Episode 191: Southern Shepherds, Savage Wolves: Otis Pickett on Presbyterian Missionaries, Race, and the Antebellum South

Southern Shepherds, Savage Wolves: Otis Pickett on Presbyterian Missionaries, Race, and the Antebellum SouthWhy is Sunday morning still one of the most segregated hours in American life? That question — sparked by a line from Martin Luther King Jr. that Dr. Otis Pickett encountered in seminary — set him on a twenty-year search through the archives. In this episode, Chad sits down with Dr. Otis Westbrook Pickett Sr., University Historian at Clemson University, to discuss his first book, Southern Shepherds, Savage Wolves: Presbyterian Domestic Missionaries and Race in South Carolina, 1802–1874.Otis and Chad examine the nineteenth-century Presbyterian missionaries — most prominently John Lafayette Girardeau and T. C. Stuart — who worked to bring enslaved and later freed men and women into the life of the church, and who faltered when that calling collided with the racial hierarchy of a slaveholding society. The conversation traces how theology and ecclesiology shaped interracial encounter within the Presbyterian church and in Southern society more broadly, the uneasy coexistence of enslavement and "ecclesiastical rights," and the role religion played in shaping both slavery and Native American removal — along with how these ideas fared through the Civil War and helped lay the groundwork for the segregation that followed.Dr. 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 the College of Charleston, and a PhD in history from the University of Mississippi. He is also co-founder and co-director of the Prison to College Pipeline Program, the first program in Mississippi to offer tuition-free, credit-bearing college courses to incarcerated students. AmazonLinks: 🎙️ Support the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/AHOCT 🌐 A History of Christian Theology: https://www.ahistoryofchristiantheology.com 📖 Southern Shepherds, Savage Wolves (USC Press): https://uscpress.com/Southern-Shepherds-Savage-Wolves 📚 Read it free via Open Carolina: https://manifold.sc.edu/projects/southern-shepherds 👤 Dr. Otis Pickett at Clemson: https://www.clemson.edu/cah/about/facultybio.html?id=6273 𝕏 Follow the podcast: @theologyxian | 📘 facebook.com/ahistoryofchristiantheology