I enjoyed this article and here is one quote to sort of get your interest:
"Generation after generation, Southern pastors adapted their theology to thrive under a terrorist state. Principled critics were exiled or murdered, leaving voices of dissent few and scattered. Southern Christianity evolved in strange directions under ever-increasing isolation. Preachers learned to tailor their message to protect themselves. If all you knew about Christianity came from a close reading of the New Testament, you’d expect that Christians would be hostile to wealth, emphatic in protection of justice, sympathetic to the point of personal pain toward the sick, persecuted and the migrant, and almost socialist in their economic practices. None of these consistent Christian themes served the interests of slave owners, so pastors could either abandon them, obscure them, or flee."
This is good and I have seen the connection with the wealthy plantation owners and the spin they used to promote the poorer folk to go to war for them. Unfortunately, it is still said today, despite the overwhelming ecidence that the war was about 'states rights'. It was only about slavery and anyone who has an iota of knowledge about the war can plainly see this. We are still fighting the Civil War just as we are still fighting WWI (the war to end all wars). Again, control by the powerful over the poor and ignorant.
I read an article yesterday, was gonna post it but got side tracked and now can not find it BUT it was about the brain damage and being more susceptible to fundamentalist christianity.