I Got More Qualms than the Bible's Got Psalms

Darren Grem

What do you get when you take the head of Sojourners and the director of the Southern Baptist Convention’s ERLC and toss them in a virtual room with one another?

This video throwdown on the federal budget!

Well, maybe "Skyped airing of qualms" is more accurate. In any case, for anyone interested in the rivalry between true believers on the American left and right, this one is ripe for analysis. (Bonus points for anyone keeping track of the number of hiccups in logic and fact made by both sides). Available for watching in 5-6 minute-long segments or 35-minute-long director's cut.

P.S. Good to see all y'all again after the long hiatus.

Simple Things You See are All Complicated: Random Reflections on the 2nd Biennial Conference on Religion and American Culture

Paul Harvey

The simple things you see are all complicated
I look pretty young, but I'm just back-dated, yeah
The Who, "Substitute"

If it's a lie, then we fight, on that lie. But we gotta fight.
Slim Charles in The Wire

Elesha, Janine, and Kelly have initiated a vigorous conversation arising from one particular session at the 2^nd Biennial Conference on Religion and American Culture which concluded just over a week ago. Because I had to leave just before this particular session, I don’t have much to add to it in particular, but I had a few stray thoughts on other parts of the meeting to throw up here. Today’s post will be lighter, more observations about some key phrases and indelible memories that I’ll carry from the conference. Tomorrow I hope to develop a few more serious thoughts about one session in particular, the one involving a discussion about the "bracketing" of religious belief in religious studies -- its rationale, its benefits, and its costs.

Before continuing, the last session was on "The Future of American Religion," but I was unable to be there, so am really hoping that one of ya'll out there will post on the discussion that went on there.

The first thought: a shout out to my partner in crime Philip Goff for organizing the conference in the first place, a huge undertaking of fundraising and organization. I don’ t know whether Phil got thanked at the end, but having lunch with him just before I left, he told myself and someone else present about his death struggle with the J.W. Marriott (the conference hotel) to get them to do what they had in fact been contracted to do (such as set up our room chairs in a circular pattern, put us in the room agreed to, etc.). Conference attendees don’t normally think about stuff like that, but suffice to say after threatening to call in his university lawyers and engaging in numerous conversations with the Marriott staff, the hotel at last came through with what they were contracted to come through with. That was a lot of work they had to go to just so we could sit around and talk.

All went smoothly, but not without a lot of background fighting leading up to the event. Anyway, since scholars tend to bitch and find fault with individual sessions or presenters or anything else, a shout out for those (Phil and his assistant Becky Vasko in particular) who make these things possible.

Second, I have no doubt that long after some of the substantive intellectual discussions have been forgotten, I’ll still remember some of the shorter or even “throwaway “ observations, conversations, and barroom late night jesting. Here are a few that stick with me (I had some others at the time, but they disappeared after the third martini).

One presenter, Su’ad Abdul Khabeer, discussing her research on the styles and head scarves of inner-city Muslim women, related that the women she studies refer to their scarf styles as “hood-jabs.” Her entire discussion of the phenomenon of "Muslim Cool" was the single most interesting ethnographic description I've heard in a good while, and a reminder of the tireless vitality of American religious cultures. She might have been the only person there from the discipline of Anthropology (maybe there were others, but I didn't see any), and as someone who did a minor field in Cultural Anthropology lo so many years ago I still enjoy hearing work from that perspective.

At the session on religion and market models, James Hudnut-Beumler, a scholar of religion and economics, author recently of In Pursuit of the Almighty's Dollar: A History of Money and American Protestantism, and Dean of the Div. School at Vanderbilt, related a conversation he had once with Ben Bernanke at some kind of conference or meeting. Bernanke asked him what he studied, and he replied “religion.” Bernanke answered back, “I can explain that.” Bernanke was being a little facetious, but only a little, for he went on to give an economic analysis, based on rational choice theory, on why women historically would predominate in many types of religious organizations (basically, their “wages” from this participation were equal to or greater than the discriminatory wages they would have faced – and would still face – in the secular marketplace and workplace). The idea here was both to suggest what we can learn from approaches drawn from market models of religion, as well as why we resist the hegemony of those models – the irritation we feel at the “I can explain that,” even when meant only half-seriously, is an irritation at a reductionism run amok.

And yet, reductionism is a tool that leads to significant insights (like, what's causing that e coli outbreak? and why are there more religious "nones" now than there used to be?), so it never hurts when humanists get exposed to social science scholars who use the word "data" a lot. There will always be a fair amount of cross-disciplinary carping at these kinds of conferences, a small price to pay for crossdisciplinary conversations.

At the very first session, we had a great “ethnographic moment,” in an impromptu discussion between Robert Orsi and Jan Shipps, renowned scholars both but slightly separated generationally, concerning whether we can “bracket out” religious belief in our studies. In reflecting on her pioneering studies of Mormonism, Shipps noted how she always said (or implied) “for them,” as in “for them, these visions were real.” Orsi replied that the problem with the “for them” bracketing was that it could easily lead to “for them, these visions were real – and they are crazy.”

I hope to develop a fuller post on this conversation early this week, as it was the session that ultimately interested me the most, but just this brief conversation between the two raised the same kinds of issues and back-and-forth responses which Orsi and Richard Bushman discussed recently in the journal Dialogue (see Chris Jones’s post on that), and which Orsi and Stephen Prothero batted back-and-forth several years ago in a discussion that is still frequently referenced – click here for a useful summary of that. I have noted recently that a lot of folks are assigning that discussion to students in classes, because it really gets to the heart of the matter of how scholars conceive of themselves and their work in religion.

Is the “whoosh” that we get from sporting events (or from some other mass group activity that induces emotional excitement in individuals) the same as the “whoosh,” the rapid firing of neurons and physiological response, that “we” get from religion? If so, is religion some sort of minor subdiscipline of cognitive psychology and neuro-biology? This became the theme of a lively discussion between Ann Taves (whose recent work has been done in collaboration, so I gather, with neuro-psychologists and other scientists) and Tracy Fessenden, who spoke eloquently of her resistance to adopting the scientific model of study as a means of accessing the huge money and prestige that scientists win at universities, in comparison to the perpetually impoverished and denigrated state of the humanities at many (most?) institutions nowadays – especially state institutions where “productivity” is measured in grant dollars raised. I don't mean to suggest that Taves was leading that direction -- certainly not true for the President of the AAR! But we are entering a new era of discussion (beyond the "two cultures" model) of sciences and the humanities, and there's an awful lot at stake in those discussions.

