“Southern Cross” explores Bible Belt history

Mention the Bible Belt of the United States—bastion of religious culture—and it brings to mind the portrait of a preacher-man in flowing robes and at the pulpit, thundering messages about the wages of sin, the evils of dancing and drink, and the vile temptations of the devil. The Bible Belt carries with it a unique tincture all its own, but how did it come to be? What were the historical forces that created this area of religious fervor? Christine Leigh Heyrman, author of Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt, explores these questions and does so with brusque thoroughness and comprehensive documentation.

Step by step, the author traces the evolution of this region from the time of the American Revolution when Anglican Church clergy returned to England—leaving a gap in the religious culture filled by itinerant, untrained, and uneducated preachers—to the emergence of the evangelicals as a religious stronghold in the mid-nineteenth century. In personal accounts, lives of believers and preachers are revealed as filled with revivals, confessions, conversions, visions, dreams, literal and figurative assaults from the devil, high drama, and a strained spiritual morality. Other concerns—such as family, business, and the chores of daily life—were secondary to the newfound religious practices.

Spiritual warfare and a rousing awakening was demanded for each man’s soul. After a modest start, the new religious culture found overwhelming acceptance by stressing the mastery of white men over their families and African-American men, and by the perceived emergence of preachers as fearless, patriotic, bold-fighting men.

Thorough explanations and historical summaries are consistently provided in Southern Cross. Cogent and clear, these explanations and summaries, combined with personal accounts, paint a clear picture of the South during a period of religious upheaval. The book speaks to the casual reader and the serious scholar as it accurately depicts the religious development of this area and provides insight to the present structure of religion throughout the United States. As the author states in her epilogue:

Evangelicalism’s complex beginnings in the early South would probably claim the curiosity of only a small circle of historians were it not for the fact that this legacy now shapes the character of conservative Protestant churches in every region of the United States. Its influence is evident among large denominations like the Baptists, small Pentecostal groups like the Assembly of God, and a rapidly growing number of “independent” congregations.

Well worth reading, Southern Cross provides an explanation and understanding of the religious culture in the South, from wobbly infancy to entrenched stronghold and continued influence in the United States.