Southern Civil Religions in Conflict: Civil Rights and the Culture Wars

Back in print, revised, and enlarged to bring the discussion to the present, Manis shows how two conflicting civil religions emerged in the South during the civil rights movement, each with its own understanding of America's calling and destiny as a nation. Using black and white Baptists in the South as case studies, Manis interprets the civil rights movement as a civil religious conflict between southerners with opposing understandings of America. Originally published in 1987, this new, expanded edition further argues that the civil rights movement and its opposition, with their conflicting images and hopes for America, foreshadowed the ongoing "culture wars" of recent days. In the aftermath of World War II, citizens of every region drew together to affirm their common inheritance as a people and to celebrate the nation's military and moral victories. Such triumphs seemed to confirm America as a beacon to the nations, a "city on a hill." When America and particularly the South turned inward to think about "the American dilemma" of race, the South became a battlefield of conflicting civil faiths. The growing civil rights movement, calling on the nation to "live out h-21