Avenues of Faith: Shaping Urban Religious Culture of Richmond, Virginia, 1900-1929.

By Samuel C. Shepherd Jr. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2001. 414 pp.

In summary, this book is a useful work that can broaden the historiography about how urban Christianity in the South interacted with the surrounding culture. It is part of the Religion and American Culture series.

In the opening pages of Avenues of Faith, Samuel Shepherd Jr. outlines the thesis of his book. Richmond, Virginia's, religious leaders in the early-twentieth century were uniquely and, to use Shepherd's word, "impressively" successful in adapting religious ideals and institutions to both the changing South and to the needs of a diverse urban society. Methodologically, his book presents readers with a merger of urban history and the history of Southern Progressivism and these two fields' intersection with southern religion. Thanks to several good, recent books, historians are beginning to diminish the notion that Social Christianity was a uniquely northern phenomenon, and Shepherd's book adds to that literature by showing how urban southern religious leaders participated in the experience. As such, this is an important and needed work.

In fact, addressing the need for southern, urban religious history is an important aim for Shepherd. His book is well researched and is enjoyable to read because of his balanced style. It is arranged topically, and this is done to good effect.

He limited his study to Southern white Protestants and their role in shaping the religious culture of Richmond. Shepherd's work really seems to capture the spirit of interdenominational cooperation in Richmond. He explained how these Protestant leaders viewed the unique role of religion as a formative influence in directing the tone of Richmond's many changes in the early 1900s. By noting the changes in the city's make-up and image over a few critical years, he explained how Richmond was transformed from the shrine of the Lost Cause to an example of New South Progressivism. Shepherd noted how this transition owed much of its successes to religious leaders. He described how churches addressed societal needs, and how churches involved themselves with the usual Progressive concerns of temperance, social justice, and the changing business climate, but not in such a way as to diminish the churches' distinctly spiritual orientation.

Shepherd also tackled the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy of the 1920s and its outcome in Richmond. Shepherd argued that Richmond's churches, for the most part, resisted identification with religious fundamentalism. With years of experience in ecumenism, most religious leaders, including many of the more conservative ones, viewed fundamentalists negatively. His argument that fundamentalism was viewed as an outsider movement by many Southerners is a hypothesis that merits more scholarly investigation.

In conclusion, Shepherd's book took a complex religious culture and made it accessible and understandable. He made a valuable contribution with this book, and it should be widely read.--Reviewed by Christopher Beckham, pastor, Flemingsburg Baptist Church, Flemingsburg, Kentucky, and adjunct history professor, Morehead State University.