Harvey, Paul 1961- (Paul William Harvey)

PERSONAL:

Born July 29, 1961. Education: Oklahoma Baptist University, B.A., 1983; University of California at Berkeley, Ph.D., 1992.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, COH 2, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs, CO 80933-7150. E-mail—pharvey@mail.uccs.edu.

CAREER:

University of California at Berkeley, lecturer, 1992; University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, assistant professor, 1996-2000, associate professor, 2000-04, professor of history, 2004—. Visiting professor, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, 1991, 1993, 1996.

MEMBER:

American Historical Association, American Academy of Religion, Southern Historical Association, American Society of Church History, Organization of American Historians, American Society of Church History,

AWARDS, HONORS:

Postdoctoral teaching fellow, Lilly Fellows Program, Valparaiso University, 1993-94, 1994-95; Pew Fellow in Religion and American History, Yale University, 1995-96; Full-year faculty research fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1999-2000.

WRITINGS:

Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 1997.

(Editor, with Philip Goff) Themes in Religion and American Culture, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 2004.

(Editor, with Philip Goff) The Columbia Documentary History of Religion in America since 1945, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Freedom's Coming: Religious Culture and the Shaping of the South from the Civil War through the Civil Rights Era, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 2005.

Contributor to various collections and texts. Contributor to several journals, including Southern Cultures, Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Fides et Historia, Reviews in American History, Crossroads: A Journal of Southern Studies, Cresset, and Christian Century.

Editorial board member, Journal of Southern Religion; maintains a Web log at http://usreligion.blogspot.com.

SIDELIGHTS:

Writer and educator Paul Harvey was born on July 29, 1961. He attended Oklahoma Baptist University, graduating with a bachelor of arts in 1983, and earning a doctoral degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1992. Over the course of his career, he has taught at several institutions, including Colorado College in Colorado Springs, where he served as a visiting professor in 1991, 1993, 1996, and the University of California at Berkeley, as a lecturer in 1992. In 1996, he joined the faculty of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs as an assistant professor of history. He was promoted to associate professor in 2000, and in 2004, became a full professor of history. He has also been honored with a number of fellowships, including a postdoctoral teaching fellowship through the Lilly Fellows Program at Valparaiso University, for both the 1993-94 and the 1994-95 academic years, a Pew Fellowship in Religion and American History at Yale University for 1995 to 1996, and a full-year faculty research fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the 1999-2000 academic year. Harvey's primary areas of research and academic interest focus on the post-Civil War era of American history, including the history of the South, American religious history, popular culture, the relationship between war and society, and the history of American music. In addition to his academic endeavors, Harvey is a contributor to various journals, including Southern Cultures, Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Fides et Historia, Reviews in American History, Crossroads: A Journal of Southern Studies, Cresset, and Christian Century. He has also written articles, essays, and chapters for various books, and maintains a Web log. He is the author of Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925 and Freedom's Coming: Religious Culture and the Shaping of the South from the Civil War through the Civil Rights Era. In addition, he edited books with Philip Goff, including Themes in Religion and American Culture and The Columbia Documentary History of Religion in America since 1945.

In Redeeming the South, Harvey analyzes the ways in which both black and white southern Baptists intermingled in the period following the U.S. Civil War, up until the mid-1920s. Harvey alternates chapters, devoting half of the chapters to the black perspective and half to the white perspective, showing where the two overlapped and particularly how a shared religious bond served as a way to interact when other social or cultural features of daily life were more controversial. The two groups did not always agree, however. Particularly regarding issues of church and state, they were in solid opposition, with white southern Baptists frequently acting hypocritical regarding the political use of the religious arena. Southerners called upon northerners to avoid lecturing about racial equality, yet they preached about issues involving the relationship between whites and blacks. John W. Storey, in a review for the Journal of Church and State, found the book to be "thoroughly researched and clearly written," and concluded that it will "be of interest to students of southern culture, let alone specialists in southern religion."

