From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Co

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These observations of what is missing point more to what research needs to be done rather than a failure on Dochuk's part. In sum, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt has established the base from which other research on the Religious Right will start and as such deserves a place in all academic and public libraries.

He is author of Strangers in Zion: Fundamentalists in the South, and is currently researching the image of military authority in Hollywood movies. If you would like to authenticate using a different subscribed institution that supports Shibboleth authentication or have your own login and password to Project MUSE, click 'Authenticate'.

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This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless. From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Project MUSE Mission Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide. This book, which began as a dissertation in history at Notre Dame, gave me more clarity into politics than almost anything else I've read.

The big picture oversimplified story is this: The cultural influence of Southerners half a million former Texans resided in the LA basin in the s , working in aggressive opposition to some of the most liberal populations in the US during the Cold War, is hard to overstate.

Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism

The Left in SoCal was also fueled by migration: Dust Bowl peasants i. The Grapes of Wrath and others who were distrustful of a predatory form of capitalism believed unions were necessary to reset the balance of power between capital, management and labor. Meanwhile, the Jewish immigrants who built the major Hollywood studios championed multicultural tolerance through storytelling that favored David Vs. Walt Disney pushed back and released some of the most effective anti-communist propaganda films ever produced. And the need for Ph. California has long been something of a cage match between social democrats on the Left and Christian nationalists on the Right.

Jul 22, Mark rated it liked it. I think the author did a good job of charting the path of evangelicalism from the Bible Belt to the Sunbelt and the national political landscape and major changes that it created. For me- I would have been fine with a pg primer. This book was just too long for me, discussing an issue I only am moderately interested in. Jul 27, John rated it it was amazing Shelves: I reviewed this book for amazon.

This book looks at the rise of conservatism in Southern California, as the working class migrants from Oklahoma, Kansas, and other dust bowl states of the s became middle class Californians in the s, s and after. The question of how this transformation took place has been addressed by many historians, who have found many subtly different explanations for this change the bibliography on the issue is quite large.

Dochuk focuses on the c I reviewed this book for amazon. Dochuk focuses on the change and finds a major explanation for it in the transformations in evangelical Christianity in Southern California from the s to They had much more opportunity to find work there than the perhaps more famous Dust Bowl refugees who ended up as migrant farmworkers, a group that Americans will associate with the Joads of John Steinbeck's novel "The Grapes of Wrath. The author makes fascinating observations, which had never occurred to me, about just how many southern people were settled in Southern California in this period -- the number of southern-born people in the environs of Los Angeles actually exceeded the population of some southern states.

The largest percentage of these folks were white, which of course has an influence on their history. The author writes that generally, these folks had always had a vision of America that centered on Jesus and Jefferson -- the Thomas Jefferson who saw the best future for America in small farmers and small businesspeople, unhampered by government interference. Of course, like all political visions, there are many contradictions in that political vision, and some folks would see a contradiction between Christianity and that vision.

How the political ideas and religous ideas interacted in the development of evangelical conservatism in California is what the book is about. He focuses on individuals active in the western south and California, and the institutions they created -- for example, churches and church organizations, and colleges and universities, from John Brown University to perhaps the epitome of the evangelical conservative university, Pepperdine.

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The author did a huge amount of research over many years, so of course his arguments are well-documented. The book is also engrossing -- I couldn't put it down, and couldn't stop talking about it. The author's own political and religious beliefs are not stated in the book -- it is a work of scholarship. But you don't have to be a professional historian to learn from the book, or to enjoy reading it. I've seen other books on the rise of convervativism in Southern California.

From Bible Belt to Sunbelt

If I could ask the author a question, I would ask him "What about the many new Californians who did not go to church? Nov 02, William rated it really liked it Shelves: Dochuk opens up one of the grand narratives in 20th century American politics.

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From Bible belt to Sunbelt chronicles the rise of the southern white diaspora -- the plain folks from the old southwest Oklahoma, Arkansas, the Texas panhandle to Southern California, and then how this group found its particular and peculiar political voice in a sort of Christian nationalism that foreshadowed the emergence of the Christian Right. The book is part ethnography, part political history, part religious h Dochuk opens up one of the grand narratives in 20th century American politics.

The book is part ethnography, part political history, part religious history, and in the background, the implicit story of the emergence of Southern California. One cannot expect a book to cover all four developments in a single volume -- it really is the stuff of a lifetime. Dochuk, however, is a good starting point for this discussion. From the side of politics there are two stories here: While the political movement of this community foreshadowed the Christian Right as a kind if "beta" model, the center of gravity moved from SoCal to Texas, to Colorado Springs, to points East.

The arrival of so many immigrants destabilized California politics, in part because of the sheer numbers, but also because of the values the immigrants brought with them.

The battle in the plain folk communities was less about conviction than the classic immigrant struggle to maintain its ways. In California where everything and everyone could be new, the culture wars began.

Dochuk underplays the specific cultural wars aspect, particularly as it relates Before, this cultural conflict could be confined regionally. The values of the north, the Midwest, the "elites" did not necessarily have to traffic with the South, the homeland of these SoCal plain folk. Indeed this distance was an integral part of the New Deal coalition. In SoCal that distance was compressed.

Moreover with the growth of SoCal in relation to the traditional role of San Francisco as the political leader only accentuated the conflict Religion plays a big part in the story. For the plain folk as with other immigrants, faith is a way the community maintains itself, but it was also the sectarian form of the faith itself which fueled the politics. It was it only a faith that emphasized conversion, but it was militantly separation it's -- it drew bright lines. The creed of biblical literalism empowered individuals, and lent itself easily to simple narratives. Finally, to be set in SoCal was to be at the center of a media megaphone.

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The result was that the faith not only nurtured a political consciousness, it also developed an increasingly national brand: In SoCal that relationship was rejected. The new shape of faith had its own power, independent of the old ways. Here, Dochuk misses something of the singularity of the new Fundamentalist brand. Conservative Protestant belief is lumped together generally, without an attention to the real divisions that would later inform the emergence of theChristian Right.

Apr 08, Charlie rated it really liked it Shelves: By beginning his narrative with the post-Depression migration of evangelicals from the western South, Dochuk hopes both to undermine the interpretation that the politics of religious conservatism appeared suddenly on the scene with the Moral Majority and to account for its distinctive cultural characteristics.

Dochuk's book makes several contributions to American studies. First, it could refocus the attention of political historians from the South to the Sunbelt as a culturally distinctive and influential region. Second, it certainly demonstrates the significance of mobility in American history; regions of the country are not demographically or culturally static. Third, it models a way of blending grassroots, regional research into national narratives. Fourth, it raises important questions about how religious ideals can become instantiated in institutions and local cultures, even aside from politics.

My only criticism of the book and this may be a pet peeve is that the fascinating ethnographic work of the first part seemed to get lost in the last third of the book, as if it were merely a springboard that facilitated a leap to a more conventional political narrative.

Apr 27, Steve Walker rated it it was amazing Shelves: America's current political climate did not happen over night. It has its origins in the 40's, 50's, and early 60's. For the early period I recommend Rick Perlstein's two books:

• The Regeneration: Project Take Over Vol.1
• Stranded with the Prince (Mills & Boon Intrigue) (Defending the Crown, Book 3)
• Dragonmorte (The Boy and the Dragon Princess)
• Acting: The Basics
• So Fahr ich hin
• International Handbook of Research on Conceptual Change (Educational Psychology Handbook)