Holifield

The Gentlemen Theologians: American Theology in Southern Culture, 1795-1860. By E. Brooks Holifield. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1978.

In The Gentlemen Theologians, E. Brooks Holifield questions assumptions about the emotionalism of Southern religion. Holifield does admit, “Such descriptions are not entirely false,” but he adds, “but they are only partially true, which means that the prevailing image of Southern religion is empty of contrasts” (3-4). His book is an attempt to provide that contrast. Holifield’s scope includes Presybterians, Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Catholics, and Lutherans. While many books on Southern religion focus on camp meetings, circuit riders, and the rural church, Holifield examines the urban church. The urban setting, he argues, created a different type of theologian, one who saw himself as a gentleman and a professional. These town and city dwelling men of God crafted a new vision of themselves and of the society in which they lived.

While he acknowledges the small proportion of town clergy, this minority held important positions in the South staffing the biggest churches, publishing the largest number of theological books, and teaching in the colleges. Rather than present individual profiles of gentlemen theologians, Holifield offers a study of an elite hundred who held positions in the national church leadership: thirty-seven Presbyterians,fourteen Episcopalians, eighteen Methodists, twenty-three Baptists, two Lutherans, and six Catholics. He found these gentlemen came primarily from the South from diverse, though mainly middle class, backgrounds. While they ranged in educational level, most had attended at least some college. They also lived a comfortable lifestyle with financial security. Though they represented diverse faiths, all had a common goal “to reassure men and women that they were reasonable people living in a reasonable world” (28). This interest in rationalism drove Southern religion.

According to Holifield, most mainstream town preachers stressed “rational orthodoxy” (49) and looked to apologetics to find rational proof for belief. Christian Evidences became the most popular class in many of the seminaries in the South. Indeed, many ministers began to use natural science and philosophy to “prove” the existence of God and efficacy of traditional teaching. Some, in fact, became amateur scientists., for “If modern science was the offspring of the Christian West, there was every reason to believe that the child would honor and obey the parent” (81).

Southern theologians also owed a great debt to Scottish philosophy and Common Sense Realism. While sects used the ideas of the Scottish philosophers in different ways, the concepts of knowing, believing, and sensing became part of the discourse. The southern theologians also extensively studied moral philosophy. They sought to create a synthesis between sentimentalist and rationalist trends in order to “unite head and heart” (134). This synthesis suited the town ministers who could not entirely embrace the emotionalism that characterized rural religion but did not want to get rid of it entirely.

Although Holifield makes an argument for the similarities of all of the sects in the South, he also examines their many conflicts. Two of the largest centered on the sacraments of Baptism and Communion, and he provides a tidy summary of the beliefs of each religious group. Yet, despite their differences, he maintains that most gentleman theologians thought of the sacraments as teaching tools, for they “taught about a covenant-keeping God, and thus symbolized the rationality of divine activity” (185). The author also examines disputes revolving the concepts of election, predestination, and Armenianism, and while he elucidates fundamental theological disputes, he maintains that the main purpose for theology in the urban South as to promote reasonable behavior and qualities like “restraint, order, refinement, self-control, self-improvement, and similar virtues that sometimes seemed alien in the Southern culture” (206). Through their dedication to Enlightenment thought and their new positions as members of the professional class, the gentlemen theologians sought to put order to God, their parishioners, and themselves.

While Gentlemen Theologians is primarily a theological study, historians can benefit from his in depth intellectual history of the ante-bellum South. In addition, his focus on rationality and reason offers an effective counter balance to many studies which emphasize the emotional aspects of Southern religion.

Texas Christian University Amanda Bresie

Gentlemen Theologians: American Theology in Southern Culture, 1795-1860. By E. Brooks Holifield. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1978.

Gentlemen Theologians by E. Brooks Holifield examines urban clergymen in the old south and presents a revisionist interpretation of their spiritual thought. The traditional interpretation states that religion in the old south relied primarily on emotional interactions rather than temperament or theology. From emotional revivals to feelings of conversion, most historians found little evidence of serious intellectual discussions of theology. Holifield contends that urban clergymen, as opposed to those in rural areas, engaged actively in such discussions. By looking at these ministers, he concludes that the southern clergy developed a rational approach to theology “designed to commend Christian faith to an expanding class of educated and aspiring Southerners” for a short time (4). As southern society became more sophisticated, so did urban ministers. Until the onset of the Civil War, urban clergymen promoted a theology of rational orthodoxy, along with emotional spirituality, in their congregations.

