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From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism Hardcover – December 13, 2010

by Darren Dochuk (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 45 ratings
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Winner of the American Historical Association's John H. Dunning Prize and the Organization of American Historians' Ellis W. Hawley Prize.

A sweeping, five-decade history of the evangelical movement in southern California that explains an epochal realignment of American politics.
From Bible Belt to Sun Belt tells the dramatic and largely unknown story of "plain-folk" religious migrants: hardworking men and women from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas who fled the Depression and came to California for military jobs during World War II. Investigating this fiercely pious community at a grassroots level, Darren Dochuk uses the stories of religious leaders, including Billy Graham, as well as many colorful, lesser-known figures to explain how evangelicals organized a powerful political machine. This machine made its mark with Barry Goldwater, inspired Richard Nixon's "Southern Solution," and achieved its greatest triumph with the victories of Ronald Reagan. Based on entirely new research, the manuscript has already won the prestigious Allan Nevins Prize from the Society of American Historians. The judges wrote, "Dochuk offers a rich and multidimensional perspective on the origins of one of the most far-ranging developments of the second half of the twentieth century: the rise of the New Right and modern conservatism." 8 pages of photographs
Previous page
  1. Print length
    544 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    W. W. Norton & Company
  4. Publication date
    December 13, 2010
  5. Dimensions
    6.5 x 1.5 x 9.6 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0393066827
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0393066821
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"An exhaustive history brimming with lively characters."
--Amy Sullivan, Time

"Detailed and closely argued.... Dochuk...well understands the pivotal role religion plays in shaping America's cultural self-image, and...breaks with a long tradition of historical writing that has monolithically depicted evangelical believers as backward-looking prophets of cultural reaction."
--Chris Lehmann, The Nation

"[Dochuk] skillfully traces a continuous narrative stretching from the Dust Bowl to Ronald Reagan, and demonstrates with prodigious research how this narrative fits into a much broader canvas of...political change. A superbly researched study of grassroots mobilization.... An important book."
--Mark A. Noll, The New Republic

"Very impressive.... From Bible Belt to Sunbelt is the product of prodigious research."
--Randall Balmer, Christian Century

"Dochuk excels in his profiles of early 'plain-folk' settlers and their world, and the tangled personal, institutional, and doctrinal motives of the ministry that served them.... [A] fascinating portrait of the early Christian Right."
--Ed Kilgore, Washington Monthly

About the Author

Darren Dochuk is Associate Professor in the Humanities at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Huffington Post, and other venues.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; First Edition, First Printing (December 13, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 544 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393066827
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393066821
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.05 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.5 x 9.6 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 45 ratings

About the author

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Darren Dochuk

Darren Dochuk

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A native of Edmonton, Alberta, Darren Dochuk earned his BA from Simon Fraser University and MA from Queen’s University (Canada) before receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame. He writes widely on the history of religion, politics, and culture in modern America. His first book, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelicalism (Norton) won the John H. Dunning Prize from the American Historical Association and the Ellis W. Hawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians, and was based on a dissertation that was awarded the Allan Nevins Prize from the Society of American Historians. His most recent book, Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America (Basic Books), explores the intersections of the petroleum business, American religion, and politics from the US Civil War to the present. He has also edited several other books in American history, including most recently The Routledge History of the Twentieth-Century United States (Routledge). Dochuk teaches history at the University of Notre Dame, where he avidly cheers on the Fighting Irish football, hockey, and lacrosse teams. He lives in South Bend, Indiana, with his wife and his loveable, lazy pit bull.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
45 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

KayElle
5.0 out of 5 stars Research is stunning!
Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2012
Verified Purchase
Contrary to traditional scholastic approaches which take a "jack-in-the-box" approach to conservative religion in modern day American history- that is, conservative religions "pop-upped" in the 1970s- Dochuk argues that the roots of the Religious Right go as far back to the Great Depression, when large numbers of Southerners began making the trek to California, bringing with them their "plain folk" gospel to Southern California, and thus created an alternative world of neighborhoods, schools and churches. After WW2, these "transplants" coalesced to form a powerful movement to fight against communism, and soon these "Sunbelt evangelicals" were changing American politics, e.g. helping Reagan win governorship in 1966. These Sunbelt evangelicals eventually fulfilled their ultimate goal of a moral crusade by taking their mixture of religion and politics back to the South, where Nixon was able to take advantage of this rise of evangelicalism and win the South in 1972. Ultimately, this new powerful group of voters helped Reagan win the national presidency in 1980.

The amount of research put into this book is stunning (warning- book is heavy and thick). His introduction is indispensable- read it to get a clear outline of his arguments and the way the book is structured. Anecdotes at the beginning of each chapter highlighted each issue well. Whole thesis of the book was very interesting- this whole move from the South to the West then move back "culturally" to the South.

