Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority, and Church Discipline in the Baptist South, 1785-1900 (Religion in America) Book

No American denomination identified itself more closely with the nation's democratic ideal than the Baptists. The antebellum southern Baptist churches were led, in general, by populists who addressed their appeals to the common person and allowed women and slaves to vote on membership matters. Paradoxically, at the same time, no denomination could wield religious authority as ruthlessly as the Baptists; between 1785 and 1860 they ritually excommunicated forty to fifty thousand church members in Georgia alone. Wills traces this split to two rival strains in the Baptist church--moderates who emphasized personal religious freedom and tolerance, and fundamentalists who preached discipline and the inerrancy of scripture. He demonstrates how a denomination of freedom-loving individualists came to embrace an exclusivist spirituality, and the how the results of that conflict continue to affect the church. Wills's analysis furthers our understanding of the interaction between democracy and religious authority, and will appeal to scholars of American religion, culture, and history, as well as members of the Baptist church.