Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America

by Darren Dochuk

A groundbreaking new history of the United States, showing how Christian faith and the pursuit of petroleum fueled America's rise to global power and shaped today's political clashes


Anointed with Oil places religion and oil at the center of American history. As prize-winning historian Darren Dochuk reveals, from the earliest discovery of oil in America during the Civil War, citizens saw oil as the nation's special blessing and its peculiar burden, the source of its prophetic mission in the world. Over the century that followed and down to the present day, the oil industry's leaders and its ordinary workers together fundamentally transformed American religion, business, and politics -- boosting America's ascent as the preeminent global power, giving shape to modern evangelical Christianity, fueling the rise of the Republican Right, and setting the terms for today's political and environmental debates.

Ranging from the Civil War to the present, from West Texas to Saudi Arabia to the Alberta Tar Sands, and from oil-patch boomtowns to the White House, this is a sweeping, magisterial book that transforms how we understand our nation's history.

Genres: History, Religion, Politics, Nonfiction, American History, Christianity, Christian

688 pages, Hardcover

Published June 4, 2019

About the author

Darren Dochuk is associate professor in the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics and the Department of History at Washington University in St. Louis.

Reviews

[Joan · Rating 3 out of 5]

How the concept of capitalism and free market economy became such an integral part of evangelical Christianity had been a mystery to me. There was certainly nothing in the Bible advocating or promoting big business and huge profits.

This book helped me understand the influential role oil barons played in the evangelical movement. I was made aware of the idea that oil was a natural resource God had given to America. Oil magnates considered themselves true patriots, using their profits to assure Christian culture and capitalism did not fall in the face of foreign influence. So big was the influence of oil money that World Wide Pictures (Billy Graham) made their first movie (Mr. Texas,1951) about a rancher turned oil man who found peace in Christ. The second movie was called Oiltown, U.S.A.

I even found out how the big business of oil turned toward the Republican party. When Democrats in power put restrictions on oil production, Republicans rose in anger, supporting the profitable oil industry. Eisenhower, developing the God and country and God and business themes, gave out oil grants. The relationship was cemented as oil money supported missionary work. Oil companies promoted themselves as the ultimate example of American free enterprise, especially against the threat of communism.

This is a huge book with just short of 600 pages of text and another 100 pages of notes. I am glad I could extend the check out time at my local public library. I am glad I read it as it helped me understand much better the current close relationships between capitalism, the Republican Party, and evangelical Christians.

[Venneh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thorough, deeply depressing recounting of the deep and inextricable link of Christianity and crude oil in modern America. There’s a significant section on Palestine in particular, which I really appreciate, especially in the current environment. It’s a dense read but absolutely worth your time.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must-read! I did a Q&A with the author here.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dochuk is easily one of the exemplary scholars of American Christianity. He offers here such a thorough story of the US’a massive history in oil production and its religious underbelly. I’m really glad this story exists in the world, even in its massive form!

[Brian LePort · Rating 5 out of 5]

Darren Dochuk's Anointed with Oil mixes together numerous strands of American history: the separation of "liberal" and "conservative" Christians; the rise of the gas and oil industry; the emergence of powerful, capitalism-advocating families like the Rockefellers; the motivation for American foreign interests, especially in the Middle East; and much more. If you are interested in American history broadly and/or American religious history, specifically, you'll want to read this book. It's so extensive, that it's difficult to review in a succinct blog. What I'll say is this: the oil industry has had more to do with the modern shape of the United States, and the United States' within world affairs, than you could've imagined, and American Christians—liberal and conservative—were highly influential.

For a longer review, go here: https://readingthebiblewithigen.home....

[Jeffrey Bostick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a sweeping history of the American oil industry with a focus on its peculiar relationship to American Christianity. The book describes political and religious tensions throughout the history of oil between the rationalizing paternalistic ecumenism of the major firms vs the independent libertarian evangelism of the wildcatters.It's a division we can recognize as threaded through the long Hamiltonian vs. Jeffersonian archetypes of American political economy although I don't recall Dochuk stating this in the book.

In part, it explains why we see the inheritors of the Rockefeller and Pew fortunes involved in supporting liberal-ish causes today through legacy NGOs while a contrasting strain of evangelical cosmology can fold concepts like “peak oil” and climate change into their expectation that the Apocalypse is near and the fact they feel fine about that.

For an example of the latter, here is Dochuk writing about Ernest Manning, Premier of Alberta in the 1950s and an evangelical thought leader.

Manning, like Aberhart before him, held to a dispensational premillennialist view, which encouraged him to decode signs of societal strain as evidence that Christ’s return was nigh. His eschatology grafted onto contemporary theories of petroleum geology. At that moment, M. King Hubbert, a founder of the social movement known as Technocracy, which underscored the importance of engineers in the management of society and had ties to Social Credit, crafted his theory of “peak oil” holding that US domestic production would crest by 1971, then steadily decline. This prediction confirmed Manning’s belief that the world was entering its last phase. Not only did time seem to be running out on America - God’s City On A Hill - but it was now favoring non-Christians located in the very place to which Christ would return: the Middle East. His response was twofold: first, to train Western Christians’ eyes on the Middle East, where rising oil production and politics seemed to portend Christ’s return, and second, to extract expeditiously whatever oil was left under their soil before their dispensation expired. In Manning’s scheme, wildcatters offered North Americans a last glimmer of hope: they alone had the courage to find new reserves and inspire patriots with pure capitalist drive.

