Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority, and Church Discipline in the Baptist South, 1785-1900

by Wills, Gregory A.

• ISBN13: 9780195104127
• ISBN10: 0195104129
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780199880294
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-12-12
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

No American denomination identified itself more closely with the nation's democratic ideal than the Baptists. Most antebellum southern Baptist churches allowed women and slaves to vote on membership matters and preferred populists preachers who addressed their appeals to the common person.Paradoxically no denomination could wield religious authority as zealously as the Baptists. Between 1785 and 1860 they ritually excommunicated forty to fifty thousand church members in Georgia alone. Wills demonstrates how a denomination of freedom-loving individualists came to embrace anexclusivist spirituality--a spirituality that continues to shape Southern Baptist churches in contemporary conflicts between moderates who urge tolerance and conservatives who require belief in scriptural inerrancy. Wills's analysis advances our understanding of the interaction between democracyand religious authority, and will appeal to scholars of American religion, culture, and history, as well as to Baptist observers.

Author Biography

Gregory Wills teaches church history and directs the archives and special collections department of the Boyce Centennial Library at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Introduction Religious Authority and the Democratic Impulse	p. 3
Democratic Exclusivism	p. 11
Democracies Primitive and Pure	p. 26
Democratic Authority	p. 37
Democracy, Race, and Gender	p. 50
African-American Democracies	p. 67
Freedom, Authority, and Doctrine	p. 84
Associations, Creeds, and Calvinism	p. 98
Democratic Religion Transformed	p. 116
Conclusion	p. 139
Notes	p. 141
Index	p. 185
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