Southern Religion

In my speech at the Florida League of the South State Conference, I highlighted this map from The New York Times of “where Christian conservatives live by county”:

where-do-christian-conservatives-live

I wasn’t satisfied with the amount of time that I spent on religion in that speech. Because racial identity has faded under the withering hostility of “mainstream” American popular culture, religion is the elephant in the room of what remains of an enduring Southern people in the 21st century. I’ve done some more digging into the subject and have turned up this excerpt from The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Religion:

“Protestantism can be classified into four major families – liturgical, classical (or Reformation), evangelical, and radical. In the South, the evangelical family predominates. Even Presbyterianism, which falls within the classical category, takes on features of evangelicalism. Radical Protestantism – Mennonite, Amish, Quaker – has left its stamp on regional forms but has had very little acceptance in the South.”

That’s an understatement.

“Three feature stand out in making the religion of the South different from the pattern that prevail elsewhere. (1) The forms that are common in the region are relatively homogeneous. The range of popular options has been historically quite narrow. (2) The South is the only society in Christendom in which the evangelical family of Christians is dominant. Evangelicalism’s dominance is decisive in making the South the “religious region” that it is and in marking off the South from patterns, practices, and perspectives prevalent in other parts of America. (3) A set of four common convictions occupies a normative southern religious position. Movements and denominations in the South are judged for authenticity in the popular mind by how well they support these beliefs: (a) the Bible is the sole reference point of belief and practice; (b) direct and dynamic access to the Lord is open to all; (c) morality is defined primarily in individualistic and interpersonal terms; and (d) worship is informal, loose structuring and spontaneity being preferred over prescription.”

During the colonial era, most Southerners were Anglicans, nominal Anglicans, or Presbyterians, but that changed during the Great Awakening and Second Great Awakening, which led to an explosion in the numbers of Baptists and Methodists who have been the predominant force in Southern religion ever since. In particular, the relative importance of baptism vs. Communion also makes the South distinct:

“At no other time and place in the history of Christendom has baptism been elevated to such eminence – and Communion so deemphasized. … Communion rates well below baptism in the evangelical-revivalistic religion that pervades the American South.”

As a Lutheran, this sounds strange to me, but I have little experience with evangelical circles. I was raised as a nominal Methodist, but science loomed far larger in my childhood than religion.

Here’s another map which draws a sharp division between Baptist Oklahoma and Missouri and Catholic Kansas:

imrs

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

53 Comments

  1. I was recently told that the most self hating Whites in America are in Iowa. I’ve never been there so I can’t say whether or not this is true. Worse than Minnesota? That’s hard to believe.

  2. Sometimes we know/feel, deep inside, that our faith is not factual, and yet this faith plays a crucial role in our ethnic identity. So we play along for our benefit, and the benefit of our children.

  3. Jew-

    Pardon me, but my faith is actual, historical, racial and cultural. The Four Compass Points of Truth.

    It is the faith of Christendom, my family, the undivided Roman Empire, and the culmination of the Old Testament Covenant, superceded by the Incarnation of the Son of God, and the calling in of the Tribes of Israel.

    But, in deference to this study, HW, I would posit the greatest strength of the South, is also its greatest weakness, and the antichrists know it.

    To quote:
    “(a) the Bible is the sole reference point of belief and practice; (b) direct and dynamic access to the Lord is open to all; (c) morality is defined primarily in individualistic and interpersonal terms; and (d) worship is informal, loose structuring and spontaneity being preferred over prescription.”