My only wish was that he would have written what happened after 1980 during Reagan's presidency before ending his narrative, since other scholars on the Religious Right have disagreed on their evaluations of the Reagan's presidency. However, his book was already thick enough, so it might have been wise for him to cut it off then.

Overall a great book, especially for those interested in learning more about "Sunbelt evangelicalism" and just about the conservative movement in the Republican Party in general.
3 people found this helpful
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Russell Ferrell
5.0 out of 5 stars Southern evangelicals in southern California give rise to Ronald Reagan and the Christian Right
Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2016
Verified Purchase
Have you ever wondered what happened to all the Okies who migrated to California during the 1930s Dust Bowl and Great Depression? John Steinbeck's book The Grapes of Wrath chronicled the story of Okies who fled rural Oklahoma in search of agricultural work in the fields of the Golden State - picking vegetables and fruits on large agri-business operations. Exploited by the growers, the vegetable pickers like the Joad family eventually faded into dismal obscurity within the agricultural central valley. But what of those many others who migrated during the extended period of the 1930s-1950s and evaded the pauperism of the farming industry? Those that ended up in the urban centers and munitions factories? Darren Dochuk's book From Bible Belt to Sunbelt tells the story of those more fortunate migrants who eventually found urban bliss and economic prosperity outside the confines of the fields of big agri-business.

The book documents the amalgamation of politics and religion instituted by transplanted southern evangelicals rising through the ranks of the new evangelical empire established on the soil of southern California during the period of the 1930s-1950s. Transplanted southerners from the western South (OKlahoma, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, and Kansas) instituted their brand of evangelicalism into the culture of southern California - particularly in Los Angeles and Orange counties. Southern preachers and evangelical businessmen merged religion into politics, thereby laying the foundation for the Christian Right and the Republican Southern Strategy, while making evangelicals the solid core of the Republican Party. Southern California would become a bastion ofright wing politics - enabling the national rise of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Anti-communist, anti-union, anti-liberal anti-United Nations, these right wing preachers and businessmen saw the New Deal as statism or communism in an embryonic state. Also staunchly anti-New Deal, they considered Roosevelt a threat to capitalism and freedom, when in reality it was Roosevelt's New Deal that had saved capitalism and preserved the privileged class of capitalists. In southern California, working class southerners became middle class Californians as they found economic sustenance in the armament factories. On appeals from their preachers and businessmen, they shifted from Neal Deal democrats to hard-right republicans. This phenomenon accomplished three things within the social-political-economic sphere; a retreat from the moderate republicanism of President Eisenhower to embrace Reagan-styled right wing republicanism; the rise of a national evangelicalism (Christian Right) and the third great awakening which seeded the emergence of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and Pat Robertson's Christian business empire that evolved into prosperity theology.

Closely aligned with the defense industry, this part of the Republican base nourished the ascension of the military industrial complex, bloated defense budgests, and military interventionism (wars), especially those supposedly bringing about Armageddon and the Rapture. This faction, while being staunch anti-regulation and anti-environmentalism, now stands against any remedial addressment of global warming and environmental degradation. Southern evangelicals, especially those who migrated to southern California and joined the ranks of the middle class, had embraced New Dealism during the 1930s, but by the 1950s had repudiated it once becoming prosperous while under the sway of right-wing evangelical preachers who provided a stringest dose of propaganda under the cloak of conservative political ideology.

A major objective of these southern preachers and capitalists was to end the New Deal and destroy Roosevelt's legacy. An entire systematic framework of ideological implantation had sprung up to inculcate acceptable ways of thinking and seeing the world. Plain folk gospel spurred the popularity of Billy Graham and other evangelicals that gave rise to the Christian Right and the political careers of Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. The movement helped Reagan win the governorship in California in 1966, while Nixon took advantage of the rise of evangelicalism to enact his Southern strategy and win the South in 1972. Evangelicals were in the forefront of Reagan's bid to win the presidency in 1980.

This book documents the rise and ascendancy of the evangelical Christian right in southern California, which has had a profound effect on the nature of today's Republican Party with its courtship of evangelicals by politicians like Cruz and Santorum. This movement has profoundly shaped American society, economics, foreign policy, and politics since the 1960s. Those Okies we assumed had vanished into the central valley hinterland of blissful sunny California took root in the urban metropolis of Los Angeles-Orange County, prospered, and became ultra-conservative in their political ideology - supporting Cold War military budgets and virtually all military interventions, including the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. There legacy is also the legacy of the Republican Party.

This book is highly recommended for those wishing to learn about the enculturation of southern evangelicals in California and their impact on the modern world.
7 people found this helpful
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Sam Millsap
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2015
Verified Purchase
Excellent research and very well written
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