Shadow on the Church: Southwestern Evangelical Religion and the Issue of Slavery, 1783-1860, and: Broken Churches, Broken Nation: Denominational Schisms and the Coming of the Civil War, and: The Enclosed Garden: Women and Community in the Evangelical South, 1830-1900 (review)

356CIVIL WAR HISTORY ing circumstances ofthe war, identify key aspects ofGeorgia society. In the process, they suggest how the Civil War prepared Georgia to meet the problems of Reconstruction. Paul A. Cimbala University of South Carolina at Aiken Shadow on the Church: Southwestern Evangelical Religion and the Issue of Slavery, 1783-1860. By David T. Bailey. (Ithaca, NY., and London: Cornell University Press, 1985. Pp. 293. $24.95.) Broken Churches, Broken Nation: Denominational Schisms and the Coming of the CivÜ War. By C. C. Goen. (Macon, GA.: Mercer University Press, 1985. Pp. x, 198. $17.95.) The Enclosed Garden: Women and Community in the Evangelical South, 1830-1900. By Jean E. Friedman. (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1985. Pp. xvi, 180. $19.95.) A generation ago southern religious history was an obscure subset of soutiiern history, and most of the works in the field were biographies or narrow institutional studies ofparticular denominations or synods that had little explicit relationship to larger issues in the history of the South. The field has come ofage in recent decades—as these books indicate—and now die religious dimension is an important aspect of scholarship on a wide variety of southern topics. The changing scope and growing sophistication of the work currently being produced deserves the attention of an audience broader than historians of religion. Certainly the three books here under review will be ofinterest to many readers ofthis journal. David T. Bailey in Shadow on the Church is careful to distinguish the developments in the Old Soutiiwest—Kentucky,- Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi—from tiiose in die seaboard South, a distinction not observed as it should be by many historians who write as ifthe Soudi were Carolina writ large. Bailey is also careful to distinguish the changes in ministerial personnel and outlook over time, temporal changes that have likewise often been neglected by historians. Bailey portrays four separate generations of ministers. First was the pioneer generation, who tended to be critical of slavery but to litde effect. They were followed by the revival generation, whose views on slavery paralleled their tiieological stance toward die Great Revival. The conservative post-revival generation was cautious, almost silent, on slavery and sought to consolidate the gains of religion in the maturing society. After about 1830 a fourth generation of ministers, often augmented by personnel and viewpoints from die East, BOOK REVIEWS357 hoped to modernize die society, improve the status of ministers, and reform the institution of slavery. Hence religious attitudes evolved between 1780 and 1830 from abolitionism to amelioration. Bailey is also concerned to portray the declining participation of blacks in the white (actually biracial ) churches over the period. His research has included published and manuscript sources and is enriched by a prosopographical analysis of 1,255 ministers in the region spread among die four generational cohorts. Perhaps it is fair to conclude tiiat in die most general sense his book confirms and documents what had earlier been only suggested on the basis of impressionistic evidence. C. C. Goen's book, Broken Churches, Broken Nation, examines a topic central to die concerns of most readers of this journal, die relationship between the denominational schisms (Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian ) beginning in the late 1830s and die ultimate secession ofthe soudiern states. That there was a connection has long been discussed, beginning before the culmination of secession itself. Goen's purpose is to examine this relationship in careful detail, denomination by denomination. He is careful to say diat die splits in the churches were not the cause ofeventual secession; rather they were die "portent and catalyst" of die "national tragedy" (p. 6). Goen's argument proceeds logically. First he documents die extent to which evangelical Christianity served as a bond of national unity. Then he traces how the three major national denominations became so divided over the issue of slavery diat they broke apart into what were in effect distinctly sectional churches. These divisions in the churches both mirrored and promoted political divisions in die nation. Sectional religious leaders created distorted images of the other section; lay persons grew more accustomed to thinking of diemselves in sectional—not national— terms; and the "model" of die...