Southern White Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1975

In Mississippi Praying, historian Carolyn Renee Dupont challenges the prevalent notion that southern white evangelicals simply failed to support civil rights because they were carried along by the influence of the wider culture. Instead, she documents a link between their theological views and their hostility towards desegregation. These evangelicals rejected a notion of a corporate responsibility for dealing with racism, seeing such social causes as a distraction from pursuing individual salvation. Dupont’s work shows how such a religious worldview could easily end up sanctioning white supremacy.

For more information on the publication, click here.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“This is an inspired and sparkling religious history of the three major white denominations—South Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists—in the state of Mississippi for the three decades of the Civil Rights movement…This is not simply a tale about what happened in the struggle for black equality in Mississippi from 1945 to 1975.  It is a mirror, reflecting what is still happening in segregated churches all over America, not just in Mississippi, not just in the South, but all over this great republic.”-Baptist History & Heritage

“Dupont’s book is an essential companion to any study of the civil rights movement, not only for its treatment of how religion impacted the movement’s history but also for the way it exposes how easily oppression can be wrapped in a cloak of religiosity that blinds its adherents to injustice occurring all around them.” –The Historian

“Carolyn Renee Dupont’s examination of Mississippi white evangelicals’ fervent support of segregation during the 1950s and 1960s offers historians a fresh interpretation of the confounding paradox of God-fearing whites condoning and even participating in massive resistance. […] This book successfully challenges the reader to think beyond a variety of biases inherent in discussion of literature’s relationship with ethnic, regional, and national identities.”-The Journal of Southern History

Fellow travelers are scholars, activists, and practitioners that embody the ideals and commitments of the Project on Lived Theology. We admire their work and are grateful to be walking alongside them in the development and dissemination of Lived Theology.

For more of “On the Lived Theology Reading List,” click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyReads. For more recommended resources from our fellow travelers, click here, #PLTfellowtravelers. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.

A History of African American Secularism

There are many histories of African-American religion, but in this new book, historian Christopher Cameron charts the largely overlooked impact of irreligion on two centuries of black intellectual life. Cameron’s work challenges the idea that atheism, agnosticism, and religious skepticism were exclusively the concerns of whites. He documents how a tradition of black freethought shaped the careers of well known figures, including Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, and James Forman. Cameron makes a compelling case that to understand the effects of religion, scholars also need to be attentive to those who rejected it.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Cameron offers a compelling survey of African American freethought across two centuries. Rather than treating secularism as a regulatory discourse of modern statecraft, Cameron unpacks the alienations, arguments, and aspirations of black secularists themselves. He brings depth and clarity to an aspect of African American religious history rarely given the sustained attention it deserves.” —Leigh Eric Schmidt, author of Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment 

“In African American intellectual history, religious skepticism, agnosticism, atheism, and secular humanism have long been lost in the shadow of the black church. Taking a closer look at the evidence, Cameron shows that the experience of slavery and the degradations of proslavery Christianity also led some enslaved and free blacks in the nineteenth century to varieties of unbelief. This tradition laid a foundation for the next century, from the Harlem Renaissance to the Black Power movement and beyond. With deft readings of a host of fascinating figures, Cameron shows how black freethinkers made important interventions in American culture.” —Christopher Grasso, author of Skepticism and American Faith: From the Revolution to the Civil War

For more information on the publication, click here.

Fellow travelers are scholars, activists, and practitioners that embody the ideals and commitments of the Project on Lived Theology. We admire their work and are grateful to be walking alongside them in the development and dissemination of Lived Theology.

For more of “On the Lived Theology Reading List,” click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyReads. For more recommended resources from our fellow travelers, click here, #PLTfellowtravelers. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.