The Gospel Working Up

This book offers a history of three generations of Baptist and Methodist clergymen in nineteenth-century Virginia, and through them of the congregations and communities in which they lived and worked. Unlike previous scholars, who examined Southern Protestantism as only a proslavery and pro-Confederate ideology, Schweiger takes a wider view and finds a broad transformation of the social and cultural context of religious experience in the region.

She traces several major themes, such as the contrast between rural and urban experience, or the Methodist and Baptist schisms of the 1840's through the lives and careers of 800 clergy. Review: Schweiger's fresh and innovative study of Methodists and Baptists in nineteenth-century Virginia challenges many standard historical interpretations of southern evangelicals.

American Historical Review, June 2001 This is a bold and sweeping book that addresses important themes in Southern history and Southern religion. John W. Quist, Civil War History Schweiger's story does more than make sense. It may stir many readers to wonder how historians could have got the picture so far wrong for so long.

Mark Wahlgren Summers, Georgia Historical Quarterly