A01=Kimberly Kellison
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
American Revolution
antebellum period
Author_Kimberly Kellison
automatic-update
Baptist Associations
Baptists
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJ
Category=HBJK
Category=HBWJ
Category=HRAM6
Category=HRAX
Category=HRCC92
Category=NHB
Category=NHK
Category=NHWF
Category=NHWR3
Category=QRAM6
Category=QRAX
Category=QRMB32
Charleston
Christian slavery
colonial America
Columbus
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
Devon Baptists
eighteenth-century America
Enslavers
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=0
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Euhaw Baptist Church
evangelicalism
First Baptist Church Charleston
Francis Pelot
John Gano
Language_English
Lowcountry
missionaries
nineteenth-century America
Oliver Hart
PA=Available
Philip Mulkey
Piedmont
plantation
pre-Civil War
Price_€50 to €100
Protestantism
PS=Active
racism
Richard Furman
segregation
Separate Baptists
slaveholding
Slavery
softlaunch
South Carolina
Southern Baptists
Upcountry
Welsh Neck Church
white proslavery
William Screven
Yamasee War
Product details
- ISBN 9781621907596
- Weight: 431g
- Dimensions: 157 x 233mm
- Publication Date: 30 Mar 2023
- Publisher: University of Tennessee Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
A significant contribution to the historiography of religion in the U.S. south, Forging a Christian Order challenges and complicates the standard view that eighteenth-century evangelicals exerted both religious and social challenges to the traditional mainstream order, not maturing into middle-class denominations until the nineteenth century. Instead, Kimberly R. Kellison argues, eighteenth-century White Baptists in South Carolina used the Bible to fashion a Christian model of slavery that recognized the humanity of enslaved people while accentuating contrived racial differences. Over time
this model evolved from a Christian practice of slavery to one that expounded on slavery as morally right.
Elites who began the Baptist church in late-1600s Charleston closely valued hierarchy. It is not surprising, then, that from its formation the church advanced a Christian model of slavery. The American Revolution spurred the associational growth of the denomination, reinforcing the rigid order of the authoritative master and subservient enslaved person, given that the theme of liberty for all threatened slaveholders’ way of life. In lowcountry South Carolina in the 1790s, where a White minority population lived in constant anxiety over control of the bodies of enslaved men and women, news of revolt in St. Domingue (Haiti) led to heightened fears of Black violence. Fearful of being associated with antislavery evangelicals and, in turn, of being labeled as an enemy of the planter and urban elite, White ministers orchestrated a major transformation in the Baptist construction of paternalism.
Forging a Christian Order provides a comprehensive examination of the Baptist movement in South Carolina from its founding to the eve of the Civil War and reveals that the growth of the Baptist church in South Carolina paralleled the growth and institutionalization of the American system of slavery—accommodating rather than challenging the prevailing social order of the economically stratified Lowcountry.
this model evolved from a Christian practice of slavery to one that expounded on slavery as morally right.
Elites who began the Baptist church in late-1600s Charleston closely valued hierarchy. It is not surprising, then, that from its formation the church advanced a Christian model of slavery. The American Revolution spurred the associational growth of the denomination, reinforcing the rigid order of the authoritative master and subservient enslaved person, given that the theme of liberty for all threatened slaveholders’ way of life. In lowcountry South Carolina in the 1790s, where a White minority population lived in constant anxiety over control of the bodies of enslaved men and women, news of revolt in St. Domingue (Haiti) led to heightened fears of Black violence. Fearful of being associated with antislavery evangelicals and, in turn, of being labeled as an enemy of the planter and urban elite, White ministers orchestrated a major transformation in the Baptist construction of paternalism.
Forging a Christian Order provides a comprehensive examination of the Baptist movement in South Carolina from its founding to the eve of the Civil War and reveals that the growth of the Baptist church in South Carolina paralleled the growth and institutionalization of the American system of slavery—accommodating rather than challenging the prevailing social order of the economically stratified Lowcountry.
Kimberly R. Kellison is associate professor in the Department of History and associate dean of Arts and Sciences at Baylor University. Her articles have appeared in the Georgia Historical Quarterly, the South Carolina Historical Magazine, and American Baptist Quarterly.