Freedom's Coming addresses the complicated coexistence of religion and race relations in the American South. On the whole, southerners are known to be a deeply religious group, earning the name "Bible Belt" for part of this region of the United States. Religion, particularly evangelicalism, plays an important role in the lives of many southerners and bridges differences in race, gender, color, and political beliefs. People outside of the South began to seriously question how such diverse individuals—including Ku Klux Klan members and civil rights activists—could possibly share a religious belief, and how the religion is sufficiently flexible so that it applies to such diverse groups. Over the course of the book, Harvey provides readers with a broad history of the American South, from the Reconstruction to the 1900s. Harvey points out the ways in which both political and religious groups rallied and organized their numbers in very similar ways following the Civil War, taking note of the different meanings they ascribed to the Civil War and how these meanings affected the ways in which they chose to move forward with their lives. The majority of the South was split between the white supremacists that kept their beliefs from prior to the war—and in many cases their beliefs deepened with the South's loss—and the newly independent blacks, who were struggling to find a new place in a hierarchy that, despite their freedom, treated them in virtually the same way as it had prior to their emancipation. Matt J. Zacharias Harper, in a review for Southern Cultures, remarked that "Harvey has done substantial primary research, but little of his story is new material. Rather, Harvey has found a way to string together ideas and examples from the best scholarly books on Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights movement." Michael E. Williams, Sr., a contributor to Baptist History and Heritage, stated that "this book is an outstanding contribution to studies in American cultural and religious history." In a review for Church History, Ted Ownby commented that "the particular strength of the volume lies in its numerous and often innovative ways of showing religious activism." Ownby concluded that "in properly bringing many unstudied or poorly studied characters to the forefront of southern history, [Freedom's Coming] thinks wisely and widely about the places of religion in southern life."

Themes in Religion and American Culture, edited by Harvey and Goff, is organized by topic, and then chronologically within each section, in direct contrast to the sweeping chronicles of the history of religion in America that start with the natives and work their way through the settlers and each subsequent historical period until reaching modern-day perceptions. The collection of essays still touches on a broad range of topics, however. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly commented that the collection is a "breath of fresh air; it maintains the integrity of the overall story while giving dire attention to its various parts."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, February 1, 1998, review of Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925, p. 283; December 1, 2006, John B. Boles, review of Freedom's Coming: Religious Culture and the Shaping of the South from the Civil War through the Civil Rights Era, p. 1519.

Baptist History and Heritage, March 22, 2007, Michael E. Williams, Sr., review of Freedom's Coming, p. 114.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, September 1, 1997, review of Redeeming the South, p. 147; March 1, 2005, F.M. Szasz, review of Themes in Religion and American Culture, p. 1245; October 1, 2005, E.M. Mazur, review of Freedom's Coming, p. 308.

Church History, June 1, 1998, Lydia Huffman Hoyle, review of Redeeming the South, p. 422; March 1, 2006, Ted Ownby, review of Freedom's Coming, p. 219; March 1, 2006, Charles H. Lippy, review of The Columbia Documentary History of Religion in America since 1945, p. 232; September 1, 2006, Douglas L. Winiarski, review of Themes in Religion and American Culture, p. 702.

Foreign Affairs, May 1, 2005, Walter Russell Mead, review of Freedom's Coming.

History: Review of New Books, January 1, 1998, John W. Storey, review of Redeeming the South, p. 67.

Journal of African American History, March 22, 2006, Michael Pasquier, review of Freedom's Coming, p. 221.

Journal of American History, March 1, 1998, Clarence E. Walker, review of Redeeming the South, p. 1518; March 1, 2006, Anthony B. Pinn, review of Freedom's Coming.

Journal of American Studies, August 1, 2006, Tom Rogers, review of Themes in Religion and American Culture, p. 432.

Journal of Church and State, January 1, 1998, John W. Storey, review of Redeeming the South, p. 204; June 22, 2005, Gaines M. Foster, review of Freedom's Coming, p. 635; September 22, 2005, Wendy Dackson, review of Themes in Religion and American Culture, p. 884.

Journal of Religious History, February 1, 1999, Merrill Hawkins, review of Redeeming the South, p. 138.

Journal of Southern History, August 1, 1998, David Stricklin, review of Redeeming the South, p. 588; May 1, 2006, Charles H. Lippy, review of Freedom's Coming, p. 493.

Journal of the American Academy of Religion, June 22, 1998, Bill J. Leonard, review of Redeeming the South, p. 431.

Library Journal, April 1, 2005, Leo Vincent Kriz, review of The Columbia Documentary History of Religion in America since 1945, p. 99.

Publishers Weekly, November 8, 2004, review of Themes in Religion and American Culture, p. 53; April 11, 2005, review of The Columbia Documentary History of Religion in America since 1945, p. 51.

Southern Cultures, September 22, 2006, Matt J. Zacharias Harper, review of Freedom's Coming, p. 111.

Virginia Quarterly Review, September 22, 1997, review of Redeeming the South, p. 117.

ONLINE

H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online,http://www.h-net.org/ (May 1, 2005), Edward J. Blum, review of Freedom's Coming.

University of Colorado at Colorado Springs Web site,http://web.uccs.edu/ (August 20, 2008), faculty profile.