Abstract
This study focuses on overlooked connections between the
traditional honor culture
of the South and the rise of evangelical Christianity in the region
in the late-eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. Historians have argued that it was only
as evangelicals
moderated their early opposition to the southern shibboleths of
honor and slavery that
evangelical religion flourished in the South. But this study argues
that the interaction
between evangelicalism and honor was not as simple as an arc
running from early
opposition to eventual accommodation. In 1780 as well as 1860
evangelicals critiqued
some of the behaviors associated with honor, but from the beginning
evangelicals also
engaged the discourse of honor and shame to tell their sacred
story. Furthermore, from
the movement's earliest period evangelicals drew from the same
cultural wellsprings that
nourished the traditional culture of the South to sustain their
communities and enforce
their vision of Godly order. Thus this study examines important
strands of historical
continuity that bound evangelical beginnings and eventualities
together in the South.
Just as it shaped southern life in general, honor intersected
nearly every facet of the
evangelical experience. Early evangelical ministers preached the
gospel of a God who
was jealous of his honor but let his son be shamed for the sake of
sinners. Many
preachers laid claim to the status of honorable men as orators,
while the duties of office
exposed them to the acclaim and obloquy of their communities.
Evangelical churches
used the power of communal opinion to shape behavior, and
evangelical rituals and
church discipline became sites of communal judgment that
significantly influenced the
balance of honor and shame in the local community. For women,
church discipline
largely repeated and reinforced the mandates of female honor, while
for slaves rituals
signifying their spiritual rebirth and social inclusion as members
of the church were
important symbols that offset the social death and dishonor of
slavery. Meanwhile, white
men struggled, at times successfully, to balance the demands laid
on them by their honor
and their religion.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter 1. 'True Honor Comes From God Alone': Evangelicalism and
the
Language of the Alternative Community in the Deep South 18
Chapter 2. 'In the publick manner': Honor, Community, Discipline,
and
the Self in the Local Church 62
Chapter 3. Dual Citizens and a Twice Sacred Circle: Men, Women,
and
Honor in the Local Church 137
Chapter 4. Social Death and Everlasting Life: Slave Identity,
Honor,
Ritual, and Discipline in the Deep South 201
Chapter 5. "A Voice at its Full Thunder": Evangelical Oratory,
Honor, and
the Self 242
Chapter 6. 'An Everlasting Name': Ambition, Fame, Duty, Death, and
the
Evangelical Ideal 297
Epilogue: 'He was the only man in South Carolina who could
have
achieved that thing': James Henley Thornwell and the
Guardhouse Riot at South Carolina College 354
Bibliography 368
About this Dissertation
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