Does the term “Bible Belt” still remain true for Southern states? Did Facing the Giants depict religious life in the South accurately? From before I can remember, I was attending church and a part of children’s musicals. Church is like a second home and a huge aspect of my life. Religion is a common ground for many Southerners, and is a place to gather and catch up with one another, while in other parts of the country it tends to be a touchy topic. Religion is one of many aspects that developed the South into what it is known for today. Facing the Giants, by Alex Kendrick, effectively represents the role of religion in the South through the literal translation of the Bible, the role it continues to play in daily lives, and how the South still embodies religious aspects.
Facing the Giants is a biblically based movie made by Sherwood Baptist Church of Albany, Georgia about religion and football. The film stars Coach Taylor, a mediocre football coach, for Shiloh Christian Academy Eagles. Everything is falling apart for Coach Taylor: his car continually breaks down, he is the reason his wife cannot become pregnant, and he is on the verge of being fired. With all of these things confronting him, he turns to the Bible, puts his life in God’s hands, and his life dramatically changes . He and the football team decide they are going to play football to glorify God and not necessarily to win; thus, whether they win or lose, they will glorify God. This change impacts the players, which in turn impacts the school, and a revival transpires. The Eagles play their next football game and win. They continue to win and make it to the semi-final round of the state playoffs. Sadly they lose in the semi-finals to the Panthers but still gl...
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...characteristic traits of religion in the South and does a great job at giving insight to the significance and importance it has in the culture. As times are shifting and cultures are changing, the one thing that remains constant in the South is religion.
Works Cited
Facing the Giants. Dir. Alex Kendrick. Perf. Alex Kendrick, Shannen Fields, and Jason McLeod. Sony, 2006. DVD.
Hook, Wade F. "Religious Regionalism: The Case Of Lutherans In The South." Review Of Religious Research 27.1 (1985): 77. Academic Search Premier. Web. 6 Feb. 2012.
Wilson, Charles Reagan. "Religion In The Southern States: A Historical Study." Religious Studies Review 16.3 (1990): 205-210. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials. Web. 6 Feb. 2012.
Wilson, Charles Reagan and Mark Silk. Religion and Public Life in the South in the Evangelical Mode. Oxford: AltaMira Press, 2005. Print.
What The South Intends. THE CHRISTIAN RECORDERS August 12, 1865, Print. James, Edward, Janet James, and Paul Boyer.
John Shelton Reed says that the South embodies three different regions. Do all of these regions still exist? Or have they become incorporated into what is considered the South today? “The Three Souths,” by Reed, divides the South into three categories: Dixie, Southeast, and Cultural South. Southern agriculture and the growth of cotton established Dixie. The Southeast region is a metropolitan region that relies on commerce and communication to grow. The valued qualities, such as religion, sports, and manners are characteristic ways that set apart the Cultural South. According to Reed, Atlanta is the only place one can be in all three “Souths” at once. The daily life of a person in the South is very similar to the daily life of a person in another part of the country. Each work a normal workday but their use of free time sets them apart (Reed 17-27). The South of the past still exists today through traditional Southern values passed down in families and carried throughout the nation, yet the division of the South no longer exists as a three part entity, but as a growing, changing region.
Robert Laurence Moore has written a delightful, enlightening, and provocative survey of American church history centered around the theme of "mixing" the "sacred" with the "secular" and vice versa. The major points of conversation covered include the polarization caused by the public display of religious symbols, the important contribution that women and Africans have made to the American religious mosaic, the harmony and friction that has existed between science and religion, the impact of immigration on religious pluralism, and the twin push toward the union and separation of religion and politics.
In American culture, the South has more or less been stereotyped and degraded in various ways, which naturally brings about a sense of defensiveness. The southerners stick together to defe...
Many Southerners supported, in some measure, the position of the clergy to some extent. Yet, they did not wish to abandon their system suddenly and without an adequate replacement. They were also concerned that free labor promoted infidelity, secularism, liberal theology, perversities, egotism and personal license to the detriment of God-ordained authority and the Christian social order.
