, Alicia Jackson, Ted Ownby, Otis W. Pickett, Arthur Remillard, Chad Seales, and Randall J. Stephens Over more than three decades of teaching at the University of Mississippi, Charles Reagan Wilson’s research and writing transformed southern studies in key ways. This volume pays tribute to and extends Wilson’s seminal work on southern religion and culture. Using certain episodes and moments in southern religious history, the essays examine the place and power of religion in southern communities and society. It emulates Wilson’s model, featuring both majority and minority voices from archives and applying a variety of methods to explain the South’s religious diversity and how religion mattered in many arenas of private and public life, often with life-or-death stakes. The volume first concentrates on churches and ministers, and then considers religious and cultural constructions outside formal religious bodies and institutions. It examines the faiths expressed via the region’s fields, streets, homes, public squares, recreational venues, roadsides, and stages. In doing so, this book shows that Wilson’s groundbreaking work on religion is an essential part of southern studies and crucial for fostering deeper understanding of the South’s complicated history and culture.

Author : Michael Pasquier
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253008085
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Gods of the Mississippi written by Michael Pasquier and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-27 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the colonial period to the present, the Mississippi River has impacted religious communities from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. Exploring the religious landscape along the 2,530 miles of the largest river system in North America, the essays in Gods of the Mississippi make a compelling case for American religion in motion—not just from east to west, but also from north to south. With discussion of topics such as the religions of the Black Atlantic, religion and empire, antebellum religious movements, the Mormons at Nauvoo, black religion in the delta, Catholicism in the Deep South, and Johnny Cash and religion, this volume contributes to a richer understanding of this diverse, dynamic, and fluid religious world.

Author : Charles Marsh
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691266352
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book God's Long Summer written by Charles Marsh and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-08-06 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 1964, the turmoil of the civil rights movement reached its peak in Mississippi, with activists across the political spectrum claiming that God was on their side in the struggle over racial justice. This was the summer when violence against blacks increased at an alarming rate and when the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi resulted in national media attention. Charles Marsh takes us back to this place and time, when the lives of activists on all sides of the civil rights issue converged and their images of God clashed. He weaves their voices into a gripping narrative: a Ku Klux Klansman, for example, borrows fiery language from the Bible to link attacks on blacks to his "priestly calling"; a middle-aged woman describes how the Gospel inspired her to rally other African Americans to fight peacefully for their dignity; a SNCC worker tells of harrowing encounters with angry white mobs and his pilgrimage toward a new racial spirituality called Black Power. Through these emotionally charged stories, Marsh invites us to consider the civil rights movement anew, in terms of religion as a powerful yet protean force driving social action. The book's central figures are Fannie Lou Hamer, who "worked for Jesus" in civil rights activism; Sam Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi; William Douglas Hudgins, an influential white Baptist pastor and unofficial theologian of the "closed society"; Ed King, a white Methodist minister and Mississippi native who campaigned to integrate Protestant congregations; and Cleveland Sellers, a SNCC staff member turned black militant. Marsh focuses on the events and religious convictions that led each person into the political upheaval of 1964. He presents an unforgettable American social landscape, one that is by turns shameful and inspiring. In conclusion, Marsh suggests that it may be possible to sift among these narratives and lay the groundwork for a new thinking about racial reconciliation and the beloved community. He maintains that the person who embraces faith's life-affirming energies will leave behind a most powerful legacy of social activism and compassion.

Author : Elizabeth L. Jemison
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469659700
Total Pages : 243 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Christian Citizens written by Elizabeth L. Jemison and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2020-10-07 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With emancipation, a long battle for equal citizenship began. Bringing together the histories of religion, race, and the South, Elizabeth L. Jemison shows how southerners, black and white, drew on biblical narratives as the basis for very different political imaginaries during and after Reconstruction. Focusing on everyday Protestants in the Mississippi River Valley, Jemison scours their biblical thinking and religious attitudes toward race. She argues that the evangelical groups that dominated this portion of the South shaped contesting visions of black and white rights. Black evangelicals saw the argument for their identities as Christians and as fully endowed citizens supported by their readings of both the Bible and U.S. law. The Bible, as they saw it, prohibited racial hierarchy, and Amendments 13, 14, and 15 advanced equal rights. Countering this, white evangelicals continued to emphasize a hierarchical paternalistic order that, shorn of earlier justifications for placing whites in charge of blacks, now fell into the defense of an increasingly violent white supremacist social order. They defined aspects of Christian identity so as to suppress black equality—even praying, as Jemison documents, for wisdom in how to deny voting rights to blacks. This religious culture has played into remarkably long-lasting patterns of inequality and segregation.

Author : Mark Newman
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820340200
Total Pages : 373 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Divine Agitators written by Mark Newman and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The National Council of Churches established the Delta Ministry in 1964 to further the cause of civil rights in Mississippi--the southern state with the largest black population proportionately and with the stiffest level of white resistance. At its height the Ministry, which was headquartered in Greenville, had the largest field staff of any civil rights organization in the South. Active through the mid-1970s, the Ministry outlasted SNCC, CORE, and the SCLC in Mississippi, helping to fill the vacuums when these organizations fell apart or refocused their energies. In this first book-length study of the Delta Ministry, Mark Newman tells how the organization conducted literacy, citizenship, and vocational training. He documents the Ministry's role in fostering the growth of Head Start and community-based health care and in widening the distribution of free surplus federal food and food stamps. Newman discusses, among other Ministry successes, the Delta Foundation, which created jobs by channeling grant money to small businesses that could not secure bank loans. At the same time, he details the Ministry's problems from its chronic underfunding to its uneasy relationship with the Mississippi NAACP, which pursued civil rights objectives through less confrontational methods. Newman examines the Freedomcrafts manufacturing cooperative and other ministry failures, as well as mixed efforts such as Freedom City, a collective agricultural and manufacturing community built by displaced agricultural workers. Divine Agitators looks at many inadequately studied events across a time span that extends beyond the widely accepted end dates of the civil rights movement. It offers new insights, at the most local levels of the movement, into conflict within and between civil rights groups, the increasing subtlety of white resistance, the disengagement of the federal government, and the rise of Black Power.