Wayne Flynt, Alabama Baptists: Southern Baptists in the Heart of Dixie. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998. 731 pp.
Halfway through reading this volume, I knew what the opening line of
this review had to be: "This is, without question, the very best state
or regional Baptist history ever published in the United States."
However, upon completing the book, I am prepared to go further: "This
is one of a handful of the best Baptist history books--local, state,
regional, national, or topical--I have ever read."
Regional and state Baptist histories are absolutely critical to an
"One only hopes
that the fact that the book was published by a university press and the book's 731 pages will not
discourage Alabama Baptists from reading it."
understanding of Baptists, not only in the South but throughout the
United States. Those histories, however, often notorious for literary
dullness, shabby scholarship, inadequate or nonexistent
interpretations, and a myopic focus on denominational structures,
appeal to the very, very few. With this volume, Wayne Flynt,
Distinguished University Professor at Auburn University, has
significantly broadened the audience of readers to include the average
Baptist, others who want to understand Baptists, as well as historical
scholars, especially church historians, southern historians, and
Baptist historians. Also, he has set a new and exceedingly
high standard for the writing of state Baptist histories in particular
and Baptist history in general. Flynt's excellence in research and
beauty of style, cradled in an immeasurably rich context of
denominational, state, Southern, and national history, catapults his
muscular volume ahead of Norman Maring's study of Baptists in New
Jersey (1964) and Glenn Hinson's history of the Baptists in Arkansas
(1979), both of which stand out among state Baptist histories.
Turning his cards face up in the opening line of the "Preface," Flynt
identified his intriguing purpose in writing the book: "to explain
Baptists to themselves and to explain them to others, with a focus on
the people who called themselves Alabama Baptists" (ix). Why is this
an intriguing purpose? Because Flynt rightly assumed that Baptists
have to be explained to themselves! Like a sculptor at work on a
masterpiece, he utilized one-hundred and seventy-five years of Alabama
history and three decades of his own life as a professional historian
to explain Baptists to themselves and to others. Rather than fixating
on bureaucratic denominational development, he focused his history on
"individual Baptists, their congregations, and how they were related
to the denomination," as well as on Alabama Baptist State Convention
(ABSC) institutions. The result is a story (Flynt is a master
storyteller) of real people burdened with moral shortfall and blessed
with moral vision.
Why is such a book important? For many reasons, but let me identify
three. First, statistics make it important. One
in four Alabamians and nearly two out of every three church members
belong to churches of the ABSC (ix). This is not the story of an
exotic sect on the margin of Alabama life; this is the fascinating and
complex story of Christ and culture in Alabama.
Second, Flynt's historiography makes the book important. Writing from
what he called a "requisite double vision," he heeded both the values
of the Baptist community and the values of the broader secular
society, and he did both without letting his historiography be
conscripted by "presentism" on the one hand or "primitivism" on the
other hand. He neither projected the values of the present back into
the past nor wrote of the past as though it were unrelated to the
present. Refining his history with enormous but fascinating details,
Flynt stayed a country mile from generalizations. Most important,
Flynt interpreted his story in light of the changing nature of the
Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), a most important dimension of the
book. An underlying theme of the book, as Flynt himself stated, is the
collapse of the Baptist consensus in the South.
Third, Flynt not only told an engaging story about Alabama Baptists,
but he told that story by engaging scholarly interpretations of both
Baptists and the South. His interpretations of antimissions (32),
women and religion in the South (39), religion and slavery (42), the
ministry and education (70), and modernism, ecumenism, and social
Christianity (251) both challenge and confirm other scholarly views.
Organized chronologically into thirteen chapters, only two chapters
covered more than a twenty-year time span. In each chapter, Flynt
analyzed Alabama Baptists internally and externally. Internally, the
Auburn professor investigated almost every conceivable topic in
Baptist church life -- theology (Calvinism, Arminianism,
fundamentalism, liberalism), ecclesiology (Landmarkism, individualism,
connectionalism) race, gender, worship, preaching, music, revivalism,
alcohol, public education, Masonry, dueling, sexuality, denominational
organization -- and others too numerous to mention. Externally, Flynt
demonstrated the Baptist interaction with the Alabama frontier, state
and national politics, war, Reconstruction, depression, general
economic conditions, class divisions, scientific evolution, and almost
every intellectual and cultural force that swirled around Baptist
life.
The University of Alabama Press deserves high praise for a beautiful
finished
product, containing a useful chronology, an extensive bibliography,
and a marvelous index. One only hopes that the fact that the book was
published by a university press and the book's 731 pages will not
discourage Alabama Baptists from reading it. Flynt is an artist as
well as a scientist, so the book is delightfully accessible. A
remarkable achievement, this book should be an award-winner.