Rachel Wheeler concluded one session by noting how our generation of scholars always ends up saying, in effect, “it’s complicated.” That is certainly my classroom mode, and the message one would end up with at a conference like this. Yet others in the room, especially those in the social sciences, bring more concrete questions (and therefore answers) to the table, as when Roger Finke discussed some of the findings that can be gleaned from sociological studies of religious behavior such as he has conducted in some of his well-known studies. That brings us back to the discussion that Hudnut-Beumler and Ben Bernanke had about “I can explain that.” The humanists in the room stiffen their backbones against any explanation that does not invoke complexity and some degree of unknowability; some (not all) of the social scientists naturally are drawn to projects that focus on concrete questions and answers – has religious/philanthropic giving risen or fallen over time as a percentage of people’s incomes? Has the pay of clergy risen or fallen relative to other professions over the longue duree (answer: fallen, but you already knew that)? And so on.

As a humanist at heart, naturally I gravitate towards “It’s complicated” as my answer for most important questions. For the smaller questions, we can find answers, but for the bigger questions that drew me into academic studies in the first place, our answers will be tentative at best. Therefore, my classroom pedagogy tends to be deconstructively Socratic, in the sense of proposing questions, letting students pose hypotheses, poking holes/finding problems with those hypotheses, and then commanding them to “go and research some more” at the end of the period (they probably go to toga parties instead, but at least I want to leave them with the idea of the beautiful confusion of historical research). Is that, ultimately, where I want to leave it? I don’t think that will leave the assessment committee at my university very happy, since we are supposed to be assessing concrete bits of student learning.

But that leads to a final irony: I am chair of our departmental assessment committee (that's a committee of one -- but full of self-doubt as I am, reaching consensus is surprisingly difficult), so I get to develop the instruments to test exactly what bytes of data students "learn." Since I developed them, our instruments, therefore, essentially capture the degree to which students "get" the concept "it's complicated."

Is “boring from within” the way to beat a bureaucratic system that inevitably beats down individuals? On the other hand, as a lover and scholar of The Wire, I also know that, ultimately, the institution always wins, so we shall see whether, like Slim Charles, I "fight on that lie," just because we have to fight, or whether "boring from within" is simply carving a hole in my own academic soul.

Ultimately, in this age of the privatization of public goods such as education, the game does change, while it also just gets more fierce -- as Kathryn Lofton and Sylvester Johnson reminded us in their presentations on/critiques of (respectively) neoliberalism and its influence in market models of religion, and the relationship of American religion to the American imperial state. Reflecting further on the privatization of the public good of education (as in Colorado, where state funding now represents less than 8% of the CU budget) threw some cold water on the neural "whoosh" that conferences such as this, at their best, provide. (And if, like Janine, you live in Illinois, then that water bath is even colder.)

From Bible Belt to Sunbelt, Redux: Part II of Darren Dochuk Interview

Paul Harvey

Below I'm reposting part II of my interview with Darren Dochuk, author of From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism. Part I of the interview is here. Part II was posted last week, but Mr. Monster-Blogger program ate it, so let's try this again. Hey, Mr. Blogger Man, play this post for me, I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.

_____________________________________________

PH: You begin the book with one of the most famous tropes of American religious history -- the errand in the wilderness -- and use it to situate the plain folk from the South/Southwest that you are going to follow through the book. You write: "these white southern evangelicals envisioned themselves as pilgrims carrying out their own errand into the wilderness." Can you describe briefly how they saw that "errand," and more about what kind of world they hoped to create in that "wilderness"?

DD: While reading church newspapers like the California Southern Baptist and the Assemblies of God’s Informant I was struck by the way southern evangelicals approached their new home as if on a mission; pastors, editors, and denominational leaders all spoke of being on an “errand.” This isn’t uncommon among migrant groups, since uprooted-ness tends to encourage notions of exceptionalism, but I thought it was suggestive that southern evangelical migrants approached their move this way. Considering their impressive numbers, southern evangelicalism’s built-in entrepreneurialism, and the freedoms of Los Angeles’ hinterland, it seemed significant that southern evangelicals encountered their new home with a confidence that could affect change. Able to move from the small town south to self-contained suburbs, these sojourners didn’t feel the jarring effects of migration that we see in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, in which Old Testament motifs of banishment (“exodus” and “exile”) are stressed. This isn’t to discount Steinbeck, or historians like James Gregory, who rightly and beautifully describes the hardships southern migrants faced in California. Still, I think the errand motif is a helpful qualifier, because it stresses the empowerment southern evangelical migrants felt (and were told to feel) when resettling on the West Coast.

And to be honest, I also found it intriguing that these sojourners did what they set out to do—impose their will on their wilderness in order to awaken their people back home. Meant to give hope to an uprooted people, the “errand” motif (as exaggerated or skewed as it may have been) in fact became a blueprint of sorts that these sojourners followed to a tee. In the immediate, they used it as justification to carve out strong, independent churches, ministries, schools, and communities in which they could codify principles of individualism, local autonomy, laissez-faire economics, and family values. In the long-term, they used it to help fashion this amalgam of beliefs into a coherent political strategy—the GOP’s Sunbelt strategy—that would win the hearts and votes of the people they left behind in Oklahoma and Texas, and ultimately win them access to Washington’s halls of power. So, although a neat rhetorical device (another reason why I used it), the errand motif also points us to a real, lived experience that few historians have fully appreciated in the context of post-war religious and political change.

PH: As you know, the role of race within the "silent majority" is a major controversy of the historiography of twentieth-century conservatism. How did the people you write about conceptualize race in their worldview, and to what degree could they be seen as wanting to build communities, consciously or not, that preserved the privileges of whiteness?

Part of the challenge in writing a character driven narrative, as I tried to do, is that it’s tricky to delineate between subtle but important shades of racial views and measure structural forces of exclusion alongside attitudinal ones. It’s difficult to unpack this entire complex; others, like Paul Harvey, David Chappell, Joe Crespino, and Ed Blum, have done a more thorough job of it. That said, my book tries to offer a basic insight or two.

