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

by Darren Dochuk

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.”

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

544 pages, Hardcover

First published December 13, 2010

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

[Brett C · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a rich and well-researched work that I found interesting the entire time. From start to finish I learned a lot. Southern California was transformed into a Christian evangelical conservative majority in the 20th century.

The Great Depression and Dust Bowl of the 1920s and 1930s brought "Okies," "Arkies," and droves of migration from the western Southern (Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Kansas) states to California for job opportunities and a better life. These internal immigrants brought their plain folk religion of evangelical Protestantism, their culture, racial views and segregation, and conservative politics:

...Southern plain folk had always seen themselves as defenders of pristine capitalism and Jeffersonian economics, which privileged individual entrepreneurship, personalized market and commodity relations, and owner-controlled property. pg 186

The author even explained how evangelical conservatism influenced politics, the popular vote, and the rise of Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. The author covers Southern California from the 1930s up to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Additionally the author tackled subjects on economics, social, and urban growth in Southern California.

I really enjoyed this and it was an informative learning experience. The author presented the information without giving opinions on either religion or politics. Highly recommended on a chapter of American history I never knew about. Thanks!

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, which began as a dissertation in history at Notre Dame, gave me more clarity into politics than almost anything else I've read.

The big picture (oversimplified) story is this: Millions of white folks from the South and Oklahoma moved to southern California after the Depression and WWII, bringing a distinctive brand of Christian Nationalism with them. In the process, they recreated segregated/tribal patterns of urban development and economic opportunity that virtually guaranteed some version of the LA riots; six million African Americans left the South to escape Jim Crow, and many settled in SoCal, but they were blocked from accessing the high-wage jobs in the defense industry and factories in "the Detroit of the West", jobs that fostered an enormous middle class. The cultural influence of Southerners (half a million former Texans resided in the LA basin in the 1960s), working in aggressive opposition to some of the most liberal populations in the US during the Cold War, is hard to overstate. (The Left in SoCal was also fueled by migration: Dust Bowl peasants (i.e. The Grapes of Wrath) and others who were distrustful of a predatory form of capitalism believed unions were necessary to reset the balance of power between capital, management and labor. Meanwhile, the Jewish immigrants who built the major Hollywood studios championed multicultural tolerance through storytelling that favored David Vs. Goliath underdog tropes. Walt Disney pushed back and released some of the most effective anti-communist propaganda films ever produced. And the need for Ph.D's to work in defense R&D helped to promote a world-class higher education system that stepped on evangelical toes by teaching evolution, deep geologic time, tolerance and left-wing political culture. California has long been something of a cage match between social democrats on the Left and Christian nationalists on the Right.) In sum, L.A., San Diego and Orange counties were an incubator for nearly every household name in the modern Republican Right, including Tim LaHaye, Billy Graham, James Dobson, Ronald Reagan, Ayn Rand and Chuck Smith, primarily driven by the grassroots growth of Southern transplants in a Cold War era defined by the fight of secular communism vs Christian capitalism.

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal.

[Janel Tortorice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gave me a lot if insight into the environment in which I grew up, as well as some empathy for a mindset I find totally baffling.

[Moses · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very readable, exhaustive, and interesting history of the Religious Right in CA and the nation. Respectful of its subjects and very well researched. A huge achievement.

[Haidar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think it is good book for history students

[Joel Wentz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is outstanding historical work, but is not for everyone. Dochuck brings keen academic historical research to the project, which means there are many details, footnotes and what appear to be "rabbit trails" throughout the narrative. He does a fine job making the material approachable and readable, but his refusal to overly simplify (which is actually a strength of his work) also makes it less accessible than many popular historical narratives.

But for me, this is an essential historical argument that provides explanatory power to the rise of the post-Reagan "moral majority" of the 90s. Dochuck makes his case - that a major migration of "plain folk religious people" from places like Oklahoma and Texas to Southern California, combined with post-New Deal entrepreneurs and anti-communist, firebrand preachers all created a cultural crucible that paved the way for a new religio-political alignment which ultimately recreated the face of both conservatism and evangelicalism in America - and, as they say, he "brings receipts." His research is spot-on, and his argument is extremely nuanced. He refused to pose a single "silver bullet" explanation, but rather paints a complicated portrait of many cultural influences and events, which ultimately (for me) adds up to a convincing case. Something specific happened in Southern California in the post WWII decades that has left an indelible mark on our culture today.

