Forging a Christian Order: South Carolina Baptists, Race, and Slavery, 1696-1860

Eighteenth-century White Baptists in South Carolina used the Bible to fashion a Christian model of slavery that recognized the humanity of enslaved people while accentuating contrived racial differences. This model evolved from a Christian practice of slavery to one that expounded on slavery as morally right. The American Revolution spurred the associational growth of the denomination, reinforcing the rigid order of the authoritative master and subservient enslaved person.

Format: Hardback
Length: 280 pages
Publication date: 30 June 2023
Publisher: University of Tennessee Press

A significant contribution to the historiography of religion in the U.S. south, Forging a Christian Order challenges and complicates the standard view that eighteenth-century evangelicals exerted both religious and social challenges to the traditional mainstream order, not maturing into middle-class denominations until the nineteenth century. Instead, Kimberly R. Kellison argues, eighteenth-century White Baptists in South Carolina used the Bible to fashion a Christian model of slavery that recognized the humanity of enslaved people while accentuating contrived racial differences. Over time, this model evolved from a Christian practice of slavery to one that expounded on slavery as morally right.

Elites who began the Baptist church in late-1600s Charleston closely valued hierarchy. It is not surprising, then, that from its formation, the church advanced a Christian model of slavery. The American Revolution spurred the associational growth of the denomination, reinforcing the rigid order of the authoritative master and subservient enslaved person, given that the theme of liberty for all threatened slaveholders' way of life. In lowcountry South Carolina in the 1790s, where a White minority population lived in constant anxiety over control of the bodies of enslaved men and women, news of revolt in St. Domingue (Haiti) led to heightened fears of Black violence. Fearful of being associated with antislavery evangelicals and, in turn, of being labeled as an enemy of the planter and urban elite, White ministers orchestrated a major transformation in the Baptist construction of paternalism.

Forging a Christian Order provides a comprehensive examination of the Baptist movement in South Carolina from its founding to the eve of the Civil War and reveals that the growth of the B. The church's commitment to hierarchy and paternalism was deeply ingrained in its theology and practice, and it played a significant role in shaping the social and political landscape of the South. The book also highlights the complex and often contradictory ways in which Baptists negotiated the tensions between their religious beliefs and the realities of slavery.

In conclusion, Forging a Christian Order is a groundbreaking work that offers a fresh perspective on the history of religion in the U.S. south. It challenges the conventional narrative of the eighteenth-century Baptists as passive opponents of slavery and instead demonstrates how they used the Bible to fashion a Christian model of slavery that recognized the humanity of enslaved people while accentuating contrived racial differences. The book's comprehensive examination of the Baptist movement in South Carolina from its founding to the eve of the Civil War provides valuable insights into the complex and often contradictory ways in which Baptists negotiated the tensions between their religious beliefs and the realities of slavery.

Weight: 476g
Dimension: 161 x 237 x 22 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781621907596