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 the true meaning of
its creed, " revealed within the South two separate civic creeds --
one based on freedom by law and equality under God; the other
finding in the Constitution a guarantee of individual rights and in
the Bible a divine sanction of segregation.
Manis explores the southern reaction to civil rights through the
words and actions of black and white Baptists, ministers, and
laypersons whose rhetoric embodied the conflicting civil religions
in the South. Responding to the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v.
Boardof Education, both black and white Baptists urged their fellow
citizens to answer God's summons and help bring America to its
God-given destiny. But as Brown gave way to the events of the civil
rights movement, the segregationist dream of the Southland
remaining "white man's country" was increasingly challenged as
African Americans began, more militantly and more successfully, to
claim the historic promise of the nation.
Tracing the civil religious implications of the 1950s, Manis
shows that as the civil rights movement divided Americans,
desegregation became a crucial symbol for Americans who saw the
nation as a land of equality and inclusion, as well as for
Americans who continue to view America as properly and
predominantly white and Protestant. In two new chapters, Manis
connects this earlier conflict over civil religion and civil rights
with what sociologist James D. Hunter called the "culture wars." In
contrast to Hunter and others who have commented on it, Manis views
the culture wars as centrally about the problem of race and
difference in American life. What has broadened into partisan
conflict about social issues such as prayer in schools, abortion,
and family values, began as and largely remains at heart the
question first raised by the civil rights debate: How racially
diverse should America be?
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