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The University of North Carolina Press
384 pp., 61/8 x 91/4, 3 illus., 5 tables, 2 maps, appends., notes, bibl., index
The Origins of Proslavery Christianity
White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia
In the colonial and antebellum South, black and white evangelicals frequently prayed, sang, and worshipped together. Even though white evangelicals claimed spiritual fellowship with those of African descent, they nonetheless emerged as the most effective defenders of race-based slavery.
As Charles Irons persuasively argues, white evangelicals' ideas about slavery grew directly out of their interactions with black evangelicals. Set in Virginia, the largest slaveholding state and the hearth of the southern evangelical movement, this book draws from church records, denominational newspapers, slave narratives, and private letters and diaries to illuminate the dynamic relationship between whites and blacks within the evangelical fold. Irons reveals that when whites theorized about their moral responsibilities toward slaves, they thought first of their relationships with bondmen in their own churches. Thus, African American evangelicals inadvertently shaped the nature of the proslavery argument. When they chose which churches to join, used the procedures set up for church discipline, rejected colonization, or built quasi-independent congregations, for example, black churchgoers spurred their white coreligionists to further develop the religious defense of slavery.
"This exceedingly effective study pushes consideration of its complex subjects to unprecedented levels of insight. Irons argues that white-black interactions played the key role in shaping the antebellum evangelical defense of slavery. The argument, based on deep research and presented with meticulous care, is powerfully convincing."
--Mark Noll, University of Notre Dame, author of The Civil War as a Theological Crisis
"Unlike many scholars, Charles Irons takes seriously the interaction between black and white believers in the antebellum South. In this innovative and painstaking study, the author demonstrates how this interaction--flawed, agonistic, and paradoxical--played out within institutions where both races engaged each other. The result is an understanding of the ambiguity and irony that afflicted religion in the Old South, which was not the result of a simple story as much as stories in collision."
--Donald G. Mathews, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Emeritus
Cloth: $59.95
Paper: $24.95
© 2007 The University of North Carolina Press
116 South Boundary Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27514-3808
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