The Improbable Era: The South since World War II

VII. Religion & Controversy

VII. Religion Sc Controversy Southern religion like the rest of southern life felt the effects of postwar change, as those forces that challenged traditional political, economic, and social practices challenged also the conservative regional theology with its relative indifference to schemes for earthly betterment . Liberal stirrings among a minority of church members threatened the tranquillity of every denomination and caused rifts in some. Yet religious orthodoxy remained largely triumphant; the South in the 1970s was perhaps as much as ever the nation's Bible Belt. Observers agreed that southerners continued to practice their religion in distinctive ways and with an intensity that exceeded that of other regions. The South remained the most Protestant section of the country. Nine out of ten of the church members of such states as Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina were Protestant. Three out of four were Baptist, Methodist, or Presbyterian. According to Samuel S. Hill, Jr., the regional society was the only one in history dominated by low-church Protestantism.1 Almost half the southern church members were in the "ultraBaptist " Southern Baptist church, a denomination so embracing and influential in the region that it was aptly called "the folk church of the South." With some 35,000 congregations in 1973 and a membership of better than 12.4 million, it was the largest Protestant group in the United States. Refusing to confine its activities to the South, it made significant gains in other parts, especially where southerners settled in the great migrations of the war years and afterward. It remained unshakable in rejecting overtures of reconciliation with the American (Northern) Baptist church or of union with other denominations . Liberal members who in 1951 sought merger with the Federal Council of Churches soon gave up and became Episcopalians. So 120 Religion and Controversy apparently settled among the bulk of the members was the question of merger that it has not been seriously mentioned again in the Baptists ' general convention. Not surprisingly, the most spectacular evangelist of the postwar era, Billy Graham, was an affiliate of the Southern Baptist church. A native of North Carolina, Graham began his religious career as a Presbyterian but later became a Baptist preacher of impressive appearance and forceful address. Tall, slender, handsome in an ecclesiastical way, he captivated his hearers with his piercing stare, a long index finger that he brandished in the manner of "a two-gun sheriff in Dodge City/7 and a sincere and compelling style of southern pulpit oratory. Combining homilies on "Christ and Him crucified" with exhortations against "sin, sex, and Communism," he became nationally famous in 1949 when he caught the eye of the journalist William Randolph Hearst in a Los Angeles revival that converted a number of prominent figures, including one former gangster. Soon Graham was attracting audiences so large that they could be accommodated in nothing smaller than athletic stadiums. Linking religion with patriotism , calling for a penitent and redeemed America to sanctify its role of world leadership, Graham became virtually the White House chaplain during President Nixon's first administration.2 Almost 4.5 million southerners in 1970 were members of the United Methodist church. The long regional Methodist schism that began in the 1840s over slavery had ended in 1939. But formal reconciliation did not bring an end to differences; the Southeastern Methodist Jurisdiction continued to resist further national assimilation and guarded its remaining autonomy among the five major jurisdictions of the church. Strong reactions to the controversial social issues of the post-World War II years combined with the theological conservatism of most southern communicants to distinguish the regional branch from the rest of the body in all but form. Southern delegates to the General Convention usually represented the most vehement group of dissenting voices against the adoption of liberal measures. The regionally oriented Churches of Christ claimed an even faster rate of growth than that of the Southern Baptists. In 1970 they had a membership of about 2.5 million, with their major concentrations in Tennessee and Texas. Their strength, like that of the Southern Baptists , resulted from their refusal to compromise with the liberal ten- Religion and Controversy 121. dencies of other religious groups and their emphasis upon congregational structure, a point that appealed to the ingrained southern preference for local autonomy. Whereas Baptist congregational purity was somewhat compromised, at least in form, by the centralizing policies of the regional and state conventions and...