num_pages: 344
description: A richly detailed study of the rise of the Bah Faith in South Carolina. There isnt another study out there even remotely like this one.Paul Harvey coauthor of The Color of The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America A pioneering study of how and why the Bah Faith became the second largest religious community in South Carolina. Carefully researched the story told here fills a significant gap in our knowledge of South Carolina's rich and diverse religious history.Charles H. Lippy coauthor of Religion in Contemporary America The emergence of a cohesive interracial fellowship in Jim Crow-era South Carolina was unlikely and dangerous. However members of the Bah Faith in the Palmetto State rejected segregation broke away from religious orthodoxy and defied the odds eventually becoming the states largest religious minority.The religion which emphasizes the spiritual unity of all humankind arrived in the United States from the Middle East at the end of the nineteenth century via urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest. Expatriate South Carolinians converted and when they returned home they brought their newfound religion with them. Despite frequently being the targets of intimidation and even violence by neighbors the Ku Klux Klan law enforcement agencies government officials and conservative clergymen the Bahs remained resolute in their faith and their commitment to an interracial spiritual democracy. In the latter half of the twentieth century their numbers continued to grow from several hundred to over twenty thousand.In No Jim Crow Church  Louis Venters traces the history of South Carolinas Bah community from its early origins through the civil rights era and presents an organizational social and intellectual history of the movement. He relates developments within the community to changes in society at large with particular attention to race relations and the civil rights struggle. Venters argues that the Bahs in South Carolina represented a significant sustained spiritually-based challenge to the ideology and structures of white male Protestant supremacy while exploring how the emergence of the Bah Faith in the Deep South played a role in the cultural and structural evolution of the religion. 
language: English
title: No Jim Crow Church: The Origins of South Carolina's Bahá'í Community
publisher: University Press of Florida