Lines in the Sand
Lines in the Sand

Author: Timothy James Lockley

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2004-03

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780820325972

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Lines in the Sandis Timothy Lockley’s nuanced look at the interaction between nonslaveholding whites and African Americans in lowcountry Georgia from the introduction of slavery in the state to the beginning of the Civil War. The study focuses on poor whites living in a society where they were dominated politically and economically by a planter elite and outnumbered by slaves. Lockley argues that the division between nonslaveholding whites and African Americans was not fixed or insurmountable. Pulling evidence from travel accounts, slave narratives, newspapers, and court documents, he reveals that these groups formed myriad kinds of relationships, sometimes out of mutual affection, sometimes for mutual advantage, but always in spite of the disapproving authority of the planter class. Lockley has synthesized an impressive amount of material to create a rich social history that illuminates the lives of both blacks and whites. His abundant detail and clear narrative style make this first book-length examination of a complicated and overlooked topic both fascinating and accessible.

Baptists and Worship
Baptists and Worship

Author: R. Scott Connell

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2020-11-30

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1725271591

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Worship is dialogue. It is more than that, but it is not less than that. The way Baptists have worshiped for three and a half centuries demonstrates this consistently, in spite of their penchant for freedom and autonomy. No one tells Baptists how to order their worship services. They don't have a common liturgy that they must follow, and yet their services look remarkably similar. This is largely due to two controlling factors in their worship: The Bible that they embrace as inspired, inerrant, authoritative, and sufficient; and the Christ-revealing gospel that is contained within its pages. When the word of God is followed closely, a shape for worship order begins to emerge. It is the same "gospel-shape" that is found throughout the Bible. When the word of God is applied to a worship service in which God and his people are engaged in a worship conversation, a consistent contour of gospel elements and content begins to emerge that reveals the glory of the Christ we gather to worship. He is so glorious that when we behold him, we are transformed into the same image from one degree to another. This is the power of corporate worship (2 Cor 3).

The Antipedo Baptists of Georgetown County, South Carolina, 1710–2010
The Antipedo Baptists of Georgetown County, South Carolina, 1710–2010

Author: Roy Talbert, Jr.

Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press

Published: 2014-12-18

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 161117421X

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The Antipedo Baptists of Georgetown, South Carolina, 1710–2010 is the history of the First Baptist Church of Georgetown, South Carolina, as well as the history of Baptists in the colony and state. Roy Talbert, Jr., and Meggan A. Farish detail Georgetown Baptists' long and tumultuous history, which began with the migration of Baptist exhorter William Screven from England to Maine and then to South Carolina during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Screven established the First Baptist Church in Charleston in the 1690s before moving to Georgetown in 1710. His son Elisha laid out the town in 1734 and helped found an interdenominational meeting house on the Black River, where the Baptists worshipped until a proper edifice was constructed in Georgetown: the Antipedo Baptist Church, named for the congregation's opposition to infant baptism. Three of the most recognized figures in southern Baptist history—Oliver Hart, Richard Furman, and Edmond Botsford—played vital roles in keeping the Georgetown church alive through the American Revolution. The nineteenth century was particularly trying for the Georgetown Baptists, and the church came very close to shutting its doors on several occasions. The authors reveal that for most of the nineteenth century a majority of church members were African American slaves. Not until World War II did Georgetown witness any real growth. Since then the congregation has blossomed into one of the largest churches in the convention and rightfully occupies an important place in the history of the Baptist denomination. The Antipedo Baptists of Georgetown is an invaluable contribution to southern religious history as well as the history of race relations before and after the Civil War in the American South.

Politics and Piety
Politics and Piety

Author: Aaron Menikoff

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2014-05-29

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1625641893

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Historians have painted a picture of nineteenth-century Baptists huddled in clapboard meetinghouses preaching sermons and singing hymns, seemingly unaware of the wider world. According to this view, Baptists were "so heavenly-minded, they were of no earthly good." Overlooked are the illustrative stories of Baptists fighting poverty, promoting abolition, petitioning Congress, and debating tax policy. Politics and Piety is a careful look at antebellum Baptist life. It is seen in figures such as John Broadus, whose first sermon promoted temperance, David Barrow, who formed an anti-slavery association in Kentucky, and in a Savannah church that started a ministry to the homeless. Not only did Baptists promote piety for the good of their churches, but they did so for the betterment of society at large. Though they aimed to change America one soul at a time, that is only part of the story. They also engaged the political arena, forcefully and directly. Simply put, Baptists were social reformers. Relying on the ideas of rank-and-file Baptists found in the minutes of local churches and associations, as well as the popular, parochial newspapers of the day, Politics and Piety uncovers a theologically minded and controversial movement to improve the nation. Understanding where these Baptists united and divided is a key to unlocking the differences in evangelical political engagement today.

