According to conventional wisdom, theological liberals led the Southern Baptist Convention to reject segregation and racism in the twentieth century. That's only half the story. Liberals criticized segregation before mainstream Southern Baptists. They created racially integrated ministry opportunities. They pressed the Southern Baptist Convention to reject segregation. Yet historians have discounted the role of conservative theology in the convention's shift away from racial segregation and prejudice. This book chronicles how conservative theology proved remarkably compatible with efforts toward racial justice in America's largest Protestant denomination between 1954 and 1995. At times conservative theology was even a catalyst for rejecting racial prejudice. Efforts to eradicate racism and segregation were, in fact, least successful when they appealed to the social gospel or appeared to draw from liberal theology.

After Redemption fills in a missing chapter in the history of African American life after freedom. It takes on the widely overlooked period between the end of Reconstruction and World War I to examine the sacred world of ex-slaves and their descendants living in the region more densely settled than any other by blacks living in this era, the Mississippi and Arkansas Delta. Drawing on a rich range of local memoirs, newspaper accounts, photographs, early blues music, and recently unearthed Works Project Administration records, John Giggie challenges the conventional view that this era marked the low point in the modern evolution of African-American religion and culture. Set against a backdrop of escalating racial violence in a region more densely populated by African Americans than any other at the time, he illuminates how blacks adapted to the defining features of the post-Reconstruction South-- including the growth of segregation, train travel, consumer capitalism, and fraternal orders--and in the process dramatically altered their spiritual ideas and institutions. Masterfully analyzing these disparate elements, Giggie's study situates the African-American experience in the broadest context of southern, religious, and American history and sheds new light on the complexity of black religion and its role in confronting Jim Crow.

Described as “a history of Baptist beginnings in the several associations in the state,” this rare old volume was widely acclaimed when first published in 1919. No less timely today, this reprint has added value with an index of more than 1600 names. Those interested in the genealogical value of this volume will find Burnett has done an excellent job detailing ancestry, dates and places. There are more than 200 sketches with around sixty photographs. Accepting 1775 as the first recorded date of Baptist entry and effort in the state, this volume covers a period of one hundred very eventful years. There is much data of general historical interest and numerous “firsts.” Of interest to all denominations, it is the perfect gift for a church library as well as a personal gift.