Catholics, Protestants, and Sectionalism in Antebellum American: An Interview with W. Jason Wallace
Conducted by Randall Stephens W. Jason Wallace is a professor of history at Samford University . He is the author of Catholics, Slaveholders, and the Dilemma of American Evangelicalism, 1835–1860 (Notre Dame University Press, 2010). I recently caught up with Jason to ask him some questions about his work on Christianity in pre-Civil War America and to discuss some of the Wall Street, 1847. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. connections between religion, politics, and historical consciousness in the nineteenth century U.S. Randall Stephens: What makes the era between 1835 and 1860 such a critical period in American religious history? W. Jason Wallace: Between 1835 and 1860 most aspects of American social, political, and economic life reached something of a ferment. Religion, and especially Christianity, underwent substantial trials as well. Religious disestablishment was then, and still is, a young phenomenon in the scope of world history. Unlike European churches, A...