Southern Religion and Christian Diversity in the Twentieth Century by Wayne Flynt (review)

Southern Religion and Christian Diversity in the Twentieth Century is a compilation of previously published articles and recent lectures by Wayne Flynt, historian of southern religion and professor emeritus at Auburn University. Flynt began his lengthy career focused on poor white southerners but soon became a chief contributor to the emerging field of southern religious history, concentrating primarily on his home state, Alabama, and his natal denomination, Southern Baptist. He published his first article on these topics in 1968, and they remain the central focus of his scholarship.

The title, like many, is deceptively general. The works here rarely engage southern Christianity broadly or examine diversity. Although southern Methodists and Presbyterians are treated, they appear in dedicated chapters, and only one essay addresses white southern evangelicals as a distinct group. Flynt admits in the preface that the volume does not treat non-evangelicals or African American churches. Thus, his consideration of Christian diversity is not comprehensive and is instead limited to a few pages in the later chapters where recent demographic changes are briefly mentioned. Flynt states that his central thesis is one "of religious diversity embedded within seemingly impervious religious orthodoxy" (p. xi). But of the fifteen essays, only two fail to include or focus on Southern Baptists, and nine explore the Social Gospel movement and Progressive reform in the South. It seems Flynt's focus is twofold: how white southern evangelicals, primarily Southern Baptists, worked out their own version of the Social Gospel in the early twentieth century and how the denomination moved from its traditional stance on the separation of church and state to engage politically and establish its values in the public realm. In his introduction to the second article, Flynt explains that his "disagreement" with historians of religion and C. Vann Woodward on the limits of the Social Gospel in the South heavily influenced his own scholarly interests. This focus is clearly visible in the essays he has chosen to highlight his career.

Scholars interested in southern religion will find rich material conveniently included here. Flynt is a meticulous researcher interested in biographical narratives. The essays reveal the intertwined relationship of politics, reform, and evangelical religion in detail. Flynt uses his autobiography combined with the life story of Rev. Charles Bell to highlight the risks and limitations of fighting racial discrimination in twentieth-century Alabama. While Southern Baptists easily supported prohibition and came to protest child labor, Ku Klux Klan activity and social pressure prevented engagement with the central issue of the Jim Crow South. Scholars of women's history will find that Flynt's essay on Southern Baptist women foreshadows later scholarship on southern women's involvement in Progressive reform. He also presents the first succinct overview of Southern Baptist women's involvement in reform and mission activities along with their fight against the restrictions they faced in the denomination.

The final three chapters are previously unpublished lectures where Flynt examines how Southern Baptists transformed themselves into a critical political force in the late twentieth century. Flynt outlines how they moved from their traditional role as advocates for the separation of church and state to become a major influence on southern political culture. Given Flynt's deep knowledge of Southern Baptist history and the denomination's impact on the region and the nation, the essay on the transformation of their ideals is, perhaps, the most illuminating of his recent work. After tracing the history of Baptists' long commitment to religious liberty, Flynt examines two Alabama-born judges, U.S. Supreme Court justice Hugo L. Black and Alabama State Supreme Court justice Roy Moore. The contrasting biographies reveal how, as Flynt puts it, Baptists "jettison[ed] one of [their] founding principles" (p. 290). Black drew on his Baptist heritage when he wrote the majority opinion on school prayer in Engel v. Vitale (1962); Moore did the same when he defied a Supreme...