    From an Orthodox, catholic, patristic position, let’s deconstruct these four antipodes of the Faith.
    a) The Bible apart from her people, and the covenanted nations/tribes it was written by and for, is a document for historical research, not a means to the grace of the H.S. As some have said, ‘The Bible can only be understood by the Church, because it was written in the bosom of the Church.’ Or, ‘the Bible is like a lamp, unplugged from the source of the current- i.e., the Holy Spirit; which only is conferred by the hands of the Apostolic succession, no matter how many people may deny such a thing exists.
    b) Direct and dynamic access to all? Then the universalists are correct, and St. Anselm, St. Augustine, St. Prosper of Aquitaine, Calvin, Luther, Chrysostom, et al. are wrong. Christianity is an ELECTING faith, and it is GOD that elects those whom He shall save- and the salvation is normally only in the Church. “Extra ecclesiam nulla salus” – Outside the Church (the TRUE Church) there is no salvation- has been the final statement, since it was first uttered by St. Cyprian in the 3rd Century.
    c) Morality is defined corporately, culturally, and covenantally. There is no such thing as ‘private morality.’ The Ten Commands (not suggestions) were a covenantal, tribal ratification by a greater Monarch on a lesser people (God v. Israel); it is also a perpetual covenant, that can only be broken by an unfaithful people, but never by God.
    Read “Theonomy in Christian Ethics’ if you care to, by Dr. G. Bahnsen.
    d) “worship is informal, loose structuring and spontaneity being preferred over prescription.” Really? Seriously? The Didache, a ‘manual of how to do liturgy’ dates from within the first hundred years of the Church’s existence, in Anno Domini terms. In it, we find a)Liturgical, b) corporate, c) Eucharistic, and d) priestly ministry function- in short EVERYTHING that this statement ‘d’ above, denies!!!

    YHWH God proscribed EVERYTHING for ritual, worship and decorum in the OT, and you Prots seriously think that it was all chucked over at Pentecost? Hmmm. Ever read Heb. 13:10. No, thought not. An ALTAR – upon which the sacrifice of Calvary is made present (re-present-ed) every day.

    Sorry, youse guys gotta do better than this, if you want to save Western Civ. or the USA.

  4. Oh yes. I consider Roman Catholic-schism to merely be a more bizarre form of Protestantism, and no legitimate contender for the One True Church, than the Mormons, these days. I mean, anyone old enough (like me) to remember the days BEFORE “Vatican Ewww”?

    Just to be clear.

  5. @Hunter Wallace

    1. The “three features” you quoted that makes the Christianity of the South different represent the Blackening and Zionization of the old Dixie religion. The Blackening, this actually started with the California Pentecostal movement – this birthed the first integrated worship services, based on the “Azuza Street Revival” and it also featured “charismatics,” which can be seen as a kind of Black voo-doo Africanization. “Tongues” may have existed before, but in Pentecostalism it most certainly had the flavor of African derived voo-doo. Let’s be frank, Billy Graham – himself a leader in the integration movement – held “tent revivals” that were not particularly different than carnival shows.

    2. The Pentecostal movement’s most “intellectual” branch was Scofield Bible/”Christian” Zionism. The leaders of the “Christian Zionism” movement – from 80 years ago to John Hagee last week – really do represent some of the most shallow and “showman-like” (read: cynical) of religious trends. This meta-sized in the 1980s with TV preachers – like Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, Jimmy Swaggart, and Jerry Fallwell – that became national jokes for a reason.

    3. As the “Church governance” went from high (Anglican, Presbyterian) to low (Baptist, Methodist) it became more and more just a business. This degenerated the most into the modern “mega-churches” that are little more than TV celebrity pastors/pastor’s wives that have two things in common: fanatical Zionism and media exposure.

    4. True – Dixie never adopted “radical Protestantism” of the Quaker type – they DID, in fact, adopt something maybe even worse – low church, half-black, voodoo style TV-broadcasting biracial “Christianity” that worships a very Jewish and Zionist version of “Christianity” that is UNIQUE in Christendom.

    Mormonism couldn’t even do that – not even Jehovah’s Witnesses could have pulled that off.

    But the Southern Baptist Convention – increasingly pro-Black and pro-Zionist – did.

    The end result? South Carolina – SOUTH CAROLINA! – re-elects a homosexual Republican that brags about his tolerance for “trans-genders” and how he gets more money from Zionist Jews than anyone else.

    Yep, it’s the elephant in the room. This is what “occupation” looks like.

  6. Hunter, I can’t remember where I saw it. But I saw a documentary where some school girl from Iowa said that she felt cheated because she didn’t grow up with blacks or know any. She doesn’t know how lucky she is. The transplant kids in school, here in Texas, found out right quick that the nogs couldn’t have cared less that their great great grandaddy fought in some Iowa or Illinois outfit during the WSI. To niggers, crackers are crackers, even if they’re Yankees. And the stupid Commie/Libs will never figure that out.

  7. We’re going to address Pentecostals, Judeo-Christianity, and megachurches in greater depth here. Right off the bat though, Southern churches aren’t nearly as integrated as you suggest.

    There are religious leaders like Russell Moore who would like to see the SBC become more integrated, but this is more of a plea than a daily reality on Sunday.