Holifield chooses to study the “gentlemen theologians” for several reasons. Urban clergymen discussed their ideas concerning theology and left written records, whereas their rural counterparts did not. They proved better educated, with the majority receiving a college education. These men saw themselves as scholars and intellectuals, not just religious leaders. In general, they accepted the social and economical status quo of Southern society. Their sermons reflected society as a “gradation of aristocrats, middling classes, masses, and slaves” and that social inequity was divinely ordained. Moving from the frontier to the cities, clergymen came to recognize the importance of attracting wealthy and influential people into their congregations. While they understood the necessity of rational and intellectual arguments, they did not condemn the growing appeal of sentimentality of popular religion.

The Southern Reformed theologians placed a high emphasis on rationality and natural theology. They believed truth could never be never be contrary to truth, so even the mysteries of faith could be explained rationally. A few theologians borrowed from philosopher John Locke to explain natural spiritual sense. Methodist John Wesley wrote that “just as physical sensations were the necessary ground of natural reasoning, so the internal sensation of faith was also a ‘way of seeing’ ” (76). For Southern clergymen, rationalism meant more than an affirmation of natural theology; reason established the criteria for recognizing and validating the Bible’s revelations. Holifield believes that the ministers’ location in cities and towns did not produce their theology, rather the unique demands of pasturing a town encouraged a rational theology to develop. The Civil War destroyed the institutions that created and developed theology in the south and the devastation of the social and economic structures undermined rational orthodoxy.

Holifield builds his narrative on memoirs, sermons, and documents left by urban clergymen. He validates his claim that these ministers did think about theology and rationality. They did not base their entire religion on emotionally outpourings and revivals. Holifield’s narrative is very nuanced and relies heavily on theological terminology. For serious scholars of religion in the old south, this is necessary reading, but this narrative is not accessible for the casually interested reader.

Gentlemen Theologians: American Theology in Southern Culture, 1795-1860. By E. Brooks Holifield. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1978.

E. Brooks Holifield received his doctorate degree from Yale University and currently serves as the C.H. Candler Professor of American Church History at Emory University. He authored several texts over his career, including The Covenant Sealed, The Gentlemen Theologians: American Theology in Southern Culture, 1795-1860, A History of Pastoral Care in America, Health and Medicine in the Methodist Tradition, Era of Persuasion: American Thought and Culture, 1521-1680, and Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War. The Gentlemen Theologians: American Theology in Southern Culture, 1795-1860, published in 1978 by Duke University Press, examines Southern theology from the perspective of urban dwelling clergymen who largely embraced rationalism and applied it to Christian thought.

Holifield defines the “gentlemen theologians” as “naïve idealists who believed that the propagation of correct ideas could subdue the recalcitrant vitalities of the natural self and of the social organism as well – granted the assistance of divine grace” (4). The Gentlemen Theologians: American Theology in Southern Culture, 1795-1860 examines city-dwelling clergymen as opposed to their counterparts because the urbanites seemed more inclined to defining and disseminating doctrine that their rural counterparts. Of the “elite hundred” of town dwelling clergymen Holifield studied, most attended college and some attended seminary. They viewed themselves as intellectuals and urbane, desiring a fashionable and wealthy congregation, allowing Holifield to label them “gentlemen theologians.” The clergymen taught at Southern colleges and articulated moral and religious philosophy. Their sermons demonstrate the degree of their acceptance of the stratified social structure; Holifield found that their writing “exhibited a consistent, albeit rough and unhewn, description of society as a gradation of aristocrats, middling classes, masses and slaves. The ministers called for benevolence to the poor, criticized aristocratic display, and chastised unseemly and rapacious economic behavior, but they approved the social ranking.” (11).

Concepts of gentility and rationality dominated town clergymen’s self identity. They defined themselves as altruistic and selfless yet also as polished and austere members of the elite class. The urban ministers’ propensity for elitism created rifts within the major Southern denominations. The populists criticized the “aristocratic clergy” while members of the established ministry belittled the rural clergy (49).

Holifield explores the nuances of Southern thought, and deftly explains that the “orthodox theologians’” demanded that the Bible parallel their definition of rationalism, “subtly shift[ing] faith’s foundation” (72). He places Southern theologians within the larger parameters of church history and apologetic thought, beginning in the second century and continuing his chronological study to compare the “elite hundred” with their rural and northern counterparts. He argues that Southern theologians trace their religious heritage from Scottish descendents, who attempted to “discern the underlying presuppositions of all experience” (118). Southerners also embraced concepts of moral philosophy as articulated by Scottish theologians and philosophers which sometimes combined ethics with theology. Even Southern Catholics, Holifield maintains, sought to present Christianity within their rationalism paradigm.

