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Size: 6 x 9
Pages: 264
Illustrations:

Southern History
Religious Studies
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Southern Shepherds, Savage Wolves

Presbyterian Domestic Missionaries and Race in South Carolina, 1802–1874

Otis Westbrook Pickett Sr.

Paperback
978-1-64336-637-1
Published: Oct 23 2025

$27.99

Hardcover
978-1-64336-614-2
Published: Oct 23 2025

$54.99

Ebook
978-1-64336-638-8
Published: Oct 23 2025

OA Ebook
978-1-64336-638-8
Published: Oct 23 2025

$0.00

The inclusion of this book in the Open Carolina collection is made possible by the generous funding of Clemson University, and University of South Carolina Libraries

Presbyterian Church missionaries and the theology of race, enslavement, and Native American removal

In Southern Shepherds, Savage Wolves, Otis Westbrook Pickett Sr. examines Presbyterian missionaries' attempts to live up to their understood calling from their God to serve as shepherds for their congregations. These missionaries, Pickett finds, faltered in this duty when faced with the racial hierarchy of an enslaved society. He focuses on individual missionaries, most prominently John Lafayette Girardeau and T. C. Stuart, who attempted to integrate enslaved, and later freed, men and women into the church. By examining these missionaries and mission churches, Pickett sheds new light not only on the complicated role that religion played in shaping slavery and Native American removal in the US South but also the fate of these ideas in the crucible of the Civil War and its aftermath.




Otis Westbrook Pickett Sr. is university historian and clinical assistant professor in the College of Education at Clemson University. He holds an MA from Covenant Theological Seminary, an MA in history from College of Charleston, and a PhD in history from University of Mississippi.

"Southern Shepherds, Savage Wolves is an important contribution to southern religious history, with fresh, impressive material that will be new even to seasoned scholars in the field."—Paul Harvey, University of Colorado, author of Martin Luther King: A Religious Life

"Deeply researched with a pastoral edge, Pickett's argument is at once historical, moral, and timely."—Luke Harlow, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, author of Religion, Race, and the Making of Confederate Kentucky

"A powerful, unflinching account of how southern Presbyterian missions shaped—and were shaped by—race, religion, and segregation in South Carolina."—Edward J. Blum, co-author of The Color of Christ

"Of great interest to readers interested in how racism has shaped the American church."—Emily Conroy-Krutz, Michigan State University, author of Missionary Diplomacy

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