RELG 374: Religion in the South
Professor: Kevin Lewis
tel: 777-2561
email: kevin@sc.edu
Office: Rutledge 325
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Generic syllabus
Office hours: will be posted
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“Next Sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody a horseback. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kep them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching - all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith, and good works, and free grace, and prefore-ordestination, and I don't know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.”
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COURSE DESCRIPTION:
The South is "another land," in the words of W.J. Cash, a place of "haunted childhood" in the words of Lillian Smith. Its vivid and varied religious life compels description and appraisal. Religion in Southern history is marked by extraordinary homogeneity and by notable diversity. There are many Souths. There is but one South. Here new traditions have been forged. Here older traditions have been extended and renewed.
Here, as elsewhere, religion shapes and in turn is shaped by regional culture-producing distinctive local Christianities (Judaisms, Islams, etc.). Hence our interest in the Southern "mind" and imagination, and in the region's long cultural isolation, its tragic history, "peculiar" heritage, politics, literature, geography, and weather.
Method of inquiry: eclectic. How different is religion in the South? What are the flavors, who are the players? How has the drama evolved over time. What are the beliefs (and behaviors) of different churches and faiths? How has religious life been affected by race? Does the South have it's own "civil religion?" Is the Lost Cause a religion?
Students will receive 30% of the information in this course from lectures, 10% from discussion, 35% from the readings, and 25% from the assignments and tests
COURSE LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Students who successfully complete this course should be able to display broad, elementary knowledge of the several faith traditions historically engaged with Southern culture, and craft a research paper on some particular regional expression of religious life, broadly conceived.
REQUIRED TEXTS:
Lillian Smith, "Trembling Earth" chapter from Killers of the Dream (hand-out)
Samuel S. Hill, ed., Religion (Vol I, The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture)
William Faulkner, Light in August
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
SUGGESTED READINGS:(on Reserve in Cooper Library):
Marion Aldridge & Kevin Lewis, eds., The Changing Shape of Protestantism in the South
Will Campbell, Brother to a Dragonfly
W.J. (Wilbur) Cash, The Mind of the South
James McBride Dabbs, Haunted by God
Alonzo Johnson and Paul Jersild, eds., Ain't Gonna Lay My 'Ligion Down
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Charles Lippy, ed., Religion in South Carolina (one chapter by Lewis)
Flannery O'Connor, "The Displaced Person" and anything else she wrote
Lillian Smith, Killers of the Dream
Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood
REQUIREMENTS:
Attendance expected. Class participation (5%) important. Readings to be completed for discussion on the days indicated
Mid-term
Quiz on Light in August
8-10-page Paper
Final Exam
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25%
10%
30%
30%
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Grading will be on a 100-point scale as follows:
A = 90-100 / B+ = 87-89/ B = 80-86 / C+ = 77-79 / C = 70-76 / D+ = 67-69 / D= 60-66 / F = 60 or less
CLASS SCHEDULE:
| week 1 |
Introduction, Methods, Issues
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| Discuss hand-out chapter from Killers of the Dream
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| week 2 |
Religion: Native American Religion (100-104), Protestant Episcopal Church
(204-206), Sacred Places (209-211), Preacher, White (118-121), Protestantism (121-125), South as Zion (164-167), Bible Belt (171-172),
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| week 3 |
Religion: Calvinism (44-49), Presbyterian Church in the US (200-203), James Henley Thornwell (218-219), Ethnic Protestantism (62-65), Theological Orthodoxy (152-155), Moravians (197-198), Shakers (212-214)
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| week 4 |
Religion: Revivalism (132-134), Frontier Religion (69-73), Restorationist Christianity (126-132), Appalachian Religion (22-24), Alexander Campbell (173-174), Southern Baptist Convention (214-216), Will Campbell (174-76)
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| week 5 |
Religion: Francis Asbury (170-171), Methodist Episcopal Church, South (192- 194), James Cannon (178-179), Folk Religion (65-69), Country Churches (49-54), Pentecostalism ( 107-110), Serpent Handlers (211-212), Video: Serpent Handlers
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| week 6 |
Religion: Black Religion (35-39), Preacher, Black Folk (114-118), National Baptists (198-199), Religious Diversity (58-62), Spirituality (143-147), Asian Religions (28-34)
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| week 7 |
Religion: Jewish Religious Life (81-85), Roman Catholicism (135-139). John England (182), Thomas Merton (191-192), Latino Religion (85-89), O’Connor and Religion (199-200), Video: "The Displaced Person" (Flannery O'Connor)
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| week 8 |
Mid-Term Exam
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| Spring Break
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| week 9 |
Cultural Perspective: Cash's The Mind of the South, Lillian Smith
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| Cultural Perspective: (Try C.W. Wilson's Baptized in Blood on Reserve)
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| week 10 | Lost Cause (412-3), Literature and Religion (406-12), Thomas Dixon(208-9)
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| Light in August
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| week 11 |
Light in August -- Quiz
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| Light in August
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| week 12 | Fundamentalism (275-8), W.A. Criswell (187)
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| Videos (selected footage): Bill Moyers, Bob Jones, 1st Baptist Dallas
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| week 13 | William Jennings Bryan (119-20), Scopes (677), Scopes Trial (677-8), Evolution Controversy (245-7), Video: "Creation Science on Trial" (Little Rock, Arkansas, 1980)
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| Liberals, Progressives, Civil Rights: James McBride Dabbs (191), Committee of Southern Churchmen (180-1), Will Campbell (128-9), Civil Rights Movement (172-5), Black Ministerial Protest Leadership (106-8), M.L. King (393-4)
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| week 14 | South Carolina (704-20), Recent South (859-64), Women in Religion(845-51). Try Religion in South Carolina, ed. Charles Lippy (Reserve)
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| Paper Due
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| FINAL EXAM |
back to Lewis page
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