The Gentlemen Theologians: American Theology in Southern Culture, 1795-1860 relies on memoirs, sermons, and journal articles to challenge conventional assumptions that Southern religious thought rested more on emotionalism than on intellectual belief. Holifield’s focus on urban clergymen provides him the freedom to explore the conflicting ideology of slaveholding and a claim to embrace Christianity, but the author almost ignores the obvious incongruity in its entirety. An analysis of Southern religious thought should examine attempts to justify slavery in a religious light or clergy endeavors to ignore it. Despite this oversight, The Gentlemen Theologians remains a well-researched and concise look at Southern religious history.

Histories of religion in the antebellum South often focus their attention on the rise of popular belief among the masses, most notably seen in the form of Protestant evangelicalism. This stress is indeed understandable given the raucous nature of the more notable revival meetings, such as Cane Ridge, the volumes of members who joined evangelical churches during the Great Revival, and the new sects that emerged during this time, like the Disciples of Christ. What is usually overlooked, unfortunately, is the intellectual life of religion in the South. In Gentlemen Theologians: American Theology in Southern Culture, 1795-1860, E. Brooks Holifield, professor of American church history at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, attempts to correct this oversight by detailing the theological debates and discussions that formed the Southern religious mind and in so doing discovers a carefully constructed religious worldview that in many ways transcended denominational barriers throughout the South.

At the center of this religious intellectual life stood the elite of Southern churches—the urban clergy. Working under high expectations, these ministers in the growing cities, whether an Episcopal priest or a Baptist preacher, attempted to fulfill their calling to emulate class, style, and erudition, as well as to preach the Gospel. Few, however, met these standards. Throughout the antebellum period, leaders in each of the denominations lamented the inability to secure qualified pastors to assume roles in the growing urban areas. Frontier ministries had been able to thrive with ministries of little refinement, given the lack of sophistication of their neighbors. The urban churches had far more factors with which to contend. Serving the entire spectrum of the social classes, city pastors were called upon to deliver their sermons with sound research and reasoned argument but not to far beyond the minds of their listeners. The congregations expected them to demonstrate the grace and dignity of a gentleman while remaining accessible to the yeoman. As ministers accomplished these goals, the denominational leaders hoped that the urban clergy would begin to have a direct influence on the lives and activities of the socially dominate in the cities and in turn reshape the culture of the South. Thus ministers in the cities became the religious leaders of the South while at the same time they were shaped and molded by their urban experience to uphold the order of society.

The gentlemen theologians articulated their thoughts on a variety of issues, from slavery to communion to the accessibility of Scripture, always seemingly in reaction to perceived heterodoxies arising throughout the United States. The most challenging trial for these men was a growing adherence to Hume’s skepticism and the subsequent abandonment of religion by his adherents. While the country pastors may have been able to dismiss Hume with anti-intellectual rhetoric, the urban clergy held no such option. As intellectuals, they searched for ways in which to combat these sects while also demonstrating the rationality of Christianity. To accomplish this feat, Southern theologians utilized Scottish common sense realism. Southerners incorporated this common sense philosophy into their theological formulations in order to demonstrate in many ways the rationality and intellectual superiority of orthodox Christian doctrine. Covering a myriad of topics, including divine revelation, the atonement, and God’s activity in the world, the resulting theology reasserted traditional Protestant beliefs and in turn helped establish the conservative flair of Southern churches. According to Holifield, “As the articulate theologians well knew, religious conservatism of the Old South was always as much a matter of philosophical as of Biblical considerations” (125).

Holifield’s work demonstrates very well the intellectualism that existed throughout the South. In addition, his analysis of the use of common sense realism in the theologies of the South explains a little more clearly the attitude of Southern clergy on the eve of the Civil War—where they viewed their Northern counterparts as apostates and abolitionists as disciples of the devil. Indeed, his discussion of the Charleston Presbyterian Thomas Smyth presents a much fuller picture of a clerical defender of slavery, compared to the usual image of an individual capitulating to the demands of his economic order. The work is well researched and argued and goes a long way to define the theological underpinnings of the Old South as well as those clergy who so fervently supported the Confederate cause.