First, I think the racial “backlash” storyline is too simplistic. Other historians have stressed this point, but the sense that evangelical conservatives have acted (and continue to act) out of some sort of race rage remains strong. In terms of attitudes, the southerners I study came west with assumed notions of white privilege, and throughout the 1940s and 1950s they built churches and communities that sought (consciously or not) to protect this privilege. Southern California’s decentralized suburbs made this easy. But there was room within this worldview for preachers and parishioners to reconsider their views in light of California’s multicultural landscape; during the 1960s and 1970s many did, some didn’t, at least initially, and a few took it upon themselves to ensure that their neighborhoods remained white only. What is important, though, is the degree to which California evangelicalism’s moderates rose to the forefront and, through increasingly interracial ministries and interracial alliances (with black Baptist and Latino Pentecostals, for example), forged a post-racial, “color-blind” conservatism that celebrated the virtues of free markets and family values beyond white-nonwhite divided. Part savvy, part sincere, California’s color-blind conservatism certainly had its internal contradictions and limitations, but the point is that it allowed evangelicals and conservatives generally to turn their political attention to other pressing matters, like gender, women’s rights, and sexuality, and form a more centrist Right that could win the nation.

Again, this isn’t to diminish or write race out of the story as much as it is to complicate it a bit. Certainly, in terms of structural forces, my subjects contributed to a much larger system of racial exclusion, one in which their conservatism (either in its Jim Crow form or in its color-blind dispensation) was ill equipped to provide systematic answers. But then again, few Californians, liberal or conservative, Democratic or Republican, could locate or agree on answers at the time. Southern evangelicals didn’t have to teach Southern Californian’s how to be racist, in other words, nor did they alone make Los Angeles the most segregated American city; systemic economic inequities created these divides, and whites of all class and partisan persuasion perpetuated them. To pin too much on evangelical conservatives is to miss a master narrative of prejudice in which everyone is implicated. At the same time, to downplay or lose sight of race and racism in evangelical conservatism’s history is equally dangerous. However explicitly or not, however innocently or not, the people I study made decisions based on a range of social, economic, theological, and political motivations that had lasting, negative consequences for race relations in California and the country, and that legacy is still with us today.

PH: Talk briefly about how much influence the John Birch Society and like minded groups played for the coming together of evangelicalism and conservatism which you trace in the book? Would you agree with Lisa McGirr that, while the Birchers eventually of course got pushed out of mainstream conservatism by politicians such as Reagan when he was governor, that the Birchers nonetheless were central for a certain time in galvanizing people at the grassroots?

Lisa McGirr rightly emphasizes the John Birch Society’s key role in Southern California’s Right. The JBS certainly nurtured a sharper-edged, fundamentalist conservatism that responded well to the “extremism…is no vice” side of Goldwater’s GOP. But what I found so remarkable, when tracking this group, was how “normal” it seemed as a type of social club for average suburbanites. Political ideas mattered to JBS members, and they acted on them with strong conviction, but the society also functioned as a gathering space in which businessmen, engineers, and housewives could debate free market principles and talk about neighborhood issues and current events.

This was just as true (if not more so) among transplanted southerners who worshipped in fundamentalist Baptist churches associated with J. Frank Norris and the Baptist Bible Fellowship—out of which John Birch emerged as a missionary during World War II. Whether they joined the JBS or not, members of BBF churches held John Birch in high regard, and viewed the JBS with respect as a front-line organization fighting the good fight for all patriotic Christians. Such steadfast commitment to the JBS cause, in fact, made JBS leaders nervous. Churches like Tim LaHaye’s in San Diego were so welcoming of JBS members and ideology that they made the JBS redundant; who needed a JBS cell group when megachurches offered the same teachings in a livelier setting? JBS leaders tried to steer their members away from LaHaye and other Baptist churches, but to no avail.

The larger point, though, is that the JBS was critical to California conservatism’s pre-1966 history. Even after Reagan purged JBS members from the GOP—a key step in conservatism’s move from the Goldwater margins to the Reagan center—Southern California’s independent Baptists would remain fiercely loyal to the JBS message. And in a way, their pulpits and pews would become even more important conveyances of this message after the JBS was forced underground.

PH: Your book traces the triumph of your subjects in reorienting the politics and culture of a nation, yet the book's epilogue ends with some of your key characters (such as Oklahoma migrant Jean Vandruff, whose entire life trajectory your follow as emblematic of the broader processes you discuss in the book) wondering about their "community's moral fabric and political future." Do you think the main subjects of your book perceive their "errand in the wilderness" from the New Deal to the present day to have been a successful one?

I begin and end the book with Jean Vandruff because he’s the man who got the project rolling—I started thinking about the southern migration angle soon after interviewing him. It was striking to hear Jean talk about his community’s life story in a rise and fall pattern—as if the errand was achieved by 1980 then lost again. On one hand, this isn’t that unusual—generational change is easily couched in these terms.

But on the other, I thought it was quite suggestive of how evangelicals saw their movement after 1980. When talking to others, I got the sense that the Cold War era was really good for evangelicalism, and that this prosperity crested in the 1970s, but then declined. And it’s true—this decade did see California evangelicalism emerge as a national trendsetter. As I point out in the book, the “born again” phenomenon that swept America was, in many ways, a California creation. And things in Southern California did change dramatically after 1980—the loss of defense contracts and tax bases meant local economies struggled (leaving some communities, like Orange County, bankrupt, and churches struggling to stay afloat), and shifting migration patterns meant that California’s Cold War evangelicalism was no longer primed for the future.

Of course, it’s easy to stress this too much. Evangelicalism has always thrived on the declension narrative—the first generation’s tribulation is always viewed by the next as opportunity calling, and in evangelical circles the “errand” is never done; this, after all, is evangelicalism’s life source. So it’s dangerous to overplay this rise and fall pattern. Moreover, as a religious movement, evangelicalism did adjust its vision—its “errand”—and find new frontiers after the 1970s, in newer suburbs built between Anaheim and San Diego, west towards Riverside, and north towards the Central Valley. By the 1990s it would also find its way back into the city as a movement that new immigrant groups and more diverse communities could revitalize according to their own emphases. As a political movement, evangelicalism continued to extend its grassroots influence into the 1990s and 2000s as an arm of the GOP. It would do so, however, amid the rising influence of other conservative constituents (Catholic and Mormon), and an empowered liberal Democratic opposition.

So, by adopting the language of an errand won then lost, perhaps my book contributes to a slightly skewed outlook. Overstated or not, however, I think Jean Vandruff’s assessment isn’t far from the truth: that the Reagan years (1966-1974) were California evangelicalism’s golden years.

From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: An Interview with Darren Dochuk

Editor's Note: I'm delighted today to post the first of a two-part interview (the rest will come tomorrow) with Darren Dochuk, author of the recent and much-noted book From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism, published last year by Norton. The dissertation version of this work won the Allan Nevins Prize, and now in published form I predict the work will be a top contender for some of the big forthcoming prizes. Here's a brief rundown on the work, from the book's website:

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.

