Brann vs the Baptists - Violence in Southern Religion

[bobbieinok]

http://www.christianethicstoday.com/Issue/033/Brann%20vs%20the%20Baptists%20-%20Violence%20in%20Southern%20Religion%20By%20Charles%20Wellborn_033_14_.htm

Brann vs the Baptists - Violence in Southern Religion
By Charles Wellborn, Professor of Religion Emeritus, Florida Stat\e University

Mainstream Southern religion has rarely been distinguished by either restraint or lethargy. Historically Southerners have, at least partly, agreed with Augustus Longstreet’s “honest Georgian” who preferred “his whiskey straight and his politics and relligion red hot.”

The result has often been scenes of conflict, usually verbal but sometimes violent, within the ranks of the predominant southern religious groups. The current arguments dividing Southern Baptists are but the latest in a long series of disputes, going back in history to the days before the Civil War, when Southern Baptists split with their northern brethren, largely over the issue of slavery. In the 1920s, amid controversy similar in some respects to the present situation, several leading professors at Southern Baptist seminaries were driven from their posts and went to other institutions, just as many teachers have been forced to do today. Such internecine struggles have often amazed outside observers. The Scopes “monkey trial” in Tennessee and the flamboyant antics of the Reverend J. Frank Norris in Texas strike many people as exaggerated, overly dramatic, and foggily emotional. Yet to dismiss such personalities and events as mere aberrations in the history of Southern religion is unjustified. They are indicative, albeit in a grotesque way, of the deep roots of “Bible Belt” religion in the American frontier culture.

The emergence of the American South as the “Bible Belt” was profoundly shaped by the unique experiences of the early 19th century Second Awakening camp meetings in Kentucky and surrounding areas. The revivalistic style of Christian conversion, set out as the norm in those meetings, both posited and demanded a decisive and virtually instantaneous separation of the converted person from the secular, non-Christian, Satan-dominated “world.” In the frontier atmosphere of the camp meetings this separation was sometimes validated by distinctive emotional and physical manifestations (the notorious “jerks”) and always by a deep-seated hostility toward certain selected and easily identifiable aspects of the “world”—liquor, gambling, dancing, and the theater, for instance. This hostility was not one-sided. Secularists, along with representatives of more genteel religious movements, found the Southern revival experiences distasteful and disturbing. Denominational groups such as Presbyterians and Episcopalians refused to participate, but other groups, particularly Baptists, Methodists, and Disciples of Christ, benefited enormously in terms of numbers from the meetings. And the gap between “Bible belt” religion and its detractors sometimes, and not unexpectedly, was bridged with violence.

In the last decade of the 19th century William Cowper Brann, self-styled the “Iconoclast,” indulged in a series of hot-headed assaults upon a large and influential segment of Southern Protestantism. He attacked Texas Baptists and their most important educational institution, Baylor University. His story offers not only a fascinating vignette of Southern religious history but also a case study in the violent working out of the hostility between church and world.

much more....

[regnaD kciN]

1. Well, what can you say about a Christian denomination that was created...

...to preserve slavery? :puke:

I would submit that much of the American South has been defined, over the years, by the anger of having been defeated in the "War of Northern Aggression," followed by being treated as third- or fourth- class citizens during Reconstruction.

In a way, you can see a parallel in the early part of this century, when the Allied powers decided to cripple Germany as punishment for WWI. The nationalistic anger arising from this led straight to the Nazis.

Besides, grudges can last a long time when it's neighbor against neighbor -- just look at the Middle East or the Balkans for examples.

[Blutodog]

2. The Civil War 2- They won this time!

We've been fighting the rear guard of the Civil War for over a 130 yrs. now. The North having won the War by all accounts lost the aftermath known as the so called Reconstruction. The South was allowed to basically reinslave the black population through a series of laws ( the Jim Crow laws) that stood un-challenged by the north for over 100 yrs until the Civil rights struggle of the 50's/60's era. Today we see the same forces of darkness that shaped the reconstruction south once again trying to force their particuliar world view on the rest of the country through the agency of the Bu$h regime. Having seized the SCOTUS they just might succeed in imposing a second Reconstruction on the whole country. I expect were going to be witnessing the roll back of many rights that many of us have grown to believe were protected. Roe, Griswold ( privacy) and then most of the Labor rulings of the last 70 yrs could disappear as well as most of the environmental laws. We are all gong to be living with the aftermath of the Bu$h regime for the rest of our lives and it's not going to be pretty.

[HawkerHurricane]

3. Machiavelli was right.

The problem with reconstruction was that it was to harsh to forgive, and not harsh enough to make them afraid...