New Issue of the Journal of Southern Religion

Luke Harlow and I are pleased to announce the new volume of the Journal of Southern Religion:

Our features include:

--An article by Chad Seales (University of Texas-Austin) on baptisteries and modernity.

--A roundtable on class in early twentieth-century southern religion, with contributions and responses from Ken Fones-Wolf (West Virginia University), Richard Callahan, Jr. (University of Missouri-Columbia), Jarod Roll (University of Sussex), Alison Collis Greene (Mississippi State University), and John Hayes (Augusta State University).

--An author's reflection on Evangelizing the South by Monica Najar (Lehigh University).

--A review forum on Daniel Williams's God's Own Party, with reviews by Randall Balmer (Columbia University), Darren Dochuk (Purdue University), J. Russell Hawkins (Indiana Wesleyan University), and Mark Silk (Trinity College), and a response from Daniel Williams (University of West Georgia).

--Twenty-six book reviews on the latest scholarship in the field.

Emily Clark, managing editor, and Art Remillard, book review editor, contributed immensely to helping make this issue happen.

Luke and I would like to invite everyone to consider contributing to the next issue of the JSR. As an online journal, we are in the exciting position to compliment traditional articles and book reviews with innovative content like special topic forums, author reflections, interviews, and audio-visual presentation. Any and all ideas are welcomed.

The Bible Belt Blues

BY MICHAEL PASQUIER

Hal Crowther—essayist, journalist, southerner—is upset with his co-regionalists. Indeed, he’s been distressed for some time (see his previous books Gather at the River: Notes from the Post-Millennial South [2005] and Cathedrals of Kudzu: A Personal Landscape of the South [2000]). “Evangelical religion of an extreme stripe—fire and brimstone, biblical inerrancy—thrives in many far corners of the republic,” he writes in a recent edition of the Oxford American, “but the South is its wellspring and its homeland.” He continues, “Feral religion has been the South’s second greatest embarrassment, after race. Unfortunately, they’ve been closely linked.” Terry Jones, the Gainesville preacher who promoted “International Burn a Koran Day,” is just the latest example of southern humiliation that Crowther associates with “[t]he unctuous, nausea-inducing Pat Robertson” and the “Southern fundamentalists [who] have bonded with the Tea party and politicized their pulpits.” Like I said, he’s not happy.

While singing what he calls the “Bible Belt Blues,” Crowther is also searching for “rays of light” that might signal the unbuckling of southern bucklehood. He looks to the Baylor graduate Edwin Gaustad for reassurance that the Virginian Thomas Jefferson had “an undying anxiety of anything that would bring church and state together.” He calls on the UNC biblical scholar Bart Ehrman to explain how “the Bible is a deceptive literary grabbag authored by just about everyone except God.” He wishes that the Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza’s conception “of a God inseparable from Nature, from Creation,” would replace the “hellfire Christianity” of today’s mainstream white South. And he finds in his own universalist/pantheist beliefs a model for southerners to keep their religion to themselves. “The important part of religion,” Crowther concludes, “is what you believe when you’re in your room alone, not what you profess to believe in a crowd of believers.”

After reading Crowther’s essay a few months ago, the cynical-me wanted to tell Crowther, “Good luck with that, Hal. Good luck making southerners into Emersonians, much less Spinozans. Hell, good luck getting folks to read Spinoza.” The political-me wanted to give Crowther a high-five. And the religious studies/historian-me just had to calm down and appreciate some fine writing.

As someone who spends a lot of time thinking and writing about religion in the American South, I like to go to the Oxford American (the self-described “Southern Magazine of Good Writing”) for perspectives on southern culture that manage to avoid the sappiness of Southern Living and the scholarliness of the Journal of Southern History. I like to ask myself, as Crowther does in his introduction to Gather at the River, “Why, then, are libraries bursting with dissertations on the metaphysics of Southernness, why are panels convened, sages summoned, centers dedicated to the study of the Tao of Dixie? Why is Southern separateness—among the reflective class no less than the belligerent—an enduring strain of separateness no other American region can approach or comprehend?” It’s an old, some might say tired question, but I love asking it and trying to answer it.

In the next week or so, Luke Harlow and I will be releasing the latest edition of the Journal of Southern Religion. The JSR started in 1998 under the editorship of Rodger Payne, now chair of the Department of Religious Studies at UNC-Asheville. Its first issue included Ted Ownby’s review of Paul Harvey’s Redeeming the South and a review forum on Christine Heyrman’s Southern Cross (with reviews by E. Brooks Holifield and Ann Taves). R. Marie Griffith and Joel Martin commented on the film The Apostle and Sam Hill wrote an article called “Fundamentalism in Recent Southern Culture.” Check it out; it’s kinda fun.

Last year, Luke and I relieved Randall Stephens of his editorial duties. If you know Randall, then you know we’ve got big shoes to fill. We’ll be sure to announce the JSR release on the blog.

Summer/Fall issue of Fides et Historia

Randall Stephens

Donald Yerxa and I have taken the editorial reins of Fides et Historia, as editor and associate editor respectively. We look forward to exploring themes that the Conference on Faith and History has long been interested in, and branching out in some new directions as well.

We're putting together the Summer/Fall 2011 issue now, which will be available in November. This includes forums on religious belief and the historian's craft as well as a series of review essays and dozens of book reviews. Future issues will include a roundtable on "Beyond the Protestant Nation: Religion and the Narrative of American History"--organized by Chris Cantwell, with Robert Orsi, Richard Bushman, Catherine Albanese, Wallace Best and Lila Berwin--and another roundtable on bracketing faith and doing history. Fides will also continue to feature research articles and occasional interviews. Back and current issues will now be available through ATLA and EBSCO.