Of course, an endorsement of this work from a justly obscure historian such as myself means jack, so let's look at what some of the premiere historians of our time (Kevin Starr, Michael Kazin, and Sean Wilentz) have to say about it:

The nation is today color-coded into red and blue. In this tour de force of research, narrative, and analysis, a brilliant young historian chronicles how Southern California served as the matrix for this enduring bifurcation. Beneath the sunshine and the palm trees, uprooted evangelicals experienced a Great Awakening that transformed American politics in our era.” — Kevin Starr, University of Southern California

“With narrative authority and sparkling insight, Darren Dochuk explains how and why Southern California became the crucible of the Christian Right. Anyone who wants to understand the history of modern American conservatism should read this book.” — Michael Kazin, author of A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan

“Darren Dochuk's fortunate readers are in for some surprises as well as for enlightenment. The story of the Dust Bowl and the migration to southern California during the Great Depression, usually told through the left-wing tale of Tom Joad, turns out to be prologue to the rise of a vital segment of the modern Christian Right. From Bible Belt to Sunbelt is an essential contribution to our growing understanding of the origins and development of contemporary American conservatism.” — Sean Wilentz, author of The Rise of American Democracy

Just as a final note, I used this work this semester in conjunction with Bethany Moreton's To Serve God and Wal-Mart (which we've featured extensively on the blog before, and is also reviewed, somewhat more critically, here) and Jefferson Cowie's fascinating new book Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (reviewed at length by Rick Perlstein here). Taking the three together -- with Dochuk and Moreton centrally featuring religious themes and characters, and Cowie scarcely mentioning religion as his interests/subjects lie elsewhere -- made for a fascinating comparison and contrast of recent history, especially the 1970s. In truth, by very different routes, the authors end up in some similar places, but perhaps the routes are more interesting than the final destination. For more extensive discussion of the emerging historiography of the 1970s, see the fine discussion over at U.S. Intellectual History.

Without further adieu, it's question time for Darren.

Update: Part II of the interview is here.
_________________________________________________
PH: Darren, how does a volleyball star like you from the Great Plains of Socialist Canada end up studying and writing this massive book about conservative southern evangelicals in twentieth-century California? Take us through some of your professional trajectory that got you to this book.

DD: The Great Plains, Socialist Canada, and volleyball may have had something to do with my obsessions. As a kid growing up in Alberta, I had a warped fascination with all things American; I read more about George Washington than John A. Macdonald, I loved U.S. college football, and my family’s annual vacation usually took us south (Edmontonians don’t drive north unless ice fishing or moose hunting are in order). South meant Southern California, a place where we could escape the Great Plains tundra for beaches and Disneyland. It wasn’t uncommon for us to use some of the 30 hours of driving time to debate why Americans hate government so much and Canadians don’t think it’s so bad. Then, while playing university volleyball, I had the chance to compete against California programs I followed as a high schooler. I had the best match of my career against the Pepperdine Waves, despite being heckled by some brutally tough fans. So perhaps the book can be boiled down to catharsis—some subconscious attempt to reclaim (or maybe purge) a familiar past…but I’ll leave that up to my sister psychologist to figure out.

The “professional trajectory” can be summed up more simply. While struggling to find a Ph.D. dissertation topic, I read (and loved) Lisa McGirr’s Suburban Warriors and thought more could be done to explain Southern California conservatism, so I set out to do it. My goal was to write a book that embedded evangelicalism in the larger story of post-1930s politics by teasing out its connections to suburbanization, political economy, race relations, and the politics of labor, education, housing, and business. I wanted to thread evangelicalism into mainstream narratives of U.S. political history, which still tend to paint evangelicalism as a sideshow.

PH: I read somewhere, on another online interview I think it was, that in part this book is a response (and historical critique) of the "What's the Matter with Kansas" thesis, which of course holds that a fair number of Americans have been effectively snookered into voting against the own material economic interests by forces which have sold them on a falsely cultural populism. Am I right in seeing this book in part as a response, and if so, how so?

DD: I didn’t set out to address Frank’s thesis, but my book touches on a few of its themes. At the least, it tries to add a layer of complexity to Frank’s notion that Main Street populists have been “duped” by Wall Street corporate types into voting against their economic interests. First of all, the “duped” motif has its limitations. Some of the Wall Street types I include in my story could be classified as evangelical populists themselves whose own politics covered a range of issues beyond their pocketbooks; economic interest wasn’t their sole interest. And many of the Main Street types I talk about continually measured their economic interests against the “culture wars” agenda they’ve purportedly been spoon-fed from above, so to say they were snookered into doing something against their wellbeing shortchanges their own capacity as rational political actors.

Along this same line, I think Frank’s provocative critique also downplays the processes of negotiation that have taken place between Wall Street and Main Street over the past half-century. The people I talk about were embroiled in a struggle against liberalism that started much earlier than the culture wars of the 1960s and 1970s, and the alliances they forged to fight their battles were not static, uncontested, or permanent. The Main Street evangelicals I write about were never perfectly or entirely or always willing to do Wall Street’s dirty work in the trenches, and the evangelical businessmen I talk about sometimes acted on behalf of their rank-and-file brethren in ways that defied fiscal logic.

And ultimately, I’m hesitant to say someone is voting or acting against their best interests, as if I have some deep wisdom they don’t; I can’t even figure out what my own best interests are, let alone someone else’s, so I’m not that eager to pass judgment.

PH: The people you study didn't wait around for Rand Paul or the contemporary Tea Party to develop a pretty deep-rooted antipathy towards the New Deal and the expanded state that came out of the New Deal. Ironies abound here, of course, since the processes set in motion by the New Deal brought many of them to California in the first place. When did the subjects you study come to distrust the New Deal state, and how did they get to that point given their origins as poorer folk who were supposed to be one bulwark of the New Deal coalition? What role did religion play in that critique?

DD: I don’t think the people I study ever truly trusted the New Deal state. They certainly relied on it during times of trouble and they believed it was their right as white American citizens to do so; however contradictory or not, they thought that the federal government had a responsibility to provide short-term aid in exceptionally bad circumstances, and be the last resort in times of need. Roosevelt came through for these citizens, and they returned the favor by supporting him. But their first choice was always a limited state; as soon as times got better, Washington, they believed wholeheartedly, was to move aside.

When government didn’t move aside, they got angry. Their anger was politicized right after World War II, during the labor wars that erupted in the defense plants and neighborhoods that had lured them west.

