In this richly researched and intellectually ambitious study, Gareth Evans-Jones uncovers the Welsh-language religious debates on slavery that unfolded across nineteenth-century America. Drawing on a remarkable corpus of Welsh-American newspapers and journals, The Bible Divided reveals how Scripture became a site of fierce moral and political struggle, as interpreters wrestled with the relationship between Christianity, justice, race, and human freedom. Though rooted in the distinct tradition of Welsh religious Nonconformity, the book makes an important contribution to the wider study of American abolitionism, ethnicity, and religious culture. A major achievement in transatlantic cultural history.

Daniel G. Williams, Swansea University, UK

The process of retrieval and assertion of this overlooked perspective in the complex of transatlantic slavery is what makes Evans-Jones work so novel but it is his ability to examine and interpret the layers of biblical meaning apparent amongst this diasporic community and consider their socio-cultural import that makes this text so unique and refreshing

Charlotte Williams, Bangor University, UK

Gareth Evans-Jones has mined the unusually rich resources of Welsh-language American periodicals to make a significant contribution to American religious and political history. Welsh-speaking immigrant communities, with their fervent Bible-centered faith, debated the morality of slavery as intensely as any other Americans. But their position as recent immigrants and mostly not slave-owners made their reaction to landmark events (Fugitive Slave Laws, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and more) distinctive. This landmark study explains both why distinctive and how distinctive.

Mark Noll, Regent College, Canada