After hearing today’s discussion around class in pertaining to Christine Heyrman’s book, Southern Cross, it seems that our conclusion rested on the idea that Heyrman did not explicitly use class to discuss her arguments about the rise of Evangelicalism in the south. Matt also raised a good point in that Evangelicalism could be seen as a venue for people to participate in for spiritual renewing. But what still remains unanswered is the importance of Evangelicalism to southern cultural history outside of the combining of different classes of southerners. Does Heyrman want us to believe that Evangelicalism is important in the context of an intermediary between clergy, laymen, and planters or is it possible that this portion of Christianity is symbolic of southern culture at a more specific level? Another question is if Evangelicalism is a social force in shaped by southern culture and used as a means for planters to avoid issues of class with other whites across class lines, can any religion be seen as a social force of agency or is it in just this particular situation? This question could resolve further inquires on historical study of religion in terms of its pertinence with social structures. In another sense, while in terms of the majority of southern society, Evangelicalism does not seem to influence it with exception to situations of violent resistance to a general acceptance of the religion on an elitist understanding but it impacted slaves, and women separately from white males, property holding or not.
Maybe it would be more fruitful to consider their perspectives and isolating their experiences into a separate class experience that were in some sense changed due to the challenging concepts such as spiritual equality, tolerance of women speaking in church, and debates on women preachers to separate churches for blacks and whites. For example, “the whiff of sheer insolence- and, as time passed, the stench of racial betrayal-hung over church practices that obliged white men to compete for spiritual recognition with blacks” (217). This passage attests to the opposition the Southern white had against blacks in the church but even though this passage speaks to the spiritual competition between blacks and whites, it underlies a new society being constructed for a lower to non existing class of people that had not been there before. When one considers these outsiders, society changed due to the religion and the conflicting southern culture impacting it.
To add to this idea, maybe a better way of understanding Heyrman’s position in her book, Southern Cross, is considering Gregory Dowd’s work, A Spiritual Resistance. He along with Heyrman approaches ideas of religion in terms of Native American resistance to Christianity in a similar vein to Heyrman. Dowd goes into more detail about the views of Native American theology; from there he outlines the growing resistance, assimilation of Native American groups to Anglo-Americans as well as the Anglo-Americans reactions and manipulations of the Native Americans economically and religiously. For example, “Neolin, the renowned Delaware Prophet, encouraged his followers to give up all the Sins & Vices which the Indians have learned from the White People. On the other hand, he was apparently fond of the French but did go further than most [Indians] and planned to end, eventually, the use of all European-made trade goods”(20). Of course, Dowd does not a direct correlation with Heyrman’s thesis of Evangelicalism because Evangelicalism and Nativism were not both resistance movements but did offer to its communities a separate way of worship. Another difference between the two was that Nativism died out while Evangelicalism survived but both draw upon economic resources used to fuel both ideas.
To surmise, Dowd provides a framework to Heyrman in that he covers a spiritual movement that faces resistance using experiences of whites, Indians, and slaves as well as individual battles while Heyrman uses letters, diaries, and accounts of hysteria and visions which in some ways echoes Dowd. Dowd presents a case in which a religious movement dies because of competing interests and a failure to accommodate to the dominate culture at the time. I suggest viewing other works by cultural historians dealing with religion could penetrate more issues around class in terms of religion and culture impact on class distinctions and tensions.
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