Amid post-war adjustments, when California’s Social Democrats pressed for an active government that would support industrial unionism and race reform—for an expanded New Deal, in other words—southern evangelicals attempted to protect their interests as white workers and homeowners through a movement called Ham and Eggs, which combined calls for Christian revival and morality with a championing of the independent producer. This was William Jennings Bryan’s (and Huey Long’s) Populism reborn, and it scared Social Democrats, who believed that Ham and Eggs was irrational and racist. Ham and Eggs failed, leaving liberals in charge of California’s Democratic Party and evangelicals convinced that a coordinated assault on “big labor” and “big government” was in order. It’s in this moment that they began recasting Roosevelt and the New Deal as twin evils that had allowed socialism to creep in to American society.

It’s also in this moment that they began shifting their party affiliation to Independent and Republican. Evangelical businessmen, who at the time were helping form an anti-statist/free market movement, urged their fellow churchgoers along in this thinking. These sides would unite in the 1950s thanks, in large part, to Right-to-Work campaigns, which sought to rollback the power of unions in the workplace (sound familiar?).

PH: It's rather amazing to me that in reading your book alongside Bethany Moreton's To Serve God and WalMart, two previously obscure tiny colleges in Arkansas - John Brown University and Harding University -- have suddenly become central to the narrative of twentieth-century religion and conservatism, and hence to the entire narrative of twentieth-century American politics (I should add here that my cousin's son, who grew up in California, attends John Brown U.). As far as California higher educational institutions go, only Pepperdine plays as central a role in your book. Tell us something briefly about those two institutions, and what role they play in your book

Funny thing is, Bethany and I met in the one-room archive of John Brown University, tucked away in the foothills of the Ozarks. We were told that no researcher had visited in quite some time…yet there we were, two dissertators from “up north” eagerly flipping through files and splitting time at the photocopier.

The reason we were there is because we recognized that evangelical institutions have rich stories to tell. Historians often focus on preachers and the pews when tracking the evangelical Right. But a much thicker history of this phenomenon emerges when we follow the money trails that link evangelical schools to their patrons (highly politicized businessmen), or read between the lines to see how a college’s pedagogy endorses certain political expressions.

So, for instance, John Brown University and Harding University wrapped their pedagogy in a curriculum (“Head, Heart, and Hand”) that stressed practical education in the trades and business, full immersion in boots-strap entrepreneurialism, and staunch defense of traditional family values. These schools’ founders saw that this curriculum as a counter to the liberal elitism of the Ivy League, and the only answer to society’s “socialist” drift. Like countless other southern colleges, these two schools were near financial collapse in the 1930s. To save themselves—and preserve their independence—they approached the nation’s most powerful (and often evangelical) corporate leaders for support and got it, with the promise that they would train the next generation of evangelicals in a corporate-friendly environment. During the Cold War, as public education expanded and private schools faltered, John Brown, Harding, and their peer institutions stepped up their search for corporate help, by hosting annual “Freedom Forums,” for instance, which gathered CEOs, educators, and activists from around the country. In reaching out in this way, at such a formative moment in American political development, these schools essentially became the conservative movement’s first “think tanks” and marshaling zones.

I think a second benefit of studying these schools is the way they account for regional change in the post-Depression era. One of my book’s goals was to track the emergence of a Sunbelt axis of power—of the kind Kevin Phillips and Kirkpatrick Sale first designated in the 1970s as spanning from California to the Carolinas. Scholars have debated the strengths of the Sunbelt thesis, with detractors often stressing important differences in Atlanta, Houston, and Los Angeles’ metropolitan politics, or the disjuncture between notions of citizenship in Oxnard, California and Oxford Mississippi as reasons to jettison the concept. I think the Sunbelt concept is useful, and one way I saw it play out was in the realm of evangelical higher education. The more I dug the more I became fascinated with the way these schools (as well as west-coast ones like Pepperdine) linked the futures of the South and West through institutional channels, laying the groundwork for a broader, Sunbelt powerbase. Critics of the Sunbelt thesis claim that their research on urban development doesn’t bare the burden of this concept, but perhaps they should look to simpler data for evidence—bank statements for Christian colleges, which demonstrate Californian, Texan, and Floridians’ shared investment in places like John Brown University, or school enrollment books that track the flow of teens from Tulsa to Los Angeles, Orange County to the Ozarks—teens with last names like “Harvey."

Update: Part II of the interview is here.

Tuesday Merry-Go-Round: From Oprah to Rob Bell to Chick-Fil-A to R. J. Rushdoony's Righter-Than-Thou Economics (And Why They all Matter)

Paul Harvey

If you're like me and pushing your red pen up a Sisyphean pile of papers, you may not have time to get to any of these good reads right away, but I'll put some good stuff to read later for you up here so you can get to it when you can get to it. Yes, it's miscellaneous but good links day here.

First, we've noted here the great set of dialogues going over at Immanent Frame (with 12 substantive and engaging responses now) on Kathryn Lofton's Oprah: Gospel of an Icon. The latest entrant in the conversation is our friend Tracy Fessenden's O Tedious Selfhood, a wonderful and very funny take. A brief taste:

How has the trajectory of American religious history brought us to this place, this Oprah?

A thumbnail history might go like this: The Protestant sanctification of the commonplace, the discovery of divine light in the mundane array of objects and acts taken up by a priesthood of believers, proves a boon to American merchants and clerics alike. As Protestantism finds itself more and more at home in the New World, its religious dispositions and their modes of production become less separable from everyday life—indeed, they come to make up the fabric of everyday life. This means your life. The erstwhile Puritan discipline of self-scrutiny brings the things of the world increasingly into its purview, reading them for the shimmering glint of spiritual favor. Advertising, the most aspiring of evangelical preaching’s bastard offspring, offers the promise of entry into a more charismatic life in exchange for the dissipation of spiritual and economic capital: buy, believe, buy and believe more. Consumer choice and religious option open along the same paths, obscuring relational possibilities and imperatives that might bind you to a particular past, a more circumscribed future, to anything that might constrain the unfolding of your own best life. Women gain ground in the commercial revolution faster and more easily than they wrest standing from church authorities, leaving the latter to play catch-up with the consumer culture they helped to foster. Buy and believe. Find what works for you. Purveyors of spirituals and temporals alike ratchet up the “imperatives of comfort nestling modern women in a language of self-service.” “Self-service,” here, is pitch-perfect: Because you’re worth it. And by the way, you’re on your own. We’re now in Oprah’s world—“a world in which we find alluring the templates to which we are fitted,” as Jason Bivins gorgeously puts it, “a melancholy whose song of empowerment sells us resignation as the hope we know will be dashed.”

