Redeeming the Southern Family: Evangelical Women and Domestic Devotion in the Antebellum South (review)

A P R I L 2 0 1 0 151 Shuck-Hall describes a people who did their best to balance continuity with change. With each migration, the Alabamas and Coushattas evolved and adapted but held true to their ancestral past. Although contact with Europeans meant incorporating new ideas—their cosmology was blended with elements of Christianity and they became consumers of European goods, to name only a few—they still consecrated new land and maintained their traditions with the same dedication as their Mississippian forebears. And, during their migrations they became masters of diplomacy —a necessity considering their small population. Whether they were allying with other Indian groups or their white neighbors, these alliances were always ephemeral, as Shuck-Hall describes it; when an alliance no longer benefited the Alabamas and Coushattas, they easily abandoned it. Although not always in lock step, they forged a deep cultural, kinship, and diplomatic relationship with each other. At the end of their diaspora they essentially became “one entity” (p. 188). Indeed, an Indian agent observed that the Alabamas and Coushattas were “all of the same kindred ” and were becoming “one nation or tribe” after their settlement on the Big Sandy Reservation in East Texas (p. 188). Ultimately, Shuck-Hall argues, the identity of the Alabama and Coushatta Indians was shaped by their past as well as their journey westward. Shuck-Hall emphasizes the survival of the Alabamas and Coushattas rather than their suffering at the hands of land-hungry whites. Indeed, the reader never gets a true feel for the emotional toll leaving one’s “center ” for another had on the Alabama or Coushatta. Nonetheless, ShuckHall ’s study is a useful addition to the literature on diasporic peoples and Indian emigration. CHRISTOPHER D. HAVEMAN The University of West Alabama Redeeming the Southern Family: Evangelical Women and Domestic Devotion in the Antebellum South. By Scott Stephan. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008. ix, 304 pp. $44.95. ISBN 978-0-8203-3222-2. Religion played a central role in the lives of antebellum Americans in the years leading up to the Civil War. Evangelical denominations such as the Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians underwent a dramatic shift during this period as they transformed from marginalized to mainstream movements that dominated and defined the South. Indeed, this shift was largely responsible for the rise of what became known as the Bible Belt. T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 152 While such historians as John Boles, Donald Mathews, and Christine Leigh Heyrman focus on the institutional aspects of this movement, Ball State University professor Scott Stephan takes a different approach in Redeeming the Southern Family. Examining the spread of evangelicalism through the lens of gender, Stephen argues that women of the Old South were one of the main reasons for this movement’s success. Rather than focusing on denominational differences, Stephan emphasizes the commonalities among evangelicals of various denominations. Drawing upon a series of family case studies, he utilizes personal correspondence as well as journals in his attempt to situate individual women “in the relationships that mattered most to them—that is, not only with God but also with their parents, their lovers, their slaves, and their extended families” (p. 10). Building on work of previous scholars of religion in the antebellum South, Stephan begins by calling for a reconsideration of Donald Mathews’s claim that “southern evangelicalism contained deep tensions caused by the inherent conflict among its egalitarian heritage, its antebellum embrace of hierarchy, and the emergent authority of women within the household” (p. 18). The spread of evangelicalism did create tensions and conflict within households, but this tension and conflict was also one of the main causes for its success. As clergymen and laymen alike promoted the concept of the home being a “sanctuary for the faithful,” women’s roles within their homes became vested with a moral overtone (p. 24). Domesticity was idealized, and women were granted more religious authority—albeit authority that would be demonstrated through pious example to their loved ones—yet at the same time they maintained their subordinate position within the patriarchal hierarchy of...