Southern Cross (Heyrman - paperback)

Author: Christine Leigh Heyrman

ISBN: 9780807847169

Binding: paperback

Section: History

Revealing a surprising paradox at the heart of America's "Bible Belt," Christine Leigh Heyrman examines how the conservative religious traditions so strongly associated with the South evolved out of an evangelical Protestantism that began with very different social and political attitudes. Heyrman states that, by deliberately changing their own "traditional values" and assimilating those which were conventional southern, religious groups earlier associated with nonviolence and antislavery activity came to the defense of slavery and secession and the holy cause of upholding both by force of arms—and adopted the values we now associate with the "Bible Belt."