Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause: Southern White Evangelicals and the Prohibition Movement (Religion in the South)

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In the late 1800s, Southern evangelicals believed contemporary troubles -- everything from poverty to political corruption to violence between African Americans and whites -- sprang from the bottles of "demon rum" regularly consumed in the South. Though temperance quickly gained support in the antebellum North, Southerners cast a skeptical eye on the movement, because of its ties with antislavery efforts. Postwar evangelicals quickly realized they had to make temperance appealing to the South by transforming the Yankee moral reform movement into something compatible with southern values and culture. In Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause: Southern White Evangelicals and the Prohibition Movement, Joe L. Coker examines the tactics and results of temperance reformers between 1880 and 1915. Though their denominations traditionally forbade the preaching of politics from the pulpit, an outgrowth of evangelical fervor led ministers and their congregations to sound the call for prohibition. Determined to save the South from the evils of alcohol, they played on southern cultural attitudes about politics, race, women, and honor to communicate their message. The evangelicals were successful in their approach, negotiating such political obstacles as public disapproval the church's role in politics and vehement opposition to prohibition voiced by Jefferson Davis. The evangelical community successfully convinced the public that cheap liquor in the hands of African American "beasts" and drunkard husbands posed a serious threat to white women. Eventually, the code of honor that depended upon alcohol-centered hospitality and camaraderie was redefined to favor those who lived as Christians and supported the prohibition movement. Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause is the first comprehensive survey of temperance in the South. By tailoring the prohibition message to the unique context of the American South, southern evangelicals transformed the region into a hotbed of temperance activity, leading the national prohibition movement.

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Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause: Southern White Evangelicals and the Prohibition Movement (Religion in the South) Review

In Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause, Coker argues that the South's embrace of prohibition was by no means inevitable, but the culmination of a decades-long struggle by evangelical temperance advocates to adapt a traditionally Yankee movement to the New South's culture. The author contends that the Southern temperance movement lagged behind its Northern counterpart in the antebellum period and after the war focused largely upon reforming its own membership, resisting state-imposed prohibition until the 1880s. Coker argues that from 1880 to 1915, Southern evangelicals succeeded in voting the South dry (alcohol free) "due in large part to their ability to adapt the prohibition message to the peculiarities of southern culture, particularly with regard to the issues of race, honor, gender, and separation of church and state" (p. 3).

In the introduction, Coker summarizes the argument of the book, then defines evangelicalism in the South as "a unique subset of American Protestantism, a movement born of the revivals that swept the nation in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries" (p. 5). The author admits that his scope is limited both to overwhelmingly white and male evangelical church sources and to Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. Coker's first chapter surveys the American temperance movement from its inception in New England in the early 1800s and its progress in the South from the 1820s to 1880. Methodist and Baptist evangelicals were the standard bearers for temperance and increasingly sought to reform voluntarily their own members in the 1860s and 70s. By the 1880s, Coker argues, they entered the political sphere for a crusade to eliminate alcohol.

In the next chapter, Coker focuses on the doctrine of the spirituality of the church. Southern churches had ostensibly used this doctrine to separate from - and stay separated from - Northern churches that had meddled in political issues such as slavery. The popular doctrine generated a backlash for churchmen agitating for prohibition, Coker argues, but once prohibitionists defended the church's entrance into politics on moral issues they set a precedent for moral issues in the future. Coker's next chapter deals with the racial undertones of prohibition. Coker argues that Southern evangelicals increasingly tied prohibition to white supremacy after 1880 by blaming alcohol for black men raping white women and arguing blacks with the vote would subvert both temperance and the white-dominated social order.

The following chapter focuses on the Southern cult of honor. Coker contends that evangelicals sought to reform the honor culture of alcohol and violence (such as lynching) by linking prohibition with manliness and honor. This effort, writes Coker, connected prohibition to Southern culture and solidified the shift of evangelicals from the periphery of the honor culture to its center. Next, Coker examines the leading role of gender in prohibition. Southerners saw women as the chief victims of and (through the WCTU) chief agitators against alcohol. While Southern evangelical leaders embraced prohibition in defense of women's honor, they also generally resisted the WCTU's push for gender equality in the church and at the voting booth, claiming such equality undermined women's peculiar virtue.
The book's neat organization and flowing style make it a delight to read. Coker's chapter transitions are seamless and even the introduction and conclusion flow effortlessly. The book cites hundreds of sources and seems well researched. Still, Coker admits that a chief limitation of the book is its focus on the voices of "white male evangelical leaders in the prohibition movement," particularly Southern Baptists and Southern Methodists (p. 12). The relative lack of black and female voices is particularly significant given that one chapter is about race and another is about gender. His narrow source focus is perhaps excusable given his narrow focus on white male evangelicals, yet his very focus lends itself to overcasting the importance of white male evangelicals and underrating the contributions of everyone else in tying prohibition to Southern culture.

Another weakness of the book is its opening assumption that Southern evangelicals, particularly Methodists and Baptists, were the main driving force behind national prohibition. While this assumption is common, prohibition also garnered significant support from the North, from modernist Protestants, and from secular groups including big business, radical labor, and scientists. As such, it is questionable whether the South was really "the standard-bearer in the agitation for national prohibition," as Coker assumes (p. 3). Perhaps the author's self-professed narrow focus upon evangelical sources blinded him to non-evangelical voices. Nonetheless, once Coker brings up evangelicals' role in national prohibition, he has a responsibility to let his readers know that non-evangelicals played a major role in it or risks perpetuating dubious stereotypes. By ignoring the important role of non-evangelicals and overstating the role of evangelicals in prohibition advocacy, Coker hurts his credibility.

Elsewhere, Coker rightly explains prohibition's expressly humanitarian intent and so humanizes its supporters, a necessary measure after Richard Hofstadter eloquently demonized prohibition as a "pseudo-reform, a pinched parochial substitute for reform" spread by the "rural-evangelical virus" (p. 236). The author may have overcast the significance of Southern prohibition relative to the rest of the nation, and the book's focus on evangelicals may be too narrow to give a comprehensive explanation of how prohibition became ensconced in Southern culture. Still, the book is useful as an examination of how Southern evangelicals played a key role in advocating prohibition in the South by creatively engaging churches with issues of politics, race, honor, and gender. Coker also provides valuable insight into why white male evangelicals played a major role in the South even after prohibition's failure signaled the end of Protestant hegemony elsewhere.

Perhaps Coker's analysis could have been enriched by more treatment of the interplay of theology and Southern culture. While he may overplay the role of evangelicals in Southern prohibition and the role of the South in national prohibition, Coker persuasively argues that evangelicals innovatively navigated several cultural obstacles to wed prohibition to white Southern culture.

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