This is a good thing, that social historians are embracing the study of religion. And I particularly like what Jon Butler says here. More accurately stated, I think, is that social historians are taking more seriously the day-to-day application of faith to explain and direct social change. For good methodological reasons, social historians have long used economic determinism as the driving force in history, and religion, when turned to, as a tool of dynamic and disruptive forces. Thus, economic status in historiography is the determining factor in class formation and dominates the language used to describe relationships between groups of people. In the work I plan to do, however, I want to explore if religious decision making (in what to read, how to educate children, how to approach housework) is not a superior factor in class communal or individual identity than the number of acres owned or how one disposes of ones crops. (Hardly an original or even new thought.)
Anyhow, religion, for its own sake, in Southern social historiography has a head-start on everyone else, thankyouverymuch (and that's just the white people).
Well, this sounds ponderous and very likely ill-informed, but as I develop my dissertation and rehearse the historiography, I must work hard to play with the language of social relations and not merely imitate others. Harder than it sounds. Good thing there is fantastic new stuff every day that will prevent me from getting lazy on this.
Does any of this even make sense?
Via.