In other words, the rational response to “peak oil” was to keep on producing oil as quickly as possible. The mere prospect of a cataclysm is not necessarily going to cause a change in behavior. Which is why, now, as the climate crisis worsens in ways that more and more Americans can feel in their daily lives, the policy response from a rather loud faction of our body politic continues to be an unreserved chant of, “Drill, baby, drill!”

Anyway, in his conclusion, Dochuk entertains the notion that the wildcatters have "won" their battle with the patricians. Or at least, it appears their political and religious expression has retained a surprising power and resonance. Here is the key graph there.

Battered by oil’s bloody cut-throat system, yet determined to follow their calling, they clung to a personal trust in the supernatural, which came with a transaction. Place your faith in a higher being and honor his rules for holy living, the logic read, and ride the capricious offerings of the earth and the markets to heavenly fulfillment - no matter the heavy human (and ecological) costs. Place your trust in a God who giveth and taketh suddenly, but who is always there, and watch (and feel) the pain of oil’s boom-bust cycles and ever-present maladies melt away in the face of his saving grace. Our current age, in which the fluctuations of economy have intensified on a global stage and during which the inequalities of capitalist society have calcified, has only emboldened that ethic all the more. Its promises of spiritual and, in unpredictable moments, financial returns on the magical, miraculous workings of oil, its allowances for stark enigmas and contradictions in the modern condition - between hope and futility, empowerment and despair, hyperwealth and utter poverty - and its panic to drill, find and sell redemption before the Messiah returns have proved more than prescient and resilient.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first third of this book was gold; the second two thirds were certainly informative but not as explosive or colorful. Darren Dochuk shows that conservatism and Christianity have had a long relationship with oil in America. From Rockefeller funding liberal clergyman Fosdick and Howard Pew funding The Fundamentals to the modern day where big oil = big business and wildcat oil = libertarianism, the line is surprisingly easy to draw.

The big takeaway I got from this book is that big business of the likes of Rockefeller really believed that modernity and industrialism was ushering in the eschaton. A liberal postmillennial, Rockefeller was as utopian as it got and one of the interesting things that he did was focus more on charities that addressed social causes than on helping individuals; by contrast, wildcat oil funded missions which usually (but not always) aimed at saving individual souls.

That's not to say that Dochuk is a Christian who is giving an apologetic for one side or the other. He plays his cards close to his chest as far as his own religious commitments are concerned, though I suspect he is some form of Christian. But he admires the wildcatters for their ability to withstand the vicissitudes of the market. However, I think you can also sense that he is suspicious of the special interests that oil exerted on the religious right, which is a suspicion I share.

It is hard to document and verify that suspicion, but this book shows that Christianity Today, Fuller Theological Seminary, Barry Goldwater, and Billy Graham were all funded by oilmen; they may even have been devout oilmen, given the evidence we have. Look up the movie Oiltown if you doubt.

[Mark Edlund · Rating 3 out of 5]

Non-fiction - Dochuk presents an interesting premise as to how Christians and Christianity developed, influenced and ultimately almost destroyed the oil industry and the environment. He follows oil exploration through the Rockefellers in Pennsylvania to the tar (or should I say, oil) sands in Alberta. Well researched with an interesting segue at the end as to how Islamic beliefs are now front and centre for a lot of oil resource development. These folks pay little attention to being stewards of the land but more on ripping out whatever resources they can as quick as the can.
Canadian references - too many to list but interesting reflections on Premier Manning in Alberta and the development of the tar sands.
Pharmacy references - sign in a local pharmacy in the 1920's about the health benefits of oil; pharmacist in Europe helps to distill kerosene; Syrian trained pharmacists.

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

The description and introduction of this book set out a history of oil and its entanglements with Christianity that, well, the book doesn't necessarily actually deliver on. There is a history of both oil and Christianity here, but they felt (to me) less entwined and more just related. That being said, the history of oil and the general kind of faith commitments of its purveyors do make an interesting history, and Dochuk's prose is eminently readable and is incredibly well-researched. The book definitely does feel a bit long at times, but is a very comprehensive overview of the story of oil in America and beyond, so perhaps can't be blamed for that. Overall I did enjoy reading this, and was honestly impressed with the way that Dochuk was able to vividly tie oil's history with contemporary issues, which was more eloquently done than his efforts at tying theology and oil.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an enjoyable read and very well researched. I wished the book would have made its conclusions more clear. The book mostly felt like an interesting history with stories throughout it. I got glimpses of how Christianity and oil combined, but it still felt more like a survey.

[Brian Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thorough factual history of the oil business in America and the people involved, as well as their religious inclinations. I wish it had a stronger central thesis, though. This read as history much more than historical analysis.

[Laney King · Rating 3 out of 5]

had to read for school definitely a ton of good points but long as hell and the language annoyed me at times

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gift from Tom G on my retirement. Oil and religion. They go back a ways.