Next up, for you American Historical Association members, is Darren Dochuk's piece in the latest Perspectives, the monthly newsletter of the AHA: "Searching Out the Sacred in U.S. Political History." You'll have to be a member to get it online, or track it down in your library, and it's well worth the short read. Accompanying this, by the way, is the new anthology edited by Darren and Michelle Nickerson, Sunbelt Rising: The Politics of Place, Space, and Region, another fine volume from the University of Pennsylvania Press' "Politics and Culture in Modern America" series. The volume includes Darren Grem's great piece (which we blogged about here before) "The Marketplace Missions of S. Truett Cathy, Chick-fil-A, and the Sunbelt South," and it also includes a statistical political science-y analysis of "Religion and Political Behavior in the Sunbelt."

And what would a week here at the blog be without a little discussion of hell. We noted before Lauren Winner's take on the Rob Bell Love Wins controversy; I neglected then to note Krista Tippett's take on the same, also in the Washington Post.

Finally, those of you who follow Religion Dispatches will know of Julie Ingersoll's fascinating work there tracing down the significant, if somewhat hidden, influence of Christian Reconstructionism on various aspects of the contemporary right, (she is currently, I believe, writing a book on said subject). See, for example, "Huckabee Channels Rushdoony," and "Reconstructionists Celebrate 'Ruling Over the Earth' Day."

Mark Oppenheimer discusses this further in his piece "Christian Economics Meets the Antiunion Movement," from the New York Times a couple of days ago. Aside from discussing the topic of Gary North's economic views, the article also gives a brief (and funny) history of the dysfunctional family history of "Christian Reconstructionism" from its intellectual godfather R. J. Rushdoony to its contemporary exponent North. If you have no idea what any of this is, here's a very brief summary, from the piece:

Mr. North, who is Mr. Rushdoony’s son-in-law but was not on speaking terms with him from 1981 until Mr. Rushdoony’s death, focuses on how that biblical libertarianism applies to economics. He concluded that the Bible forbids any welfare programs, is opposed to all inflation, and requires a gold-coin standard for money.

Oppenheimer's piece addresses the always difficult historical question of tracing influences. He writes:

Professor Ingersoll concedes it is difficult to prove direct connections between Mr. North’s writings and Wisconsin antiunion conservatism. On the other hand, Mr. North might like to think he has influenced the Wisconsin debate, and he has written in vociferous support of Gov. Scott Walker.

And, as Professor Ingersoll cautions, influence does not always announce itself:

“I like to say, ‘How many Christians know who is Augustine is, and how he influenced them?’ ”

Pluralism and Education: Testing the Limits of Liberal Democracy

Paul Harvey

My apologies to blog readers for being relatively absent here. Finishing up two big writing projects here is keeping me busy 24/7, and will continue doing so until next week. Fortunately, no one to date has yet noticed my absence since Kelly and the other contributors have filled up the page with great posts. Following all of Kelly's gender history and historians series should keep you busy for a while anyway. We've got much on the plate coming up -- some new contributors, a blog interview with Darren Dochuk, and, but wait, there's much, much more!

I wasn't even able to post anything about the many sessions at the Organization of American Historians meeting in Houston two weeks ago, primarily because I was stuck nearly the entire time there in lengthy committee meetings. Fortunately, History News Network followed the conference. I want to recommend especially the Day 2 Report from the OAH, which features a lengthy description of a session entitled "Pluralism and Education: Testing the Limits of Liberal Democracy." The session featured blog friend Kevin Schultz and others exploring the topic. Here's an excerpt from the description at HNN:

Remalian Cocar, a PhD student at Emory University, presented a paper on “released time,” the first paper of its kind since Jonathan Zimmerman wrote a chapter on the subject (“I think maybe five people read it,” he joked). Released time refers to a once-common practice of releasing students from school into the care of local religious organizations. It was voluntary but there was a hidden element of coercion in the practice, especially in smaller and more homogenous communities. Released time started as a Protestant program at the beginning of the twentieth century, but Catholics and to a much lesser extent Jews participated. In fact, Catholics outnumbered Protestants in release time programs in public schools in Chicago by the 1920s and in New York by the 1940s.

In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled released time a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments in McCollum v. Board of Education, but the Court partially reversed itself in 1952 inZorach v. Clauson, which held that schools could release students for religious instruction provided that the sessions took place off of school property.

Corcar made emphasized that, at least initially, released time was a mainline Protestant practice, but one which was adopted by Catholics and later by evangelicals. For the former, it allowed an inroad into an overwhelmingly Protestant public school system (it was for this reason, Corcar reminded his audience, that Catholics wanted their own parochial schools). But both Catholic and mainline Protestant organizations mainly stuck to either religious or progressive social lesions, whereas by the 1980s evangelical groups were teaching biblical creationism, a matter foreseen by Felix Frankfurter, the author of the McCollum decision, when he predicted evangelicals would roast him over the fire.But how will evangelicals react, Corcar wondered, if and when other religions, specifically Muslims, requested their released time?

Kevin Schultz, who teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, then discussed the critique of secularism expounded by William F. Buckley, deeply rooted in Catholic critiques of Protestant domination of education but utilized by both Catholics and Protestants. Both groups argued (and continue to argue) that a secular education provides an incomplete education, as it omits the importance of God, religion, and tradition in a child’s upbringing.

Earlier remarks had been made by Claremont McKenna’s Diana Selig, who analyzed the successes and failures of the Springfield model of liberal education. Springfield, MA, hosted a comprehensive liberal education program, sparked by national interest in intercultural education and implemented by progressive Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish leaders, along with faculty from Columbia’s Teachers College; ">It was not a unique program in its broad contours, but differed from others in its systemic, as opposed to superficial, prescriptions. Curriculum committees were set up with input from teachers, principals, the community, and students. This entailed interaction between entire black and white families, and, less remarkably, similar religious exchanges.

The program, however, was not a panacea—it was implemented in a city with a very small black population, and a few black teachers and students were unthreatening to white residents and the white power structure. As the town became increasingly diverse, the Springfield model began to fracture.

Jonathan Zimmerman made a few broad remarks at the end, raising questions about how much critical thinking, centered around the notion of critique, took place as a result of the Springfield project (were there some claims, like the inherent equality of the races, that progressive educators left uncontested?) and wondered if released time was at heart a pluralist impulse rooted in the needs of the various Protestant and Catholic religious communities. On the other hand, John Dewey was a fierce critic of released time because he felt it undermined democracy. One wonders, said Zimmerman, what he’d say about the heavy evangelical presence in released time today.