Gospel of Disunion
Gospel of Disunion

Author: Mitchell Snay

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 1997-09-01

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 9780807846872

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The centrality of religion in the life of the Old South, the strongly religious nature of the sectional controversy over slavery, and the close affinity between religion and antebellum American nationalism all point toward the need to explore the role of religion in the development of southern sectionalism. In Gospel of Disunion Mitchell Snay examines the various ways in which religion adapted to and influenced the development of a distinctive southern culture and politics before the Civil War, adding depth and form to the movement that culminated in secession. From the abolitionist crisis of 1835 through the formation of the Confederacy in 1861, Snay shows how religion worked as an active agent in translating the sectional conflict into a struggle of the highest moral significance. At the same time, the slavery controversy sectionalized southern religion, creating separate institutions and driving theology further toward orthodoxy. By establishing a biblical sanction for slavery, developing a slaveholding ethic for Christian masters, and demonstrating the viability of separation from the North through the denominational schisms of the 1830s and 1840s, religion reinforced central elements in southern political culture and contributed to a moral consensus that made secession possible.

Separation of Church and State
Separation of Church and State

Author: Philip HAMBURGER

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 529

ISBN-13: 0674038185

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In a powerful challenge to conventional wisdom, Philip Hamburger argues that the separation of church and state has no historical foundation in the First Amendment. The detailed evidence assembled here shows that eighteenth-century Americans almost never invoked this principle. Although Thomas Jefferson and others retrospectively claimed that the First Amendment separated church and state, separation became part of American constitutional law only much later. Hamburger shows that separation became a constitutional freedom largely through fear and prejudice. Jefferson supported separation out of hostility to the Federalist clergy of New England. Nativist Protestants (ranging from nineteenth-century Know Nothings to twentieth-century members of the K.K.K.) adopted the principle of separation to restrict the role of Catholics in public life. Gradually, these Protestants were joined by theologically liberal, anti-Christian secularists, who hoped that separation would limit Christianity and all other distinct religions. Eventually, a wide range of men and women called for separation. Almost all of these Americans feared ecclesiastical authority, particularly that of the Catholic Church, and, in response to their fears, they increasingly perceived religious liberty to require a separation of church from state. American religious liberty was thus redefined and even transformed. In the process, the First Amendment was often used as an instrument of intolerance and discrimination.

Forging a Christian Order
Forging a Christian Order

Author: Kimberly Kellison

Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press

Published: 2023-07-14

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1621907600

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A significant contribution to the historiography of religion in the U.S. south, Forging a Christian Order challenges and complicates the standard view that eighteenth-century evangelicals exerted both religious and social challenges to the traditional mainstream order, not maturing into middle-class denominations until the nineteenth century. Instead, Kimberly R. Kellison argues, eighteenth-century White Baptists in South Carolina used the Bible to fashion a Christian model of slavery that recognized the humanity of enslaved people while accentuating contrived racial differences. Over time this model evolved from a Christian practice of slavery to one that expounded on slavery as morally right. Elites who began the Baptist church in late-1600s Charleston closely valued hierarchy. It is not surprising, then, that from its formation the church advanced a Christian model of slavery. The American Revolution spurred the associational growth of the denomination, reinforcing the rigid order of the authoritative master and subservient enslaved person, given that the theme of liberty for all threatened slaveholders’ way of life. In lowcountry South Carolina in the 1790s, where a White minority population lived in constant anxiety over control of the bodies of enslaved men and women, news of revolt in St. Domingue (Haiti) led to heightened fears of Black violence. Fearful of being associated with antislavery evangelicals and, in turn, of being labeled as an enemy of the planter and urban elite, White ministers orchestrated a major transformation in the Baptist construction of paternalism. Forging a Christian Order provides a comprehensive examination of the Baptist movement in South Carolina from its founding to the eve of the Civil War and reveals that the growth of the Baptist church in South Carolina paralleled the growth and institutionalization of the American system of slavery—accommodating rather than challenging the prevailing social order of the economically stratified Lowcountry.