To answer the resounding “How did we get here?” question focused on our current political, and even existential, functioning as a country, Michael Odom offers Southern Strategies: Narrative Negotiations in an Evangelical Region. The book offers an exploration of religion’s role in how the evangelical movement has shifted in its power and perspective attempts to resurrect truth in the South. Odom takes us on a decade-by-decade expedition of several texts to show how capitalism, racism, and overall authoritarianism lie closer to the soul of the Evangelical South than to the Gospels.
Part One takes a tour of W.J. Cash’s The Mind of the South and Lillian Smith’s Killers of the Dream. In both texts, Odom points out how the writers exist as survivors of the evangelical South and are undergoing a “deconversion.” Being a Southerner now living outside of my Cajun culture, I could appreciate the literary device of establishing their authority on the matter by being of the culture but not in the culture. The text draws deeply on the landscape where these memoirs are set to investigate “the public Puritan and private hedonist.” The chapters wrestle with how corrupted Evangelical authoritarianism resulted in a patriarchy which outsources the struggle for morality by allowing someone else to do the thinking and choosing. Cash’s indictment of the Evangelical embrace of capitalism is followed by Lillian Smith’s outcry against its racism: “…white people overesteemed their skin color as a form of infantilism – a continuation of a child’s self-centeredness that was fostered by family and church.” In Odom’s review of both writers, he lays out a case for how religion did as much to influence culture and politics as any other identity factor. I questioned why Odom chose these two writers as a sort of “authority” on authoritarianism, but more on that later.
In Part Two, the writers are not insiders turned outsiders, but outsiders to Evangelical Christianity. Flannery O’Conner and Walker Percy are called upon to give their take on the salesmanship of sectarian religion and to diagnose its ills, respectively. In these cases, satire, instead of direct experience, is the mode of question. Odom’s treatment of Wise Blood and Percy’s multiple fictions had me dusting off my own copies of their works for reference. One of my favorite entries in this section included Odom walking through the evolution of a character by referencing O’Conner’s own drafts. These varied depictions showed O’Conner’s own thinking of how Evangelicalism’s cult of personality, and the emptiness therein, defines spirituality. Even more interior than O’Conner’s drafts, Odom walks through much of Walker Percy’s early life to illustrate how this literary giant came to his standpoint on his own religion as well as the religious “other.” Odom believes what troubled Percy was “…the unfounded sense of assurance, as financial success and evangelical hegemony coexist harmoniously to create an odd mixture of Jesus, prosperity, and nationalism.” The theme presented in both perspectives features these Catholic writers lampooning their evangelical cousins on form if not necessarily in an attack on the substance.
The final section of the book presents the idea of “Narrative Negotiation” by evoking “…ambivalence by trespassing established borders and transforming cultural codes into something new and different.” Odom chooses Salvation on Sand Mountain to depict a journalist’s experience of immersion in the snake-handling tradition. At times, reading about this piece second-hand had me confused as to what was being “negotiated.” Through this text, Odom describes how the transcendental experience of encountering poisonous serpents changed Covington’s viewpoint on this sect not once, but twice. Odom points out the attitude of not giving evangelicals sporting “ducktails” and “heavy-lidded gazes” a fair shake. He also notes Covington believes “the handlers are ‘refugees from a culture on the ropes,’ who filled the spiritual vacuum left by the failed promises of modernity.” It appears the post-modernistic view of “no single truth” is the piece being negotiated, with our own outlook at stake. The negotiation continues in the chapter focused on Doris Betts’ The Sharp Teeth of Love. I appreciated Odom’s inclusion of a work which considers, specifically, how evangelical religion can be oppressive of women’s bodies. In the ultimate “negotiation,” Odom focuses on the novel’s treatment of the evangelical duality of the corporeal versus the spiritual, and how the two need not be mutually exclusive.
Throughout this book, I recognized themes which parallel my own experience as a Southerner. It read academic while remaining accessible. Odom speaks directly to the impact of his study in his “Coda”, stating “For too long, willful ignorance has been a shield for white people; for everyone else, ignorance is a liability.” In considering this statement, I would like to have seen more viewpoints on Evangelicalism’s influence from communities that have been marginalized such as people of color and those who are part of the LGBTQ community. Odom does include one such writer, Anthea Butler, but more perspectives would have enriched an understanding of this movement on the American psyche. And while Odom did a good job of focusing understanding of Evangelical intertwinement with the development of the Southern identity through time, I would be interested in seeing how this ideology currently impacts not just the Protestant religions, but potentially others, as well. This book is, of course, focused on how white evangelicals have inserted their ideals into the American cultural conversation. But how has Evangelical outlook affected Southern Catholics, or Muslims, or Hindus in the practice of their own religions and voting? If it is so ubiquitous in the thinking of this region, what happens when we expand the question beyond the most monolithic understanding of Southern culture?
For students of Southern Literature like me, this book sits well next to Grit Lit: A Rough South Reader, also published by University of South Carolina Press. Similarly, Odom has approached the Southern character from a new and nuanced angle to comprehend its ethereal nature. For all its thought provoking, Southern Narratives keeps the Evangelical influence close to the heart. While Odom may depict a society content with parading its faith only on Sunday, he knows that these integral building blocks of Southern identity cannot be left in the pews.
NONFICTION
Southern Strategies: Narrative Negotiation in an Evangelical Region
by Michael Odom
University of South Carolina Press
Published March 7, 2024
Southern Review of Books 