  8. As for South Carolina, the militarization of that state has more to do with federal military spending. Virginia is even worse. The deformity goes back to the “Gun Belt” that was created in the South during WW1, WW2, and the Cold War.

  9. It’s a good thing that Southerners are reading the Bible.

    Just look at American Catholics: you would think that Catholics would be more traditional than Protestants, but just the opposite is true in the age of mass media. Because they don’t read the Bible as much as evangelical Protestants and rely more on the clergy to define Christianity, Catholics have been far less resistant to Americanization.

    Of course, the downside of this is that you get a 1,000 different interpretations of what the Bible really says, but I would argue that people who read the Bible on a regular basis are more resistant to the gospels of TV and Hollywood movies.

  10. ‘Just look at American Catholics: you would think that Catholics would be more traditional than Protestants, but just the opposite is true in the age of mass media. Because they don’t read the Bible as much as evangelical Protestants and rely more on the clergy to define Christianity, Catholics have been far less resistant to Americanization.’

    Very true for Roman Catholicks, Sir – but, not for those of the Eastern Catholick Church.

  11. We have the worst form of Protestantism imaginable, Judeo-Christianity. Besides deification of Israel and modern Jewry its other major claim to fame is the rapture doctrine. Basically do nothing but sit on your butt as society deteriorates and wait for God to rescue you. Why God would want to rescue such a lazy and apathetic people is never considered. They never want to talk about the verse whereby Christ instructs us to occupy until, he comes. One cannot occupy if one has been raptured off. Likewise his analogy of salt, which in primitive times prevented deterioration of meant. He told us to be the salt of the world. Salt prevents decay. Is society decaying? Need we ask. Finally Judeo-Christians speak of the gospel of salvation as Christ’s essential message when in reality it was the Gospel of the Kingdom of which salvation was only a part.

  12. What difference does it make if Southerners go to church, if the church spends its spare time and money building churches in Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean, or in aiding inner city or immigrant children, while ignoring those in need locally? I see that all the time in small towns. Building huts for Africans is a badge of honor for many Christians in the South.

  13. In the Jim Crow era, black missionaries went to Africa to convert their fellow blacks for many of the same reasons. It was easier to flee overseas and convert the heathen than to confront problems here at home.

  14. The word of God is available to anyone and everyone, it’s not meant to be locked away and only read by a few men who other men have deemed “important.” Salvation is available and attainable for every human being that walks this planet through Christ Jesus, who sacrificed himself for the sins of all of mankind.

    The very essence of wickedness in Jewry– the core of it– is the fact that they turned Him over to be killed and continue to deny Him. In doing this, they have turned away from God, become minions of Satan, and now, 2,000 years later, are fighting a demonic war against God and His people. This is the prism through which our current plight must be viewed.

    Those denominations that rely on pomp, grandiosity, and mindless rituals instead of straightforward Bible-based learning/worship practice an empty form of the Christian faith, and this is why so many of their adherents take such a lukewarm, unenthusiastic view towards Christ and Christianity. There was nothing unenthusiastic about the faith of 1st-century Christians, I can assure you.

    The phrase “organized religion” has a negative connotation for a good reason– it suggests that the very essence of purity, the Word of God (religion), must somehow be “organized”– interpreted, subverted– by men. This very notion is offensive to anyone who believes in the basic fallibility and sinfulness of mankind, which is most people– believers and non-believers alike. Bottom line: don’t put your faith in men, whether they be televangelists, priests in pointy hats, or “saints” of some bygone era. Men are all flawed sinners. We must put our faith in God and His Word, period.

    I believe that is the essence of Bible-based Southern Protestantism, and it should be noted that the South is still teeming with right-thinking, vibrant Christian communities while the faith sadly withers away in other parts of the country and the world (Catholic Ireland, anyone??).

    Christianity is not some boring, lifeless belief system that simply requires you to repeat after your priest and say ten Hail Marys in penance. It’s an exciting, almost overwhelming concept once you fully accept the truth of Christ’s message. I hope that anyone reading this who does not fully understand what I’m talking about will investigate further. Just pick up a Bible and start reading…Paul’s letter to the Romans is a great place to begin.

  15. The more I see the quixotic ramblings declaring that religion and “Southernness” are able to withstand the racial suicide and anti-White attacks that have done nothing but increase on their watch, the more I’m convinced that National Socialism represented a transcendence(evolution) that “faith-based” ideologies will never be able to realize.

