RALPH E. LUKER

In the late-flowering study of religion in the South, relatively little attention has been given to its intellectual traditions. The field's rich body of literature, largely produced in the last two decades, has yielded only one serious study of theology in the region, E. Brooks Holifield The Gentlemen Theologians. So great has been the historians' stress upon the heartfelt, emotional character of popular religion in the South, says Holifield, that even to inquire into a "Southern religious 'mind' . . . is to question a commonplace." ¹ One might say that, lacking a Jonathan Edwards, the South has no call for a Perry Miller. Even Holifield felt compelled to analyze the social status of his regional divines in order to create interest in their tomes of derivative common sense theology.

The South may have had no Jonathan Edwards, but it had William Porcher DuBose, a theologian more generally appreciated abroad than in the United States; and DuBose was no isolated theological genius whose work "defies environmental interpretations." ² Rather, he was the central figure in a southern intellectual tradition extending from 1840 to 1920. Beginning with James Warley Miles, an Episcopal priest and professor at the College of Charleston, the tradition found its richest theological expression in the thought of DuBose, who taught at the University of the South, and continued in the work of his students -- social reformer Edgar Gardner Murphy,

Mr. Luker is executive director of the Delaware Humanities Forum Wilmington, Delaware.

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