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Born of Conviction: White Methodists and Mississippi's Closed Society de Joseph T. Reiff

Born of Conviction: White Methodists and Mississippi's Closed Society

Autor Joseph T. Reiff
en Limba Engleză Paperback – 21 oct 2025
Winner of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters' Nonfiction Award The dominant narrative of the role of white citizens and the white church in Mississippi's civil rights era focuses on their intense resistance to change. The "Born of Conviction" statement, signed by twenty-eight white Methodist pastors and published in the Mississippi Methodist Advocate on January 2, 1963, offered an alternative witness to the segregationist party line. Calling for freedom of the pulpit and reminding readers of the Methodist Discipline's claim that the teachings of Jesus permit "no discrimination because of race, color, or creed," the pastors sought to speak to and for a mostly silent yet significant minority of Mississippians, and to lead white Methodists to join the conversation on the need for racial justice. The document additionally expressed support for public schools and opposition to any attempt to close them, and affirmed the signers' opposition to Communism. Though a few individuals, both laity and clergy, voiced public affirmation of "Born of Conviction," the overwhelming reaction was negative-by mid-1964, eighteen of the signers had left Mississippi, evidence of the challenges faced by whites who offered even mild dissent to massive resistance in the Deep South.Dominant narratives, however, rarely tell the whole story. The statement caused a significant crack in the public unanimity of Mississippi white resistance. Signers and their public supporters also received private messages of gratitude for their stand, and eight of the signers would remain in the Methodist ministry in Mississippi until retirement. Born of Conviction tells the story of "the Twenty-Eight," illuminating the impact on the larger culture. The book explores the theological and ethical understandings of the signers through an account of their experiences before, during, and after the statement's publication. It also offers a detailed portrait of both public and private expressions of the theology and ethics of white Mississippi Methodists in general, as revealed by their responses to the "Born of Conviction" controversy.
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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780197835326
ISBN-10: 0197835325
Pagini: 408
Ilustrații: 37 illus.
Dimensiuni: 157 x 234 x 24 mm
Greutate: 0.59 kg
Editura: Oxford University Press
Colecția OUP USA
Locul publicării:New York, United States

Recenzii

Winner of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters' Nonfiction Award
Born of Conviction presents a compelling narrative and challenges scholars who portray Mississippi Methodists as a racist monolith. The book is well structured Reiff effectively demonstrates that the Born of Conviction controversy was a seminal moment in the history of the [Methodist Episcopal Church]."-Christina Dickerson-Cousin, Journal of Religion
Reiff's fine oral history work and his eagle-eyed mining of materials on Mississippi Methodist churches from several archives make Born of Conviction as much an impressive institutional study as an exploration of individual lives. Born of Conviction is an important study, obviously a labor of love for the author, and a fine contribution to the growing scholarship on religion in the American South.
Born of Conviction: White Methodists and Mississippi's Closed Society is a very impressive and important contribution to our evolving understanding of how religion made the Civil Rights Movement move. In telling this story and his tireless pursuit of these brave clergy, Reiff has excavated a fascinating fissure in the cracks of Mississippi's closed society."-Davis W. Houck, Church History
Reiff's account of the 'Born of Conviction' statement aspires to complicate our understanding of the faith of white Mississippians by shedding new light on the responses of so-called 'white moderates' who operated outside the Civil Rights Movement but opposed Jim Crow.
Elaborate endnotes and textual allusions show [Reiff] to have engaged a huge array of scholarship...[and have] invested incredible effort and energy in oral history (interviews and recorded material). [He] accordingly draw[s] very current recent, timely, telling insights, perspectives and judgments into [his] narratives and do[es] so in quite adroit fashion.
Highly recommended.
With its careful attention to building the back-stories and describing in detail the results for the twenty-eight signers, this book has earned its place among the growing body of works about the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.
This high-quality study is a significant addition to the historiography of the civil rights era.
What is there to know about twenty-eight Methodist ministers in the 1960s? From written and oral history sources, Reiff's book shows there is a great deal to learn, much of it surprising, about well-educated professionals working inside and outside organized religion.
A nuanced history...[The] narrative moves effortlessly between an individual and institutional focus, a great strength of the book. Readers will walk away understanding the issues facing the Methodist Church in the 1960s, while simultaneously seeing how individuals fit into that larger picture.
Reiff tells [the Born of Conviction] story fully and clearly. The signers of this statement and their fate deserve the broad audience that this book will rightly command.
Every historical era or period, especially times of social distress, await books that guide us to a safer and better shore. Born of Conviction is a book for our time. Its pages offer portrayals of the human capacity for social evil and for heroic moral leadership. We encounter an America divided along the color line and meet white clergy and laypeople who risked Christian discipleship through words and deeds that can instruct, inspire, and invite today. As we find ourselves again on the long road to authentic democracy, this book should be required for leaders and laypeople, who will learn much from our predecessors.
Through meticulous research and crisp, engaging narrative, Born of Conviction: White Methodists and Mississippi's Closed Society accomplishes the exceedingly difficult task of telling a new and broadly significant story in the American Civil Rights Movement: the crisis of congregational and denominational identity in the wake of enormous social change. Joseph Reiff has made an enormously valuable contribution to our understanding of the movement, painstakingly reconstructing a largely forgotten chapter in the Southern 'church struggle' that is as inspiring as it is heartbreaking.
This masterful work tells a crucial and overlooked story from some of the worst days of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. Anger among whites was intense in January 1963 when twenty-eight white Mississippi Methodist pastors called for racial tolerance. Reiff tells a captivating social, cultural, and religious story with exhaustive and impeccable scholarship, revealing the deeper narrative beyond the pastors' statement and its aftermath.
Reiff, a former Methodist minister himself and son a Methodist minister, not originally from Mississippi, involved in some of the events described here has interviewed a great number of the participants in the events, researched the Methodist materials thoroughly, and incorporated the relevant primary and scholarly/secondary material into his own work. The result is a really memorable book that will be not just the definitive history of the origins, writing, influence, and aftermath of the 'Born of Conviction' statement, but one of the most important contributions to Mississippi, civil rights, and southern religious history published since 2000...Reiff was, in a sense, born to write this history, and he uses his advantages of family, regional, and Methodist connections to the great benefit of all who will be enriched by his superior piece of scholarship. For anyone who cares about the relationship of religion, race, and the civil rights movement, this is a classic.

Notă biografică

Joseph T. Reiff grew up in Mississippi and graduated from Millsaps College and Emory University's Candler School of Theology. From 1980-1985, he served as a United Methodist pastor in the Mississippi Conference, and then returned to Emory to complete a Ph.D. After 30 years of college teaching, he is now Emeritus Professor of Religion at Emory & Henry University.