    • I don’t recall saying that above.

      Quite the contrary. I explained how Southern culture evolved as a two way interaction between the land and the people until roughly the 1950s.

      After the 1950s, the rise of the mass media – radio, film, television – introduced a third factor and disrupted the local production of culture. Modernization is a trend that is eroding traditional cultures all across the world, not just in the South. That’s also true of France, Germany, Ireland and so on because film and television reach across borders.

      In the 1960s, the federal government used force to impose integration on the South. Racism was declared taboo and was made punishable by law under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

      Because Southern Whites are denied a positive sense of racial identity, religion became more important from the 1970s onwards, which is all we are unpacking here.

  16. Feric Jagger, very well stated! Salvation is earthly and not eternal life. The gospel of salvation is not Biblical. It is the Gospel of The Kingdom. Useless to try and convince the jew worshipers of this. They do not read their Bibles, they listen to their pastors. My pastor says this, my pastor says that. I ask them what does God’s word declare? In the Judeo-Christian church, their pastor is their god. Christianity does not need to be prefaced with anything, unless it is something else masquerading as Christianity.

  17. Light Division, you’ve got to get that salvation stuff out of your head.
    Rom 9:3 For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh:
    Rom 9:4 Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises;
    Rom 9:5 Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.
    Rom 9:6 Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel:
    Rom 9:7 Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called.
    Rom 9:8 That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.
    People do not chose.
    Rom 9:9 For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sara shall have a son.
    Rom 9:10 And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac;
    Rom 9:11 (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;)
    Rom 9:12 It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.
    Rom 9:13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
    Rom 9:14 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.
    Rom 9:15 For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
    Rom 9:16 So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.
    Tares cannot decide to become wheat. there are vessels made for honor and vessels made for dishonor.

  18. Mat 10:5 These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not:
    Mat 10:6 But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

    Mat 15:23 But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us.
    Mat 15:24 But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

    The jews are not Hebrews, not Israelites, they are usurpers.
    White western man are the Israel scattered. The whole world was the Roman world of that day. Not the whole planet.

    1Pe 1:1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,
    1Pe 1:2 Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.

    Jam 1:1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.

    Romans was to the Israelites in Rome. Corinthians to the Israelites in Corinth. Galations to the Israelites in Gaul.
    The Gospel of Jesus Christ has nothing to do with negroes, Asians, or mongrels. The Bible is an Israel Book. Israel only.

  19. “In the Jim Crow era, black missionaries went to Africa to convert their fellow blacks for many of the same reasons. It was easier to flee overseas and convert the heathen than to confront problems here at home.”

    I think we’ve gone way beyond the unwillingness to confront issues at home. Many white churches today support missionaries in Africa and Latin America and do their helping in immigrant and minority communities, rather than helping out locally. I’ll even go a step further and say that there is something of a view among many that a white in need of help is something of a defective type, and not really worthy of help. In a sense, not much has changed.

  20. Todd says:

    ‘ I’ll even go a step further and say that there is something of a view among many that a white in need of help is something of a defective type, and not really worthy of help.’

    Yes, that is the underlying belief.

  21. That’s the worldview that is propagated in the public schools, in the seminaries, in the universities, and especially in the mass media. The churches are just one example of an institution that is conforming to mainstream norms and values. The Southern Baptist Convention, for example, discovered that “racism” was a sin in the 1990s.

    The military is another example. It started with racial integration in 1947, but it has expanded from there into incorporating women and homosexuals into the military. Some Western countries even allow transsexuals to serve in the military. Social justice has nothing to do with the military, but it has become an arena for it.

    The primary difference between the present and the past is that before the 1950s we weren’t living in an age of mass media. Whereas before churches were able to exert some degree of control over the moral life of their communities, now that churches have to compete with values inculcated in the public schools, and above all the values that are spread through the media.

    There weren’t even many mass circulation newspapers or magazines in the South in the 1930s and local newspapers were controlled by segregationist editors. Now, television is beamed into almost every household. Everyone has a radio which exposes them to popular music. Everyone is taught the same narratives about the past in public schools. Netflix puts the latest Hollywood movies a few mouse clicks away, etc.

  22. HW

    Iowa’s founding white population were largely New England Puritans, then with latter immigration from Scandinavia. Especially in eastern Iowa. Imagine Minnesota mashed up with Massachusetts.

