The Bible Told Them So explains why southern white evangelical Christians in South Carolina resisted the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Simply put, they believed the Bible told them so. Interpreting the Bible in such a way, these white Christians entered the battle against the civil rights movement certain that God was on their side. Ultimately, the civil rights movement triumphed in the 1960s and, with its success, fundamentally transformed American society. But such a victory did little to change southern white evangelicals’ theological commitment to segregation and white supremacy. Rather than abandoning their segregationist theology in the second half of the 1960s, white evangelicals turned their focus on institutions they still controlled—churches, homes, denominations, and private colleges and secondary schools—and fought on. Despite suffering defeat in the public sphere, white evangelicals continued to battle for their own institutions, preaching and practicing a segregationist Christianity they continued to believe reflected God’s will. Increasingly caught in the tension between their sincere beliefs that God desired segregation and their reticence to vocalize such ideas for fear of seeming bigoted or intolerant by the late 1960s, southern white evangelicals eventually embraced rhetoric of colorblindness and protection of the family as measures to maintain both segregation and respectable social standing. Such a strategy spread throughout the evangelical subculture and set southern white evangelicals on a detrimental path for race relations in the decades ahead.

The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy PDF

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