Here's our first table of contents (and the new cover that I designed):

Fides et Historia, Volume 43, No. 2, Summer/Fall 2011

From the Editor
Donald A. Yerxa

Forum: Reconciling the Historian’s
Craft and Religious Commitment

Introduction

Mormon History Inside Out
Richard Lyman Bushman

Historians' Metaphysical Beliefs and the Writing of Confessional Histories
Brad Gregory

Coming to Terms as a Christian Historian with F. H. Bradley
Mark A. Noll

Writing Religious History as a Believer
Anthea Butler

The Wrong Question! Please Change the Subject!
David A. Hollinger

A Response to Bushman, Gregory, and Noll
Bruce Kuklick

Reflections on Reconciling Religious Belief and the Historian’s Craft
Paul E. Kerry

Roundtable: Confessing History

Introduction

Confessing History: In Retrospect
Jay Green

Confessing History: Prospect
Eric Miller

Comment
Rick Kennedy

Comment
Donald A. Yerxa

Review Essays:

Catholic Approaches to Faith and History
Christopher Shannon

War’s Providence
Chris Beneke

Media Review:

God in America (WGBH, American Experience, Frontline)
Maura Jane Farrelly

On Teaching with God in America
Randall J. Stephens

Book Reviews

Emotion and Christianity: Call for Papers from Editors of Church History

The following special journal CFP comes to us from John Corrigan, one of the editors of the journal Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, published by the American Society of Church History:

The editors of Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture invite submissions for a special issue on the topic: “Emotion and Christianity: Feelings Toward and About Jesus and the Saints.” Papers may focus on any historical period and any geographical region. Please send queries or complete manuscripts to: Ms. Tammy Heise, Senior Assistant, Church History, Church-History@admin.fsu.edu.

Southern Cultures Announcement and CFP

Paul Harvey

The following announcement from the journal Southern Cultures will be of interest to some of you here:

Southern Cultures, the award-winning quarterly from UNC's Center for the Study of the American South, has added several more essays and features to the section of our website that focuses of American religion, including content from our brand new issue. We'd also like to remind scholars of religion in the South--and related topics--that we're interested in your
submissions.

Over 58,000 readers in classrooms in over 60 countries have viewed our content online. To read our material on religion, please visit here. You'll also find our submission guidelines, content on other subject areas, and more information about our latest issue here.

I would just add that cruising through the journal's most popular articles and pieces from the last decade yields a lot of fun reading, including Michael Butler's "Sin, Salvation, and Southern Rock."

The Journal of Southern Religion, Vol 12, 2010

Randall Stephens

The new volume of the Journal of Southern Religion is now on-line. Hurrah!! (Thanks much for all the hard work put in by Emily Clark, Art Remillard, and Bland Whitley.)

This is the last issue that we as current editors (Bland Whitley and Randall Stephens) will edit for the Journal of Southern Religion. We’ve been at it for some time now and we believe that it’s now the right moment for a new set of editors to take the reins. (I've has written about some of the things that the editorial team has “done and what we have left undone” here on the blog.) It’s been a lively, fulfilling endeavor for all of us.

But on to the future . . . Michael Pasquier (Religious Studies Department, Louisiana State University) will move in as editor, and Luke Harlow (History Department, Oakland University) will serve as associate editor beginning with the 2011 issue. We couldn’t be more pleased that these two rising stars in the field of religious history have agreed to take the JSR to the next stage. Both have considerable experience as editors. Along with their other work, Mike has edited a special issue of the JSR with Tracy Fessenden, and Luke has served as an editorial assistant with the Journal of Southern History and has edited a volume on American religion and politics with Mark Noll.

On other fronts, Lee Willis will be stepping down as book review editor, which Art Remillard will be taking over. Lee has done extraordinary work in that role, organizing feature reviews and getting a wonderful range of writers to contribute. His efforts are greatly appreciated. And we look forward to what Art has in store for the book review section. Art will also be stepping down as managing editor/web designer. Art has done herculean work over the years. We owe him a debt of gratitude for his attention to detail, tireless efforts, and labors in the Tron-like world of cyberspace. Emily Clark, Florida State University has agreed to join the JSR as our new managing editor/webmaster. We welcome her on board and are thrilled that she has agreed to take on this role.

We are encouraged that the future of the journal remains bright. As usual, the editorial team will be open to suggestions, queries, and the like. Thanks to our contributors and our readers for making this a rewarding, intellectually stimulating venture.

The Journal of Southern Religion, Vol 12 (2010)

What's in Store for the Journal of Southern Religion

Unintended Consequences: Southern Presbyterians and Interdenominationalism in the Late Eighteenth Century
WILLIAM HARRISON TAYLOR

Lecture
"Tell About the South: Why Are They So Religious?"
SAM HILL
The Inaugrual Sam Hill Lecture in Southern Religious History
The University of North Carolina Asheville, April 2009

Interview
Teaching Southern Religious History: An Interview with Charles Reagan Wilson
CONDUCTED BY RANDALL J. STEPHENS

Review Essay
Catholics and Jim Crow: Recent Scholarship on Southern Catholicism during the Civil Rights Movement
DANIEL HUTCHINSON

Author's Reflection
Graham at the Confluence
STEVEN P. MILLER

Featured Review
Barbara Dianne Savage. Your Spirits Walk Beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion
WILLIE JAMES JENNINGS
CHERYL J. SANDERS
JACOB S. DORMAN
Author's Response
BARBARA DIANNE SAVAGE

Panel Review
Randall J. Stephens. The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South
REVIEW EDITORIAL NOTE
JOSEPH WILLIAMS
LEWIS V. BALDWIN
CHARLES A. ISRAEL
Author's Response
RANDALL J. STEPHENS

Eleven Other Book Reviews and One Film Review >>>