For those who really want to understand the Republican-Evangelical alignment in our time, especially in our Post-Trump work, and are willing to do some "homework" by reading a detailed historical text, then this is essential reading.

[Mark Knight · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the author did a good job of charting the path of evangelicalism from the Bible Belt to the Sunbelt and the national political landscape and major changes that it created. I think if you love politics and digging into the behind the scenes of evangelicalism and politics, you’d probably enjoy this book.

For me- I would have been fine with a 100pg primer. This book was just too long for me, discussing an issue I only am moderately interested in.

[Nathalie · Rating 2 out of 5]

this is a nightmare -.-

[Benjamin Stahl · Rating 3 out of 5]

A perfectly serviceable, and impeccably researched, history of the Evangelical movement in America, Dochuk delivers an informative but rarely captivating book.

[john callahan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I reviewed this book for amazon.com and said:

This book looks at the rise of conservatism in Southern California, as the working class migrants from Oklahoma, Kansas, and other dust bowl states of the 1930s became middle class Californians in the 1940s, 1950s and after. The question of how this transformation took place has been addressed by many historians, who have found many subtly different explanations for this change (the bibliography on the issue is quite large).

Mr. Dochuk focuses on the change and finds a major explanation for it in the transformations in evangelical Christianity in Southern California from the 1930s to 1980.

The migrants he discusses are the people from the western south (Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana & thereabouts) who settled in the Los Angeles area. They had much more opportunity to find work there than the perhaps more famous Dust Bowl refugees who ended up as migrant farmworkers, a group that Americans will associate with the Joads of John Steinbeck's novel "The Grapes of Wrath."

As the title suggests, it traces the transformation of "plain-folk" evangelical Protestantism, whose followers were accepting of the New Deal, to a form of evangelical Protestantism whose followers supported the USA's military buildup after World War II, an aggressive Cold War stance, a very free-market form of capitalism, and conservative moral values.

The author makes fascinating observations, which had never occurred to me, about just how many southern people were settled in Southern California in this period -- the number of southern-born people in the environs of Los Angeles actually exceeded the population of some southern states. The largest percentage of these folks were white, which of course has an influence on their history.

The author writes that generally, these folks had always had a vision of America that centered on Jesus and Jefferson -- the Thomas Jefferson who saw the best future for America in small farmers and small businesspeople, unhampered by government interference.

Of course, like all political visions, there are many contradictions in that political vision, and some folks would see a contradiction between Christianity and that vision. How the political ideas and religous ideas interacted in the development of evangelical conservatism in California is what the book is about.

He focuses on individuals active in the western south and California, and the institutions they created -- for example, churches and church organizations, and colleges and universities, from John Brown University to perhaps the epitome of the evangelical conservative university, Pepperdine.

We read about unusual developments, such as the revival of the populist "Ham and Eggs" movement after World War II, and unusual people, such as evangelist/educator John Brown. NB: This John Brown is NOT the John Brown whose body lies a mouldering in the grave.

The author did a huge amount of research over many years, so of course his arguments are well-documented. The book is also engrossing -- I couldn't put it down, and couldn't stop talking about it.

The author's own political and religious beliefs are not stated in the book -- it is a work of scholarship.

But you don't have to be a professional historian to learn from the book, or to enjoy reading it.

I strongly recommend it to people interested in US politics, US history, religion in the US,and the history of California.

Minor point: I've seen other books on the rise of convervativism in Southern California. If I could ask the author a question, I would ask him "What about the many new Californians who did not go to church?"

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dochuk opens up one of the grand narratives in 20th century American politics. From Bible belt to Sunbelt chronicles the rise of the southern white diaspora -- the plain folks from the old southwest (Oklahoma, Arkansas, the Texas panhandle) to Southern California, and then how this group found its particular and peculiar political voice in a sort of Christian nationalism that foreshadowed the emergence of the Christian Right. The book is part ethnography, part political history, part religious history, and in the background, the implicit story of the emergence of Southern California. One cannot expect a book to cover all four developments in a single volume -- it really is the stuff of a lifetime. Dochuk, however, is a good starting point for this discussion.

