Summary Of Wake The Devil From His Dream By Tim Vivian

In the article Wake the Devil from his Dream, Tim Vivian introduces the subject of slavery and segregation with a correlation of the church. Vivian offers a preface of the church antebellum and postbellum that provided insight of context for the foresight and failures of Thomas Dudley and Quincy Ewing writings. Dudley and Ewing’s writings created momentum for religious systems to oppress individuals considered as an “other” or impure promoting racism and segregation in the Jim Crow Era and still today. These religion systems incorporate boundaries, taboos, and acceptable social behavior, all of which indicate that there is another and often against, the religious norm (Vivian, Pg 8). This argument stands as a foundation of the modern prolonged problem of racial discrimination today.

This created a distinction that separated black people from white creating a feeling of any proximity is dangerous. Bishop Thomas Dudley stressed this polarity by preaching segregation- that is purity, which leads to holiness (Vivian Pg. 9) Ministers such as Dudley promoted directly or indirectly sacrificial violence. This thought of purity leading to holiness influenced the act of lynching. Black southerners were looked at as dark and impure this acted as fuel in achieving holiness through hanging these individuals. Religious systems used the argument that religion permeated communal lynching because the act occurred within the context of a sacred order to design to sustain holiness (Vivian, Pg 11). This concept narrows in the important influence that Thomas Dudley had on these religious systems and how race problems cannot be healed through the gospel that he