Southern Churches in Crisis Revisited
304 pages, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2
Paperback
Release Date:15 Dec 2020
ISBN:9780817360085
Southern Churches in Crisis Revisited
SERIES:
Religion and American Culture
University of Alabama Press
Hill’s landmark work in southern religious history returns to print updated and expanded—and compellingly relevant.
In 1966, Samuel S. Hill’s Southern Churches in Crisis argued that southern Protestantism, a cornerstone of white southern society and culture, was shirking its moral duty by refusing to join in the fight for racial justice. Hill predicted that the church was risking its standing in southern society and that it would ultimately decline in influence and power. A groundbreaking study at the time, Hill’s book helped establish southern religious history as a field of scholarly inquiry. Three decades later, Southern Churches in Crisis continues to be widely read, quoted, and cited.
In Southern Churches in Crisis Revisited, which reprints the 1966 text in full, Hill reexamines his earlier predictions in an introductory essay that also describes how the study of religion in the South has become a major field of scholarly inquiry. Hill skillfully engages his critics by integrating new perspectives and recent scholarship. He suggests new areas for exploration and provides a selected bibliography of key studies in southern religious history published in the three decades subsequent to the original appearance of this groundbreaking work.
In Southern Churches in Crisis Revisited, which reprints the 1966 text in full, Hill reexamines his earlier predictions in an introductory essay that also describes how the study of religion in the South has become a major field of scholarly inquiry. Hill skillfully engages his critics by integrating new perspectives and recent scholarship. He suggests new areas for exploration and provides a selected bibliography of key studies in southern religious history published in the three decades subsequent to the original appearance of this groundbreaking work.
How welcome it is to see this seminal book available again! And now it is enhanced by an eloquent, part-historiographical / part-autobiographical introduction and an incisive, broad-ranging epilogue that examines another fateful crisis in the southern churches. This book, renewed and reinforced, is as important now as it was thirty years ago.’
—John Boles, Rice University
This volume is a welcome (re)addition to the scene in part because of its importance as a document, especially for people interested in the ways religion and public events intersect. Blindspots and all, it records what a theologically astute observer made of the religious dimensions of a turbulent time while it was unfolding.’
—Journal of Church and State
Samuel S. Hill is professor emeritus of religion at the University of Florida.
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