A Stone of Hope - by David L Chappell (Paperback)

About the Book

Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow

Book Synopsis

The civil rights movement was arguably the most successful social movement in American history. In a provocative new assessment of its success, David Chappell argues that the story of civil rights is not a story of the ultimate triumph of liberal ideas after decades of gradual progress. Rather, it is a story of the power of religious tradition.
Chappell reconsiders the intellectual roots of civil rights reform, showing how northern liberals' faith in the power of human reason to overcome prejudice was at odds with the movement's goal of immediate change. Even when liberals sincerely wanted change, they recognized that they could not necessarily inspire others to unite and fight for it. But the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament--sometimes translated into secular language--drove African American activists to unprecedented solidarity and self-sacrifice. Martin Luther King Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, James Lawson, Modjeska Simkins, and other black leaders believed, as the Hebrew prophets believed, that they had to stand apart from society and instigate dramatic changes to force an unwilling world to abandon its sinful ways. Their impassioned campaign to stamp out "the sin of segregation" brought the vitality of a religious revival to their cause. Meanwhile, segregationists found little support within their white southern religious denominations. Although segregationists outvoted and outgunned black integrationists, the segregationists lost, Chappell concludes, largely because they did not have a religious commitment to their cause.

In a provocative assessment of the success of the civil rights movement, David Chappell reconsiders the intellectual roots of civil rights reform, showing how the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament--sometimes translated into secular language--drove African American activists to unprecedented solidarity and self-sacrifice. Martin Luther King Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, James Lawson, Modjeska Simkins, and other black leaders believed, as the Hebrew prophets believed, that they had to stand apart from society and instigate dramatic changes to force an unwilling world to abandon its sinful ways. Although segregationists outvoted and outgunned black integrationists, the segregationists lost, Chappell concludes, largely because they did not have a religious commitment to their cause.

Review Quotes

A pathbreaking study of prophetic Protestantism and the camapaign against Jim Crow.--Commonwealth

A stunning reinterpretation of the American civil rights movement.--Los Angeles Times Book Review

Accessible to laypersons as well as scholars and students in the field of history, religion, and cultural studies.--Alabama Review

Chappell's new interpretation of the civil rights movement is a first-rate work of history. . . . The book is a major contribution to civil-rights history: clearly written, prodigiously researched and forcefully argued. . . . A Stone of Hope respects the public power of religion, but it also brings Dr. King and his co-workers down from the mountaintop, transfiguring them into human beings.--Wall Street Journal

It's impossible to read the book without doing some fundamental rethinking about the role religion can play in . . . public life. . . . Intricate, dazzling in its reach into so many corners of Black and white southern life and fascinating at every turn. . . . In its mix of rigor, daring and perceptiveness, A Stone of Hope is a spectacular work.--New York Times Book Review

One of the three or four most important books on the civil rights movement. . . . This unusually sophisticated and subtle study takes an unconventional and imaginative approach by examining both sides of the struggle. . . . [Chappell] argues persuasively that revivalism engendered the civil rights movement's solidarity, leadership, worldview, and rhetoric . . . [and] that the struggle against segregation triumphed owing not only to the religious views of southern blacks, but also to the religious views of southern whites.--The Atlantic