Joel Alvis focuses on the relationships and tensions in the Presbyterian Church, U.S., whose ecclesiastical boundaries never expanded significantly beyond its original territory in the Confederacy and border South. By the time of the civil rights movement, the church was actively involved in ecumenical activities despite its regional isolation, and that involvement created unease in some quarters of the denomination. This concise institutional history traces how the church shaped and was shaped by its regional culture and explores the denomination's own cultural struggle to determine what role race issues would play in the definition of being Presbyterian.

Joel L. Alvis Jr. is pastor of the St. Pauls Presbyterian Church, St. Pauls, North Carolina. He received the M.Div. from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and the Ph.D. in American History from Auburn University. A former staff member of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Department of History, he participated in the Presbyterian Presence study conducted through Louisville Seminary.

 “Alvis has admirably delineated the struggles within the PCUS as the denomination wrestled with issues of racial justice in postwar America. It is an important story, for the denomination’s ambivalence toward racial issues mirrored that of southern society as a whole.” –Journal of Southern History

"This volume covers a very important denominational body in the South . . . and an important historical case study of what this denomination contributed to the development of a new relationship between the races in the South." – James H. Smylie, Union Theological Seminary

"Alvis tells an important story for all who are interested in religion in the South during the years surrounding the civil rights movement. The author draws from a wide range of primary sources to trace developments with the Presbyterian Church, U.S., as this overwhelmingly white establishment denomination struggled to break out of deeply internalized racial assumptions and long held patterns of behavior." – Erskine Clarke, Columbia Theological Seminary