  23. I see your point about modern media, Hunter. We sort of hit on this in the ‘Blood and Soil’ thread, but there was always harsh view of certain types of whites in the South. White Trash isn’t exactly a term that drips with paternalism.

  24. In the 1920s, the South was still an overwhelmingly rural, agricultural land. The population was more widely dispersed. The states and local communities controlled the public schools, not the federal government. Attendance wasn’t yet mandatory in lots of places.

    Most Southerners didn’t go to college. They didn’t read mass circulation national magazines and newspapers. Insofar as they listened to the radio, they tuned into local evangelist preachers. They got their news from the local newspaper which was controlled by a segregationist editor, not a corporate conglomerate like Gannett.

    Until the Second World War, Hollywood was more hesitant about challenging the established racial mores. Google the Hays Code. Television spread across America in the 1950s.

  25. The class structure of the Old South was radically permeable by European standards. Generally speaking, it was a raw, frontier society dominated by the nouveau rich, and that was reflected in the leadership of men like Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun.

  26. There have always been elites and people who look down on the lower classes. That’s something which has gotten worse in our times because it is no longer mediated by a common culture or feeling of racial solidarity.

  27. Interesting that “Conservative Christians” seems to mean basically Southern Baptists and Mormons, since the former would mostly deny that the latter are Christians at all.

    Also, that map by county gives a false impression of the relative strengths of those groups; I think the population density in Mormon country is considerably sparser.

  28. The Southern Baptist should be renamed “The New Negro Baptist”. And their membership numbers are horribly inflated also.

  29. @Griffin…

    ‘The class structure of the Old South was radically permeable by European standards. Generally speaking, it was a raw, frontier society dominated by the nouveau rich, and that was reflected in the leadership of men like Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun.’

    A great observation.

  30. @Griffin…

    ‘Because Southern Whites are denied a positive sense of racial identity, religion became more important from the 1970s onwards, which is all we are unpacking here.’

    Yes, Sir : and another proxy has been ‘Historical Preservation’.

  31. @Griffin…

    ‘That might be changing soon now that Christianity is under siege like Jim Crow was in the 1960s.’

    That’s a very very strong statement, Sir. Why do you think there is a correlation in their degrees? Admittedly, I have given the issue of anti-Christian direction of the ‘American Society’ plenty of thought, but, none in regard to a comparision with Jim Crow.

  32. In the next ten years, I see traditional Christianity being under attack in the same way that Jim Crow was dismantled. “Homophobia” is already being treated as the equivalent of racism.

  33. Mormons are a financial and political powerhouse in Utah, Nevada and Idaho. Virtually all counties in Utah are controlled – in some degree – by the LDS. Utah is similar to the South in that outsiders are not welcome, and it is not a hidden sentiment.

  34. @Griffin…

    ‘In the next ten years, I see traditional Christianity being under attack in the same way that Jim Crow was dismantled. “Homophobia” is already being treated as the equivalent of racism.’

    Okay, so, as of now it is not quite under the level of attack, but, you see it coming. Well, after giving it some thought, today, I agree – it is not being attacked like Jim Crow was – yet…

    A very good analogy of homophobia to racism. In fact, by using such an analogy, it is not hard to predict that, over the course of the coming decades, every single social border, not murder, rape, or outright theft, and not already overcome, will be villified.

    I wonder if it will progress to where it did in Germany, where, for a while, one could marry one’s German Shepherd? Where is the end of the line?

    Thank you for your thoughts, Sir. Have a good night.

  35. @Thomas…

    ‘Mormons are a financial and political powerhouse in Utah, Nevada and Idaho. Virtually all counties in Utah are controlled – in some degree – by the LDS. Utah is similar to the South in that outsiders are not welcome, and it is not a hidden sentiment.’

    That is interesting, and, perhaps even more interesting, to me, is that Mormons seem to fly below the leftist radar. I wonder why that is?

  36. When Christianity, We’re talking mainstream Christianity here, is attacked as was Jim Crow, it will roll over and expose it’s belly to be gutted. The pastors will tell their flocks that it is the Godly to obey their government. Even an ungodly government. The church pastors in South Africa LED their people to hand over THEIR country, because there as here, big churches are controlled by big government. Church or so called Christian organizations are LEADING the displacement campaign. Henry Ford, in the 1920’s discovered that 80% of the seminary students were jews. What do we suppose that % is now.

