Background
Hill, Samuel Smythe was born on October 25, 1927 in Richmond. Son of Samuel Smythe and Mary Latta (Brown) Hill.
(This is a 234 page softback authored by Samuel S. Hill, J...)
This is a 234 page softback authored by Samuel S. Hill, Jr. and published by Beacon Press. The complete title is, SOUTHERN CHURCHES IN CRISIS - A Probing study of the White Protestant "Southern accent in religion."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0043UKKRG/?tag=2022091-20
( Hill’s landmark work in southern religious history retu...)
Hill’s landmark work in southern religious history returns to print updated and expanded – and compellingly relevant. In 1966, Samuel S. Hill’s Southern Churches in Crisis argued that southern Protestantism, a cornerstone of white southern society and culture, was shirking its moral duty by refusing to join in the fight for racial justice. Hill predicted that the church was risking its standing in southern society and that it would ultimately decline in influence and power. A groundbreaking study at the time, Hill’s book helped establish southern religious history as a field of scholarly inquiry. Three decades later, Southern Churches in Crisis continues to be widely read, quoted, and cited. In Southern Churches in Crisis Revisited, which reprints the 1966 text in full, Hill reexamines his earlier predictions in an introductory essay that also describes how the study of religion in the south has become a major field of scholarly inquiry. Ill skillfully engages his critics and revisers integrating new perspectives and recent scholarship. He suggests new areas for exploration and provides a selected bibliography of key studies in southern religious history that have been published during the last three decades. In a second essay entitled “Thirty Years Later,” Hill contends that a new crisis has emerged. He finds that the current dilemma, unlike the externally driven crisis of the 1960s is strictly an internal affair, initiated by the churches and related to doctrinal orthodoxy. He concludes that the triumph of rational purity over “the religion of the heart” has inaugurated an era in the South’s religious life that promises to produce major changes in the storied relation of church and culture in this most visibly religious section of the United States. Southern Churches in Crisis Revisited will be of value to scholars and students interested in the author’s reexamination of this powerful and influential force in Southern religion.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0817309799/?tag=2022091-20
( In this richly suggestive overview, a noted historian i...)
In this richly suggestive overview, a noted historian illuminates the variety and vitality of southern religion by examining three major Protestant denominational families in the region: Baptists, "Christians" (for example, the Churches of Christ), and the "of God" groups (Pentecostals, among others). Ranging in coverage from the colonial period to the present, with special emphasis on the nineteenth century, Samuel S. Hill traces the growth and diversification of each of these groups as they have sloughed off old patterns, conventions, and constraints in their never-ending searches for systems of belief and modes of expression that better embody their convictions and fit their socioeconomic situations. Throughout One Name but Several Faces, Hill turns again and again to the interrelated themes of freedom, creativity, and discontinuity that emerge from the major transitions of southern religious history: the toppling of the old Europe-influenced religious establishment and the emergence of Baptists and Methodists; the informal, unofficial "establishment" of folk religious formations; the rapid growth of separate and independent black churches and denominations; and the beginning of the Holiness and Pentecostal movements. Within this context of religious trends and events, Hill also points to other factors that have affected both the formation and the ongoing capacity for transformation of southern religious groups. Such factors include war, sectionalism, urbanization, industrialization, and new currents of thought. Internal forces are also constantly at work in the religious South, says Hill. He points to a medley of sacred and secular concerns, manifested as "freedoms," that have driven religious history from the bottom up and fueled the seemingly constant splinterings and regroupings of some denominations. Some of these ideals stem from democratic principles and the theological heritage of the Reformation; others are in response to major economic and social changes. Among them are the freedoms from church and theological systems; from constraining conventions of polite society; from domination by higher social classes or by traditions perceived as inviolate; and from restraints on holistic human expression, in spirit, body, and emotions. The story of southern religion, says Hill, is one of courage, imagination, and persistence. Not only does One Name but Several Faces bring into sharper focus some of the political, social, and economic contours of the religious South, it also affirms the value of some challenging new trends in historiography that allow for southern religious complexity and division without deadening or downplaying its dynamism.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0820317926/?tag=2022091-20
Hill, Samuel Smythe was born on October 25, 1927 in Richmond. Son of Samuel Smythe and Mary Latta (Brown) Hill.
AB, Georgetown College, 1949; Master of Arts, Vanderbilt University, 1952; Bachelor's Degree, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, 1953; Doctor of Philosophy, Duke U., 1960.
Pastor, Burlington (Kentucky) Baptist Church, 1953-1955; assistant professor religion, Stetson U., Deland, Florida, 1959-1960; professor, chairman, U. North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1960-1972; professor, chairman, U. Florida, Gainesville, 1972-1994. Consultant numerous newspapers and religious news services. Panelist National Endowment for Humanities, 1978-1993, Mellon Fellowships in Humanities, 1983-1992.
( In this richly suggestive overview, a noted historian i...)
( Hill’s landmark work in southern religious history retu...)
(Discussion south and southern churches in changing culture)
(This is a 234 page softback authored by Samuel S. Hill, J...)
(352 pages)
Fellow Society Values in Higher Education. Member American Academy Religion (regional president 1973-1974), Southern History Association, American Society Church History.
Married Claire Ray Cohen, Aug.22, 1958 (divorced 1984). Children: Sarah S., Charles A. Married Helen Louise Thompson, June 29, 1984.