Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 18631877. By Daniel W. Stowell. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. 278. Introduction, conclusion, notes, bibliography, index. $65.00.) This is a significant work that fills a gap overlooked by historians, the nature of southern reconstruction. Daniel W. Stowell rightly observes that while the historiography of the Civil War and Reconstruction is voluminous, too few scholars have examined the history of the postwar (p. 10). While much has been made of the aspect of antebellum society and the spiritual side of the Civil War, the religious reconstruction of the has been ignored by historians, until now. Stowell concentrates on the Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian churches, as these three denominations accounted for 94 percent of all Christians in the eleven Confederate states. Although the material speaks to the South in general, Stowell concentrates on Georgia and Tennessee, particularly those church bodies that together contained more than 90 percent of the population by 1860. How the war and Reconstruction affected these churches is the book's real focus. Stowell begins by looking at how southern white evangelical Christians came to grips with both military defeat and radical Reconstruction, but he does not limit his attention to those white evangelicals. Stowell brings in the missionary experience of white northern evangelicals and how they responded to the new mission field opened to them by the Union victory. Northern missionaries came south to save white southerners from their sinful and heretical views of slavery and secession, and to reclaim not only the souls of ex-Confederates but church property as well. Sectional animosities persisted, however, among both camps of evangelical Christians throughout Reconstruction and beyond. Not until well into the twentieth century did the southern and northern branches of Methodism and Presbyterianism unite, and Baptists remain divided to this day. Probably the most significant feature of this book is the story of the racial division of southern evangelicalism during Reconstruction, something that persists today. Prior to the Civil War, most black evangelical Christians belonged to the southern Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian churches. Within five years of the war's end, most black Christians left southern white-dominated denominations to form their own churches. This racial division of southern evangelical Christianity was due to both ingrained white racism and a strong black desire to pursue their own destiny. Stowell emphasizes that the church segregation of Reconstruction resulted not so much from whites casting blacks out, but African Americans seeking their own houses of worship. …