  37. Mormons fly below the leftist radar because they are not Christian. The book of Mormon is their bible. John Smith was a nut.

  38. “I wonder if it will progress to where it did in Germany, where, for a while, one could marry one’s German Shepherd? Where is the end of the line?”

    Maybe it’ll have a forced end like Weimar Germany? Worse things could happen.

  39. “The class structure of the Old South was radically permeable by European standards. Generally speaking, it was a raw, frontier society dominated by the nouveau rich, and that was reflected in the leadership of men like Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun.”

    That’s mostly true. I suppose it’s possible that Andrew Jackson could have risen like Napoleon in Europe, but he probably would have remained on the outside due to his birth. There are plenty of examples of commoners rising above their station in Old Europe, but it was usually due to technical ability or military prowess.

    I’m not trying to knock you, or to be a thorn in your side, Hunter. I just think that many white Southerners are lost to our cause because the past wasn’t all that great for them, either, and that is an issue that should be considered. They may be bought off by the regime, their children purposely ill-educated and lost in bread-and-circus entertainment, but that’s still better than what many could hope for in the past.

    I understand that humans will always divide socially, racially and along class lines. All of that is just natural, in my opinion. Still, I think we have to look at the fact that white Southerners are mocked constantly in the media and blamed for everything that’s bad in the U.S. (even when they mostly didn’t benefit or make any policy decisions) and they still don’t get upset about flag changes, desecration of Confederate graves or the complete destruction of their livelihoods, schools, neighborhoods and towns by federal legislation or the ideology of the U.S. elites that is being forced on them.

    These are hearts and minds that should be up for grabs, but aren’t.

  40. The Old South was never like Europe, much less Medieval Europe, in its social structure.

    Like I said above, it was a frontier society, with perhaps the exception of the Virginia Tidewater which was “old” by American standards. Otherwise, families moved to the western frontier, where they rose or fell just like in the North. John Randolph, for example, complained about Virginia’s old families being eclipsed by upstart cotton planters in the booming Deep South.

    Whites in Alabama and Mississippi and other states like Arkansas and Tennesssee always had the right to vote. Their elected leaders were nothing like European nobles. Even in South Carolina, which was the only Southern state that restricted the right to vote, its leading statesmen in the antebellum era was John C. Calhoun.

    Poor whites settled in the mountains, the hill country, the pine barrens and so on because of real estate speculators who priced them out of the more fertile river valleys. It was a society created by capitalism that was hardly any different than the one that exists today where wealthy whites snap up prime land.

    In Europe, Napoleon’s rise was made possible by the French Revolution which shattered the Old Regime. Andrew Jackson’s generation grew up in a world in the aftermath of the American Revolution. And it wasn’t just Andrew Jackson, but most of his contemporaries who rose from a similar background like his protege, James Polk.

    Here in Alabama, men like William Lowndes Yancey and his mentor, Dixon Hall Lewis, were hardly European nobles with landed estates populated by serfs. To be sure, there were poor White people, but poor White people also existed in the North. Again, it was nothing like contemporary Russia.

    Class consciousness exists in all societies. Rich Yankees looked down on the Irish. Rich Southerners looked down on “dirt eaters” and corn pone eating white trash. In both the North and South, families which had been white trash rose in the social scale, and elite families fell in social status, which is one reason why upwardly mobile whites were so obsessed with ostentatiously displaying wealth and embellishing their pedigree.

  41. As per the most recent post, Americans today are so self-absorbed that the nuclear family is collapsing. A people who neglect their own children and who dump their elderly parents in nursing homes aren’t likely to reflect much on their distant forebearers.

  42. @Griffin…

    ‘As per the most recent post, Americans today are so self-absorbed that the nuclear family is collapsing. A people who neglect their own children and who dump their elderly parents in nursing homes aren’t likely to reflect much on their distant forebears.’

    BRILLIANTLY STATED, SIR; AND, SADLY, A DAMNING PROGNOSIS…

  43. “It’s a good thing that Southerners are reading the Bible.” – Hunter Wallace

    ROFL! Really? Which one? There are literally dozens of various “translations” that have been published over the years which have either excised large portions of the original text of the King James Version or simply re-worded phrases in Orwellian fashion in order to change the meaning of verse under the guise of “modernity.”

