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Chosen People

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Abstract

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Type
Review Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

1 Figures on American church attendance (compiled first in 1939 and annually since 1954) can be found in The Gallup Poll: public opinion, 1981, Wilmington, Del. 1982, 1517Google Scholar. Directly comparable figures are not gathered for most Western European countries, but the available evidence indicates that a much lower proportion of the European population attends church regularly; for a discussion, see Wilson, Bryan R., Religion in a Secular Society: a sociological comment, London 1966, 86–9Google Scholar.

2 In making this point, Hill draws heavily (and with due acknowledgement) on the work of Donald G. Mathews; a more detailed development of this interpretation can be found in Mathews, Religion in the Old South, Chicago 1977.

3 See Genovese, Eugene D., Roll, Jordan, Roll: the world the slaves made, New York 1974, 232–84Google Scholar; Raboteau, Albert J., Slave Religion: the ‘invisible institution’ in the antebellum South, New York 1978, 213–19, 290–318Google Scholar; Isaac, Rhys, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790, Chapel Hill 1982, 161–77Google Scholar, 260–5, 285–93, and Mathews, Religion in the Old South, 14–20, 66–80, 185–250.

4 For an excellent re-creation of black life in early South Carolina based upon such sources, see Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: negroes in colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion, New York 1974. Unfortunately, Wood does not discuss black religion in much detail, but it is clear that these sources do contain considerable information about religion; see Meaders, Daniel E., ‘South Carolina fugitives viewed through local colonial newspapers with emphasis on runaway notices, 1732–1801’, Journal of Negro History, lx (1970). 315Google Scholar.

5 On the limited impact of the Great Awakening in South Carolina, see Sirmans, M. Eugene, Colonial South Carolina: a political history, 1663–1763, Chapel Hill 1966, 231–2Google Scholar. (Sirmans incidentally suggests that the Awakening may have had limited appeal in South Carolina precisely because white Carolinans were antagonised by black involvement!) On the distribution of black population within South Carolina see Wood, Black Majority, 149. Wood's figures indicate that the parishes which Butler cites as centres of revivalism, St Mark's and St Helena's, had relatively low proportions of blacks in their populations.

6 See Isaac, Transformation of Virginia, 161–77, 260–5, 285–93, and Mathews, Religion in the Old'south, 14–20, 66–84.

7 Ibid., 74–80, 136–80, and Raboteau, Slave Religion, 152–80.

8 Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 185–6, and Raboteau, Slave Religion, 121–2, 131–2, 148—50, 175–6, 209–10.

9 Ibid., 58–92, 275–81, and Mathews, Religion in the Old South, 208—13.

10 Ibid., 185–236, Raboteau, Slave Religion, 213–19, 290–318, and Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 232–84.

11 Friedman, Lawrence J., ‘Abolitionist historiography, 1965–1979: an assessment’, Reviews in American History, viii (1980), 202Google Scholar.

12 Abzug, Robert H., Passionate Liberator: Theodore Dwight Weld and the dilemma of reform, New York 1980, 98110Google Scholar.

13 Clifford Geertz, ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, in idem, The Interpretation of Cultures, New York 1973, 89Google Scholar.