Bibliography of Religion in the South by Charles H. LippyReview by: Randall M. MillerThe Journal of American History, Vol. 73, No. 4 (Mar., 1987), pp. 1112-1113Published by: Organization of American HistoriansStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1904192 .

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1112 The Journal of American History

eight-volume Biographical History of North Carolina (1905-1917) was long recognized, and two decades ago William S. Powell volun- teered for the monumental task.

After devoting several years to an intensive study of the resources of the North Carolina Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Powell circulated lists of names tentatively selected for inclusion in a new se- ries, and in 1972 he began assigning four thousand subjects to more than seven hundred volunteers - mostly professionals, graduate students, and lay historians. For content, sources, and format, the Dictionary of Amer- ican Biography (DAB) served as a guide.

Volume I (A-C) of the resulting Dictionary ofNorth Carolina Biography appeared in 1979 and immediately set a new standard for state biographical series. Historians who contem- plated similar projects in their states and in- quired about Powell's funding sources were stunned to learn that the DNCB project was being conducted by hundreds of authors coor- dinated by a full-time professor with no grants, payments, or royalties, and with only a small amount of typing and copying as- sistance furnished by his university. In an era of academic grantsmanship, the new series may constitute a unique contribution to the history of a state.

Volume II (D-G) confirms the critical ac- claim of the DNCB as a model of collective bi- ography. Unlike many series (including Ashe's) that serve as studbooks for the political elite, Powell's is marvelously diverse in its bi- ographees. The first five entries feature a chemist, a British army officer, an inventor, and two artists; the last five, a surgeon, a law school founder, a priest, a judge, and an en- gineer; and the center pages feature a member of the Continental Congress, a college presi- dent, and a nutritionist. Women and blacks are better represented than in any other North Carolina biographical series.

In the tradition of the DAB, sketches in the DNCB are matter-of-fact rather than orator- ical in tone, and their quality varies with the availability of sources and the research effort and literary style of authors. There is ample evidence of Powell's editing pencil, but like most collective works, this one exhibits un- evenness. For example, Christopher Gale may

deserve the longest entry (eight full columns) and Dolphin Ward Floyd the shortest (thir- teen lines), but Walter Gwynn (six columns) gets more than his due.

When completed, the Dictionary ofNorth Carolina Biography will undoubtedly become the most frequently cited source in North Carolina research.

H. G. Jones University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

Bibliography of Religion in the South. By Charles H. Lippy. (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1985, xvi + 498 pp. $49.95.)

Among American historians, few subjects have commanded so much attention as defining the South-the seeming alter ego of the American dream, the guilty among the in- nocent, the defeated (if unbowed) amid the victorious. Scholars and South-watchers searching for southern identity and for the central theme of southern history have tradi- tionally fastened on race, ruralism, and re- ligion as the marrow sustaining the region's distinctive character and history. As the con- temporary South seemingly metamorphoses into the Sun Belt, religion (most especially evangelical Protestantism) has emerged as the saving remnant of southern distinctiveness. In 1984 Sam Hill brought out a massive Ency- clopedia of Religion in the South that bears witness to the richness, variety, and freshness of scholarship in the field, as it also demon- strates how much religion has penetrated vir- tually all aspects of southern life. Now Charles Lippy has produced a companion volume that identifies and describes the large "secondary literature about religion in the South from many different perspectives," and thereby testifies anew to the subject's centrality in un- derstanding southern culture and society. Lippy's bibliography is a major achievement that will make the elusive southern identity more accessible.

Lippy organizes his bibliography topically, arranging the more than five thousand books, articles, essays, dissertations, theses, and related materials into twenty-one categories. He includes chapters on reference works, syn-

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Research and Reference Tools 1113

optic studies on southern religious culture, the religions of native Americans, black religion, the various religious groups (including a sur- prisingly large chapter on Roman Catholicism and chapters on Judaism, sectarian bodies, and smaller movements), religion in Ap- palachia and the rural South, revivalism and Billy Graham, clergy, literature (from James Agee to Richard Wright), religious thought, and the relationship of religion to art, ar- chitecture, music, education, and society. Each chapter begins with an informative com- mentary on the significant secondary litera- ture, marking trends and evaluating the works represented, and follows it with a bibliography arranged alphabetically (by author), which in- cludes many works not discussed in the com- mentary. Lippy closes with a chapter suggest- ing topics and issues needing future research and analysis.

Although not comprehensive, Lippy's bib- liography includes nearly every scholarly book and article related to his subject. Lippy ex- cludes most popular works and articles drawn from mass-circulation popular and denomina- tional magazines and journals, and he in- cludes only selected biographical and congre- gational accounts. He also confesses to a preference for journal articles and essays that have appeared in the past twenty-five years, al- though, in fact, his bibliography canvasses much older material from scholarly journals.

The only problem in Lippy's otherwise ex- cellent book is the absence of an index or any effective system of cross-reference. Casual ref- erence users will have to root around to find material on such topics as televangelists, or politics, or even the myriad activities and con- nections of a particular denomination. In his organizing schema, Lippy necessarily imposed some arbitrary boundaries on the materials, so much so that only a dogged researcher will ap- preciate how copious is the bibliography.

That deficiency notwithstanding, Lippy's bibliography is indispensable. For the first time, students of religion and region have a reliable bibliographical and historiographical analysis on religion in the South to guide their work. As religion continues to inform southern life, and as studies of southern re- ligion continue to provide models for the study of religion in any context, Lippy's work

(especially in conjunction with Hill's Ency- clopedia ofReligion in the South) should serve as the principal point of departure for anyone who wants to understand how and why God has always counted in Dixie.

Randall M. Miller Saint Joseph's University

IntellectualLife on the Michigan Frontier: The Libraries of Gabriel Richard &John Monteith. Ed. by Leonard A. Coombs and Francis X. Blouin, Jr. (Ann Arbor: Michigan Historical Collections, Bentley Historical Library, 1985. xi + 298 pp. $20.00.)

This volume, designed to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Michigan Historical Collections at the University of Michigan, con- sists of catalogs of the personal libraries of Gabriel Richard (1767-1832) and John Mon- teith (1787-1868), accompanied by essays on the collections. Richard, a Sulpician priest, ar- rived in Detroit in 1798 as a missionary from France. Monteith, a Presbyterian minister, ar- rived in 1816, the first Protestant missionary sent to Michigan. Both men were prominent spiritual and intellectual leaders in the years when Detroit was an isolated frontier outpost, and they joined forces to create the institution that later became the University of Michigan. The catalogs of their libraries represent the in- tellectual resources available to an educated man on the Michigan frontier in the early nineteenth century.

The catalogs are reconstructions of the li- brary collections of the two men, based pri- marily on the list Monteith compiled before he left Michigan in 1821 and the inventory of Richard's estate taken in 1832. Currently avail- able bibliographic information is used to am- plify to full citations most of the cryptic original references. A substantial number of the approximately 1,200 titles (over 4,000 volumes) in the Richard catalog have been lo- cated, primarily in libraries in the Detroit- Ann Arbor area, and the locations of these volumes are indicated in the catalog. Of the 275 titles (481 volumes) in the smaller Mon- teith catalog, 107 are housed in the Michigan Historical Collections. Most of the titles in Richard's collection are in French. The essays

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