Books That Have Blown Away an Entire Argument

In my field of economics, a book called The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith in 1776 blew away previous understanding of where wealth came from. Previously, religion was said to be the source of prosperity or lack thereof. Smith said, no, wealth of a nation comes from its limited land, labor and tools producing more than it did before.

Recently the book "The Turnaways" dealt a fatal blow to some of the anti abortion arguments. These included false arguments that women suffer mental anguish over abortions and that abortions are unsafe. I have not seen these old arguments made as much since the book was published. 

A case is made often by Christians that the faith never changes. Also, it is said the U.S. is a Christian nation. On the topic of U.S. history, it is said slavery and segregation was defended in the South for economic reasons and by racial prejudice. Professor J. Russell Hawkins makes the case justification for slavery and segregation was based on religion. If we use the over used "sincerely held beliefs" we would find sincerely held religious beliefs drove the resistance to integration up until and for several years after the Civil Rights era. Russell traces evidence of this "sincerely held belief" in a wonderful book, The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy (Oxford, 2021.)

The Supreme Court decision in the 1950's to make segregation illegal was seen as religious heresy by Southern Evangelicals. I think it safe to say it was seen as heresy in the same way Roe was seen as well as gay marriage more recently. It wasn't like opponents were disappointed, they were floored. How could this happen when the truth it is wrong is so obvious and indisputable?

Hawkins had noticed nearly all books about the South during civil rights have focused on where Rev. Martin Luther King held marches and where people were killed. He decided to focus on a Southern state that claimed a degree of enlightenment on race and the period, South Carolina. And, instead of using declarations of denominations about the issue of integration he followed the path suggested by author Stephen Prothero. Prothero wrote that one view of "what a religion or denomination stands for" is what the people in the pews think it stands for. What whites in the pews across South Carolina thought was much different than official positions of the two denominations in the study, Methodist and Southern Baptist. 

Both those denominations passed official resolutions affirming the equality of the races and that integration had arrived. The voluminous letters, minutes and letters author Hawkins read from congregations in South Carolina showed that people in the pews thought the leaders of their own denominations were no longer Christians.

In future blogs I will list specific scriptures used by Southern whites to "prove" God wanted the races separate and any attempt to mix them was flat out blasphemy.