The Sacred Mirror

“In this elegant and exciting book, Robert Elder sets himself apart by arguing that white southerners hastened modernity’s arrival when they accepted evangelicalism. Elder’s highly nuanced discussion of the relationship between the ‘secular’ culture of southern honor and the ‘sacred’ culture of southern evangelicalism establishes him as part of a robust movement of scholars quick to call attention to the ‘modern’ elements of intellectual discourse in the antebellum South.” — Charles F. Irons, Elon University

“Well researched and well written, The Sacred Mirror makes a sophisticated contribution to the field. Based on a wide range of published and unpublished sources, its careful documentation, straightforward prose, and clear argument will make this a widely noticed book.” — Mark A. Noll, University of Notre Dame

“Veering away from the traditional assertion that evangelicalism and honor were competing philosophies, Elder illuminates, with brilliance and great perception, the cultural soil that fed both world views. With painstaking research in church records, personal correspondence, journals, and sermons, Elder combines incisive analysis and first-rate narrative. Contextualizing the tension between the old and the new evangelicalism, Elder describes its growing effect on the American South and on modernity. This book seeks the heart of individual identity in the midst of communal authority and finds answers in the deeply intertwined relationship between religion and the honor code. This is a thoughtful, rewarding, and essential contribution to the histories of the American South and to religion.” — Orville Vernon Burton, author of In My Father’s House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina and The Age of Lincoln

“Occasionally an author treats the academy to a book that challenges everything we think we know in a given area. . . . The Sacred Mirror . . . is such a book.” — Journal of Southern Religion

“This study of white evangelical beliefs and practices . . . convincingly challenges the historiography. Recommended.” — CHOICE

“An excellent work of religious and cultural history. . . . Highly recommended for historians of nineteenth-century America, as well as for the classroom and the grad seminar.” — Journal of the Civil War Era

“Elder has written a pivotal book, which stops the common narrative of evangelical arrival and accommodation in its tracks. In its place, Elder offers a nuanced argument about the relationship between honor culture and evangelicalism in the Deep South, one that identifies their common sources, persistent tensions, and shared ideals, for good and ill."” — Baptist History and Heritage

“An excellent and important book that succeeds in reframing a major historiographical debate. It should be essential reading among historians of religion and of the American South.” — Journal of American History