Remembering the Triangle Fire

By Heath Carter

Tomorrow marks the 100th anniversary of NYC's Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, a sweatshop blaze that consumed the lives of nearly 150 women in what still stands as one of the nation's worst industrial disasters. Interest in this solemn occasion has only been intensified by the current controversies involving unionization and collective bargaining, which have been discussed at some length on this blog and around the web.

Many of the women who died were Jewish, and New York's Jewish community has taken a leading role in the public remembering. This Sunday, for example, several groups are sponsoring a procession in which 146 persons, one for each of the victims, will march from the site of the fire to the Eldridge Street Synagogue. For more on that event, you can peruse The Triangle Walk's blog.

If you are interested in reading a brief history of the fire, as well as finding out about some of the other commemorative events happening around the nation this weekend, you might check out WNYC's site as well as the Labor and Working-Class History Association's (you have to scroll down a little ways on the latter).

Black Mecca: African Muslims in Harlem

Paul Harvey

This book has been on my shelf for a little while, and I was hoping to get to it/blog about it early this summer. But in the meantime, Choice has a nice review of Black Mecca: The African Muslims of Harlem (Oxford 2010). Since we're just today on the subject of mapping religious life in New York boroughs and neighborhoods, now's a good time to repost this review, for those interested.

Abdullah, Zain. Black Mecca: the African Muslims of Harlem. Oxford, 2010. 294p bibl index afp ISBN 0-19-531425-5, $35.00; ISBN 9780195314250, $35.00. Review

How do West African Muslim immigrants fit into the fabric of Harlem, and how have they challenged established notions of Islam, race, and cultural difference in one of the centers of black culture, thought, and politics? Abdullah (Temple Univ.) offers theoretically sophisticated and evocative answers to these questions in his ethnographic study of West African Muslims in Harlem. Combining descriptions of ethnographic encounters and personal narratives with insight from existing literature, chapters address West African immigrants' expectations of America before their migration, encounters between black and African identities, the challenges of mastering language(s), negotiating religious and cultural practices, and the changing notions of family and sexuality. Abdullah weaves these topics into a dense, vivid portrait of what he describes as new "Blues people" immersed in narratives of suffering, survival, and hope. He skillfully avoids one-sided representations and allows himself to consider different angles for each encounter he describes. Situated at the intersection of race studies, anthropology, and Islamic studies, this book is significant beyond its role as a study of American Muslims in advancing readers' understanding of migration, religious identities, and globalization through the lives of people in this particular community. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers. -- J. Hammer, George Mason Universityed in 2011apr CHOICE.

Also, there is a longer, more extensive review of the book here; it emphasizes the economic struggles of these black immigrants. A brief excerpt: The mosques of Harlem are where immigrants go to maintain their bonds with each other and to find meaning in their struggles in America. What is significant in Professor Abdullah’s observations is the recasting of one’s economic plight as divine providence. Although many West African Muslims are not able to find the lucrative jobs they imagined, many set up their own shops or drive taxis in order to maintain the flexibility they need to adhere to their Islamic faith and values. In a sense, their work on the streets as an effort to inform people about and to maintain their deen is viewed as amal saalih or blessed work. The recasting of the Western immigrant plight in this manner connects immigrants back to their families and provides justification and hopefor an improved condition. A bit more about the book, from the Oxford U. Press website: The changes to U.S. immigration law that were instituted in 1965 have led to an influx of West African immigrants to New York, creating an enclave Harlem residents now call ''Little Africa.'' These immigrants are immediately recognizable as African in their wide-sleeved robes and tasseled hats, but most native-born members of the community are unaware of the crucial role Islam plays in immigrants' lives. Zain Abdullah takes us inside the lives of these new immigrants and shows how they deal with being a double minority in a country where both blacks and Muslims are stigmatized. Dealing with this dual identity, Abdullah discovers, is extraordinarily complex. Some longtime residents embrace these immigrants and see their arrival as an opportunity to reclaim their African heritage, while others see the immigrants as scornful invaders. In turn, African immigrants often take a particularly harsh view of their new neighbors, buying into the worst stereotypes about American-born blacks being lazy and incorrigible. And while there has long been a large Muslim presence in Harlem, and residents often see Islam as a force for social good, African-born Muslims see their Islamic identity disregarded by most of their neighbors. Abdullah weaves together the stories of these African Muslims to paint a fascinating portrait of a community's efforts to carve out space for itself in a new country.

Religion and the Marketplace: Fall Conference in Heidelberg

Below is an announcement for a conference this fall in Heidelberg that will be of interest to many of you. Click the "call for papers" link below for further details.

Conference "Religion and the Marketplace:
New Perspectives and New Findings"

---

October 6-8, 2011, Heidelberg Center for American Studies

Call for Papers

As decided at the 2010 meeting of the European Association of American Studies in Dublin, the Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA), in cooperation with the American Studies Network (ASN), will host a conference entitled “Religion and the Marketplace: New Perspectives and New Findings.” The HCA will host the conference on October 6-8, 2011, as part of Heidelberg University’s 625 anniversary celebration.

This international and interdisciplinary conference aims to investigate and explain how the conditions of the marketplace have determined, influenced, and limited American religion in the past and present. Given the prominence of the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses in the American constitution, a broad-based ‘competition for souls and purses’ has historically helped define the contours of religion in America. This conference will build upon previous insights while probing further into the complex relationship between religion and the marketplace along the lines described below.

We invite scholars in American Studies and related fields (geography, history, law, literature, media studies, political science, religious studies, theology, etc.) to submit paper abstracts for this conference. Individual paper abstracts (200-250 words) should be specifically directed at one (or more) of the panel topics included in the CFP. Abstracts must be received by March 31, 2011. Participants will be notified by May 1, 2011. All questions and submissions should be sent electronically to:djunker@hca.uni-heidelberg.de.

We especially desire participation from European scholars working in these fields, but welcome submissions from all around the world. The HCA will cover travel expenses (economy), lodging and meals for conference participants.

A Theological Crisis at the Heart of State Budget Crises

by Janine Giordano Drake

In the old days, states would balance their budgets by carefully managing their wealth held in property. Their means of acquiring more wealth was the state militia, and wealth, of course was, control over Indian territory. Indian land seizure could either result in fast money from speculators (usually represented by banks), or a slow, long term income stream garnered by renting to municipalities and land developers. When that was no longer easy, states sold exclusive government contracts to companies that traded with and in the state. What I want to argue here is that raising funds for state projects has never relied very much on taxed assets of the people. Today, however, we all have to decide whether it ought to be.

