Something that I read a while back (can't find the source though
) about the history of the American South was that, during the 1800s (the time of the Second and Third Great Awakenings), a good deal of the roots of what became modern American Protestantism spread throughout the Southern United States (and other parts of America, too).
However, what interested me the most about this particular passage was that the rather unique and peculiar character of (especially) Southern American Protestantism stemmed in large part from the combination of a highly zealous, evangelical (literally) Protestant movement that spread throughout the South, and the ways in which said religious movement took on characteristics of the...
unique social hierarchy of the South (most obviously, chattel slavery- but also the fact that a small number of landowners absolutely
dominated the Southern economy, political process, and social system in general).
Is it fair to say that a significant part of what we recognize today as American right-wing "evangelical" Protestantism (which is especially dominant in much of the South, but of course is by no means limited to that region) is rooted in not only those 19th-century revival movements, but also the ways in which revivalist Protestantism combined with the existing social hierarchies that were especially exaggerated by the Southern "way of life"?