    These various “translations” have likewise spawned a host of hate-crazed creatures such as Barrack Hussain Obama’s spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright (now retired), whose firebrand form of “liberation theology” is increasingly peddled to the brown and black masses throughout the United States and abroad as well as radical, home grown, apocalyptic Christians who want to bring about the Prince of Darkness and the end of the world in order to usher in the Second Coming of Christ.

    Indeed, it’s these Armageddonists who constitute the greatest threat to our very existence given their frightful eschatology and incessant worship of Murder Inc. — Israel — as well as their espousal of racial integration and the genocide of their own race via race-mixing. According to these folks, “we’re all God’s children.”

    Brad, you and your small band of true believers are unwilling to admit that the majority of these lunatic, Jew-worshipping “Christians” can be found south of the Mason-Dixon line and thus constitute the single greatest obstacle to your dream of Dixie reborn. Not only are these people the most virulent supporters of Pax Americana, the Judeo-American empire, they literally equate Jews and Israel with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

    The first official tampering of The Holy Bible which gave momentum to these heretics began with the publication of the Scofield Bible in 1917. The author, Cyrus Scofield, was a swindler, con-man and convicted felon who abandoned his wife and children and later was actively promoted by his behind-the-scene Jewish handlers as a “biblical authority” in order to sabotage the teachings of traditional Western Christianity via the publication of his annotated “study” Bible.

    It was through the publication of this fraudulent document that Christian Zionism and Dispensationalist theology was spawned.

    The end result of these shenanigans has been the systematic sabotaging of Western Christian doctrine with heresies that are now omnipresent throughout the South.

    Alas, the Church finds itself in a complete state of Apostasy! Since the close of World War Two, Christianity has been supplanted by various forms of ‘Judeo-Christianity’ and the old faith of the South is no more.

    • I’m about to leave here to get on the road for Birmingham, but I will note that Cyrus Scofield was a Yankee and that Fundamentalism was an early 20th century cultural export from the Northern states. In fact, I was just reading about this last night. I will have more to say about it soon.

    • Cyrus Scofield was a Yankee who was born in Michigan. His ancestors were New England Puritans. When the War Between the States broke out, he was visiting his sisters in Tennessee and was conscripted into the Confederate Army:

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._I._Scofield

      By 1861 Scofield was living with relatives in Lebanon, Tennessee. At the beginning of the American Civil War, the 17-year-old Scofield enlisted as a private in the 7th Tennessee Infantry, C.S.A., and his regiment fought at Cheat Mountain, Seven Pines, and Antietam. In 1862, after spending a month in Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, Scofield successfully petitioned for a discharge.[3] Scofield then returned to Lebanon and was conscripted again into Confederate service. Ordered to McMinnville, Tennessee, Scofield deserted and escaped behind Union lines in Bowling Green, Kentucky.[4] After taking the Union oath of allegiance, Scofield was allowed safe passage to St. Louis, Missouri, where he settled.

      http://www.gospeltruth.net/scofield.htm

      In 1855, Laura married a young dentist, William Eames. They moved to Lebanon, Tennessee. Cyrus’s sister, Victorine, was listed in the 1860 Census in Tennessee, as living with Laura and William.

      Cyrus was not listed in the census records in either state. By April 1861, when Fort Sumter was fired upon, Cyrus was visiting his sisters in Tennessee. He never returned to Michigan.

      Though not yet eighteen, Cyrus gave his age as twenty-one and enlisted in the Seventh Regiment of the Tennessee Infantry. In April 1862, he was listed as a patient in a hospital in Richmond, Virginia. There was no mention of a wound, so he may have become ill.

      In July, he wrote to the Confederate Secretary of War asking for exemption from further duty stating that he was a minor and a citizen of Michigan. He also claimed that he had been visiting his sister in Tennessee when he enlisted, that he had never voted in the South and that his health was broken by exposure and battle fatigue. He promised that in a short time he would enter the militia in Tennessee.

  44. “Cyrus Scofield was a Yankee . . . “

    Yeah, a Yankee who enlisted in the Seventh Regiment of the Tennessee Infantry and fought for the C.S.A in many battles, including Antietam. He was honorably discharged after a year of service. Given his Southern connections, it’s only appropriate that he would later spawn a heretical religious movement that would later be embraced by tens of millions of apostate Christians throughout the South.

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