A significant contribution to our understanding of the religious experience in the Old South and of the regional culture generally.

—Eugene D. Genovese, author of The Southern Tradition: The Achievement and Limitations of American Conservatism

Given the centrality of religious writings to antebellum southern readers, it is remarkable that this body of literature has had to wait until now to receive such an analysis.

—David Moltke-Hansen, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

An engaging, focused examination of economic issues that preoccupied the Protestant clergy, primarily what they considered the root of all evil—mammonism; i.e., 'avarice, covetousness and materialism.'

—John M. Ysursa, Civil War History