New brands of distinctly American Christianity began developing early in the country’s history. Before the revolution, George Whitefield set the stage for American religious movements. The most important factor that helped launch these movements was the American Revolution. The country was ripe with conversation and action on a new understanding of freedom. The revolution “expanded the circle of people who considered themselves capable of thinking for themselves about issues of … equality, sovereignty, and representation” (6). The country was beginning to move toward an understanding of strength lying in the common people, and the people’s ability to make their own personal decisions on issues of leadership and authority. There was a common belief that class structure was the major societal problem. The revolution created the an open environment that pushed equality of the individual, allowing political and religious beliefs to flourish and grow without being held in check by authoritarian leaders.
Cobb, James C. Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity. Oxford University Press. 2005. Print.
May, Henry F. The Recovery of American Religious History. The American Historical Review. Vol. 70, No. 1. 1964.
Slavery was a dominant part of the political and social arenas of 1800’s America. However, it was not homogenous as it divided America into two distinct groups: those who supported it and those who did not. Traditionally, the states in the north had been anti-slavery while the states in the south had been pro-slavery. Southern life and economy depended on slavery and therefore staunchly supported the continued legal status of slavery. The northern states on the other hand recognized the inhumane nature of slavery and campaigned to establish equality for all citizens. In order to establish solid reasoning for their stance, both pro-slave and anti-slave groups turned to theological inspiration for their actions. The Bible inspired both pro-slavery advocates and anti-slavery abolitionists alike. Religion was used in order to justify slavery and also to condemn it.
Religion of the protestant church was an important factor in the pre-war timeline culture. The Second great awakening, which occurred in the 19th century, greatly impacted American society. This new point of view in terms and matters of faith led northerners to cherish the theory of Christian perfection, a theory that in fact was applied to society in an attempt to eliminate social imperfection. On the other hand, southerners reacted by cherishing a faith of personal piety, which focused mainly on a reading of the Bible; however, it expressed very little concern in addressing society’s problems.1
In order to come to terms with defeat and a look of failure in the eyes of God, Southerners mentally transformed their memories of the antebellum South. It became a superior civilization of great purity which had been cruelly brought down by the materialistic Yankees.
Lacking the ready opportunity to visit a unique congregation while stuck, carless, on campus over break, I instead focus on a "field trip" that my churchs' Sunday School class took one Sunday morning last summer. Picture if you will a group of white Presbyterian teenagers hopping into a shiny church van and cruising 15 minutes south, into the poorer, blacker reaches of inner-city Memphis (where neighborhood segregation is still very much the rule). Our destination was relatively near our own church, and yet worlds apart, too. Ours was the area of stately old homes with well-kept lawns along oak- and elm-lined streets, homes filled with the genteel, white urbanites of the city. A mere handful of blocks to the south, however, lay a land of equally old but far more poorly maintained homes, streets long since denuded of any trees they may once have sported. We had left our comfortable zone of neighborhood watches and block clubs, choosing instead to spend our worship hours in a part of the city instead known for its special police precinct and its multitudinous economic redevelopment zones. Thus did we find ourselves at the Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church.
However, both groups consciously reshaped the organizing framework of religion to diminish its ordering of their lives within the public and private sphere. Prothero posits that while “The Bible remained authoritative [. . .] Americans insisted on interpreting it for themselves” (47), especially women who lived under its patriarchal construction. “In that effort,” Prothero continues “they were assisted by a new culture hero: the populist preacher, who combined evangelicalism and egalitarianism in daring new ways” (47). Prothero maintains that it was “the rise of pulpit storytelling” (51) that allowed such reimagining of religious ideology. Prothero goes on to argue that the “story sermon” (51) as a rhetorical style “did not catch on as fast in New England as it did in the South and the West (51),” a point ...
In the North we saw a different religious awakening. Reform was popping up all over the Northeast. This reform came in different faces, depending on which state it wa...
Imagine a historian, author of an award-winning dissertation and several books. He is an experienced lecturer and respected scholar; he is at the forefront of his field. His research methodology sets the bar for other academicians. He is so highly esteemed, in fact, that an article he has prepared is to be presented to and discussed by the United States’ oldest and largest society of professional historians. These are precisely the circumstances in which Ulrich B. Phillips wrote his 1928 essay, “The Central Theme of Southern History.” In this treatise he set forth a thesis which on its face is not revolutionary: that the cause behind which the South stood unified was not slavery, as such, but white supremacy. Over the course of fourteen elegantly written pages, Phillips advances his thesis with evidence from a variety of primary sources gleaned from his years of research. All of his reasoning and experience add weight to his distillation of Southern history into this one fairly simple idea, an idea so deceptively simple that it invites further study.