When the Supreme Court declared in 1954 that segregated schools were unconstitutional, the highest echelons of American religious organizations enthusiastically supported the ruling. Many white southern clergy, however, were outspoken in their defense of segregation, and even those who supported integration were wary of risking their positions. Those who did so found themselves abandoned by friends, attacked by white supremacists, and often driven from their communities.

Michael Friedland offers a collective biography of several southern and nationally known white religious leaders - including William Sloane Coffin Jr., Daniel and Philip Berrigan, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Eugene Carson Blake, Robert McAfee Brown, and Will D. Campbell - who did step forward to join the major social protest movements of the mid-twentieth century, lending their support first to the civil rights movement and later to protests over American involvement in Vietnam.