The power of religion in the civil rights movement In a provocative assessment of the success of the civil rights movement, David L. Chappell reconsiders the intellectual roots of civil rights reform, showing how the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament - sometimes translated into secular language - drove African American activists to unprecedented solidarity and self-sacrifice. Martin Luther King Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, James Lawson, Modjeska Simkins, and other black leaders believed, as the Hebrew prophets believed, that they had to stand apart from society and instigate dramatic changes to force an unwilling world to abandon its sinful ways. Although segregationists outvoted and outgunned black integrationists, the segregationists lost, Chappell concludes, largely because they did not have a religious commitment to their cause.
About the Author :
DAVID L. CHAPPELL teaches history at the University of Arkansas. He is author of Inside Agitators: White Southerners in the Civil Rights Movement.
Review :
"A pathbreaking study of prophetic Protestantism and the camapaign against Jim Crow." -- Commonwealth
"A stunning reinterpretation of the American civil rights movement." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Accessible to laypersons as well as scholars and students in the field of history, religion, and cultural studies." -- Alabama Review
"Chappell argues that the [civil rights] movement could be considered less a political protest with religious dimensions than a religious revival with political and social dimensions. . . . Chappell writes engagingly, drawing an important revisionist portrait of the crucial role of religion in defeating Jim Crow." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Chappell's new interpretation of the civil rights movement is a first-rate work of history. . . . The book is a major contribution to civil-rights history: clearly written, prodigiously researched and forcefully argued. . . . A Stone of Hope respects the public power of religion, but it also brings Dr. King and his co-workers down from the mountaintop, transfiguring them into human beings." -- Wall Street Journal
"David Chappell convincingly likens the civil rights movement to a religious revival, showing how black Southerners inspired by the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament spearheaded the drive to abolish 'the sin of segregation.'" -- The Nation
"For those who care about the role of religion in public life, this book offers not only a reckoning, but an awakening." -- Word & World
"It's impossible to read the book without doing some fundamental rethinking about the role religion can play in . . . public life. . . . Intricate, dazzling in its reach into so many corners of Black and white southern life and fascinating at every turn. . . . In its mix of rigor, daring and perceptiveness, A Stone of Hope is a spectacular work." -- New York Times Book Review
"One of the three or four most important books on the civil rights movement. . . . This unusually sophisticated and subtle study takes an unconventional and imaginative approach by examining both sides of the struggle. . . . [Chappell] argues persuasively that revivalism engendered the civil rights movement's solidarity, leadership, worldview, and rhetoric . . . [and] that the struggle against segregation triumphed owing not only to the religious views of southern blacks, but also to the religious views of southern whites." -- The Atlantic
"The effort [of reading] will be worthwhile, given the fresh and provocative arguments the author makes about issues still central to Americans in a new century when racial harmony and equality remain beyond easy grasp." -- Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
