Shenandoah Religion asks why some Protestant denominations
remained on the fringes of society while others sank slowly into the
mainstream culture.  By surveying the religiously pluralistic setting
of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Shenandoah Valley,
Longenecker reveals how the fabric of American pluralism was
woven as different peoples with different cultural practices,
economies, politics, and beliefs interacted and learned not only
how to accommodate but also how to define more sharply their
own identities. Calling worldliness the "mainstream" and
otherworldliness, "outsiderness," Longenecker describes the
transition certain denominations made in becoming mainstream
and the resistance of others in maintaining distinctive dress,
manners, social relations, economies, and apolitical viewpoints that
separated members from the material world.  Shenandoah Religion
concludes that those faith communities that defined outsiderness so
that it affected the daily lives of their followers stood the best
chance of resisting the mainstream.
	
     Longenecker's regional study will appeal to those interested
in the fascinating quiltwork of cultures that made up the
Shenandoah Valley region. His analysis of Protestant responses to
the broader culture during this formative period in American
history will be of interest to historians of the American South and
scholars of American religion.

_________________________________________________________

STEPHEN LONGENECKER is a professor of history at
Bridgewater College in Bridgewater, Virginia.  A graduate of
Johns Hopkins University (M.A. and Ph.D.), Longenecker has
published several books and numerous articles on American
religious history.


What People Are Saying About This Book:

"[This work] will confirm Longenecker's standing as the foremost
religious historian of the Virginia backcountry."—Robert M.
Calhoon, University of North Carolina at Greensboro