Right Reverend Stephen Elliott: Political Influence and the Protestant Episcopal Church in Georgia, 1840-1866

By the late 1840's, the South's religious and political convictions upheld slaveholders' social and economic views. These convictions permeated worship services in Georgia via the ministries. At the onset of the Civil War, spirituality provided an essential source of Southern strength in both victory and defeat. As fortitude subsided, religion also played a prodigious role in perpetuating the Confederate experience. For a generation, its theology had endorsed the South's social arrangement, asserted the morality of slavery, expunged Southern sins, and recruited the populace as God's devout guardians of the institution. Sustained by the belief that they were God's chosen people, Southerners rallied to the Confederate cause. Assserting great influence as the presiding Episcopal bishop of the Confederacy, the Right Reverent Steven Elliott, Jr., aggressively participated in contriving a religious culture that discerned threats to Southern society as challenges to Christian civilization.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts in History (M.A.)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis (open access)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Department of History

Year dc:date.available

2006

Author dc:creator

• Thompson, Paulette S.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Alan Downs
• Craig Roell

• ETD
• Bishop Stephen Elliott
• Jr
• Protestant Episcopal Church
• Evangelical Protestantism
• Civil War
• Georgia
• Southern politics
• Religion

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/592

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu:etd-1592