Only a tiny portion of state spending in this country comes from income taxes. Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming do not levy any state income taxes. New Hampshire and Tennessee tax only tax dividend and interest income. To me, the problem in budget-starving agricultural-heavy states like Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York and California is that states have never established the principle that effective ownership of land and other income-deriving assets requires services of a state to keep the assets in operation. These services include public servants from police forces and firefighters to teachers and municipal workers.

Cash-poor farmers have essentially been contending against urban service workers since the last Gilded Age over who ought to carry the heavier burden for public services. Henry George, who argued that poor people should not be fighting with one another but recognize the common adversary of those who own large amounts of natural resources, would turn over in his grave at the prospect of undermining organized workers' wages without taxing property owners. Together with Eugene Debs and many other land reformers, George worked hard to get poor farmers and farm workers to agree to hold their property in common in order to simulate the First Century Church (or some other equivalent utopia of peace through cooperation) and together reap the fruits of their labor. However, as Randall's recent post reminds us, pretty much all of these experimental communities failed.

Even though many Christian Socialists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century believed very strongly in George's concept of a single tax on the ownership of natural resources, Christian landowners put up just as big a fight, often by repositioning their theology of God's grace. Land provided to them through Indian conquest was often understood as a gift from God for the sake of Christian stewardship for one's family, not something borrowed from the state for the sake of the public, or, of course, stolen from Indians for the sake of power and hegemony. Landless and socialist Christians often fought back, criticizing landowners time and again for owning something that was ultimately not theirs but everyone's, and really God's. So, in the 1890s, landowning Populists began to talk about the main assets of their occupation as not land at all. Rather than engage in a business that exploited land and labor, these populists argued that they earned their living through the work of rain and sunshine--their bounty, therefore, was a gift from God.

Many farmers today still point to rain and sunshine (rather than land and labor) as the essential raw materials to their financial prosperity. International trade conditions still keep many farmers cash poor and therefore starved by higher state and municipal taxes on land. Farmers' comparatively low incomes (compared to their net worth if they own land) means that they bring in little income tax revenue to the state, compared to the federal and state subsidies that they use.

In many ways carrying out the Populist agenda, farmers and agribusiness have united to call themselves "growers," a maneuverer that accomplishes at least two political goals. First, it constructs the money-making asset of agricultural capitalists as the weather-cooperating-with-fertilizers, rather than ownership of the land in the first place. Secondly, it renders the agricultural labor required to harvest the crop as something apart from the act of farming. Therefore, "growers" have since the Depression received subsidies and tax breaks for providing food for the masses, but the migrant workers and other agricultural farm hands who do the grunt labor of harvest and farm maintenance are not even required to be paid a minimum wage, let alone a living wage with benefits or the dignity of calling oneself a farmer.

Starving states today rely primarily on revenue streams in sales taxes and a la carte fees for use of services (registrations and licenses, court filing fees, college tuition, tobacco taxes, gas taxes, etc)--in addition, of course, to large loans from banks--loans that bankers rarely complain about because states' inability to go bankrupt means banks' loans are virtually no risk.

Tying state revenue streams to general consumption and fees-for-use rather than pooled fruits of production is not only paralyzing state budgets in this new Gilded Age of poverty, wealth, and high unemployment (especially with tax laws to conserve the wealthy). Even more debilitating, it has established a myth that the state can operate independently of taxes on the production of its residents. Wisconsin never, of course, actually had a budget problem until Walker gave away so many tax breaks and contracts to his corporate sponsors. Wisconsin was in that respect an exception to the rule of starving state budgets over the last decade. However, we must admit that in handing out tax breaks and special contracts to growers and businesses, Walker was only doing what most state governors do.

I think Paul Grant is absolutely right when he talks about cooperation and consensus-building as essential cultural heritages of many working class Wisconsinites. This is not only confirmed in my research on Wisconsin socialists but helps me understand something I had been trying to figure out--why the Milwaukee atheist socialists and Christian Socialists I study feuded so terribly but still got along so well. Why, for example, Eugene Debs was not kicked out of leadership in the Social Democratic Party in 1897 when he was clearly in the minority in his belief in the possibility of establishing those Christian cooperative communes. Wisconsin socialists fought with Debs but, remarkably, kept him in charge. As Grant suggests, Scandinavian and German immigrants brought to Wisconsin not only a working class consciousness but a dense network of cultural institutions (gymnasiums, cultural clubs, churches, unions, freethinker clubs, political parties, etc) that served as schools for consensus building that would make such political and economic cooperation comfortable. I think Grant is also absolutely right that the national, conservative trend toward "brinksmanship" that Walker has recently employed in Wisconsin is to a large degree in tension with the cultural fabric of his state.

We all hate to admit it, though, but there are still many Wisconsinites who may believe in consensus building in rhetoric and demeanor but do not believe that public services should be paid for through their own pooled economic resources. Rural landowners around the country still resist tax hikes. This, I would argue, is the legacy of Populist rhetoric from the era of Indian landgrabbing: a belief that one's land is all one's own and not really a wealth-producing asset. It is a gift from God for oneself and one's family. State services, too, should be plentiful, but to Populists these should come from public revenue streams contributed to through fees-per-use and state provision, not state tithes on assets like land and income.

I find especially among evangelical Christians in the midwest a surprising combination of "Christian cooperativeness" in demeanor and rhetoric but real resistance to understanding one's income as anything but entirely one's own (and perhaps the Church's). Bethany Moreton's To Serve God and Walmart articulates and historicizes this tension so well.

To me, the referendum in all these state budget crises today is about where state revenue should come from when seizure and sale of state-contraband-territory is no longer as viable an option. Will we continue to find assets in the state's possession to exploit anew--like mines, quarries, aquifers and, err, government buildings, public parks, and guilds of municipal employees--or will we agree to issue higher state income taxes and property taxes, especially on those who can afford to pay more?

Furthermore, Madison is one of the hippest places for left-wing evangelical Christians to find each other. Will our present moment's resurgence of the virtues of communalism, the dangers of environmental destruction, and the violent legacy of settler colonialism stir a rebirth of nineteenth century Christian Socialist theologies? I think this Wisconsin battle may serve as a laboratory for American Christians reconsidering the difference between gifts provided to them and gifts provided in common.