From the side of politics there are two stories here: first, how did these New Deal populists come to shed their New a Deal Democratic allegiance; and second, given their success with Reagan (where the book closes), what accounts for its political demise as a political actor? While the political movement of this community foreshadowed the Christian Right as a kind if "beta" model, the center of gravity moved from SoCal to Texas, to Colorado Springs, to points East.

The arrival of so many immigrants destabilized California politics, in part because of the sheer numbers, but also because of the values the immigrants brought with them. The battle in the plain folk communities was less about conviction than the classic immigrant struggle to maintain its ways. In California where everything and everyone could be new, the culture wars began.

Dochuk underplays the specific cultural wars aspect, particularly as it relates

(Before, this cultural conflict could be confined regionally. The values of the north, the Midwest, the "elites" did not necessarily have to traffic with the South, the homeland of these SoCal plain folk. Indeed this distance was an integral part of the New Deal coalition. In SoCal that distance was compressed. Moreover with the growth of SoCal in relation to the traditional role of San Francisco as the political leader only accentuated the conflict)

Religion plays a big part in the story. For the plain folk as with other immigrants, faith is a way the community maintains itself, but it was also the sectarian form of the faith itself which fueled the politics. It was it only a faith that emphasized conversion, but it was militantly separation it's -- it drew bright lines. The creed of biblical literalism empowered individuals, and lent itself easily to simple narratives. Finally it's preaching of salvation was part of a larger story of American choice -- it was the sort of thing that meshed well with economic conservatism/libertarian thinking. Finally, to be set in SoCal was to be at the center of a media megaphone. The result was that the faith not only nurtured a political consciousness, it also developed an increasingly national brand: "Fundamentalism"

While fundamentalism had originally had a Southern identity, and to a lesser degree an identity in the North, it had been til mid century existed as a shadow of the Mainline churches. In SoCal that relationship was rejected. The new shape of faith had its own power, independent of the old ways. Here, Dochuk misses something of the singularity of the new Fundamentalist brand. Conservative Protestant belief is lumped together generally, without an attention to the real divisions that would later inform the emergence of theChristian Right.

[Jeremy Canipe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Knowing that the Ph. D. dissertation upon which this book by Professor Darren Dochuck won the American Historical Association's annual prize for the year's best dissertation correctly led me to think, before opening it up, that this book would be stellar. While I am only beginning my study of American religious history, I found this book fascinating and illuminating.

What was not exactly clear from the title becomes clear in the early pages of the book. Dochuck argues that modern America's white evangelical conservatism, which is commonly thought to be politically attached the the Republican Party emerged in southern California from a confluence of events which began in the 1930s and 1940s. The book traces this story, linking the western portions of the American South to southern California, ending with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency.

While the book's only weakness is that, at 400 pages and with so much to cover, it can become unwieldy to follow for the non-specialist, I came away fair convinced that he has a strong argument.

In the Great Depression of the 1930s, a substantial number of residents of the southern states located west of the Mississippi began leaving the region for better economic opportunities in southern California. Like many such transplants, they often sought to replicate as much of their prior community life in this new environment. Often working in Los Angelo's defense industry plants and other regional manufacturing jobs, they created working class, semi-rural lifestyles including gardening and small farm animals in the loosely regulated areas outside the center city. And, as crucial for the history told by this book, these largely white southern Christians created local congregations in church denominations such as Methodists, Baptists, and Church of Christ.

In time, business entrepreneurs and educational pioneers from similar church and regional backgrounds would create both businesses and colleges. Probably the most significant example would be Pepperdine University, started by the owner of Western Auto, George Pepperdine.

These communities and their institutions clashed with the Social Democrat wing of the Democratic Party which had been a coalition during the Great Depression and World War II. Similar splits would emerge from what might be called the Huey Long portion of the Democratic Party which had often attracted this rural and working class group of southerners, seeking to redistribute private wealth for the benefit of poorer and working-class Americans. However, the business interests of the new southerners in southern California were not able to agree and went their separate ways.

Overtime, these players and group became major players in California politics. The long middle of the book traces their development and clashes with a very surprised modernist Californians who assumed, incorrectly, that serious Christian commitment would fade away.

As noted above, the book ends with the election of former two-term California governor Ronald Reagan in 1980. The evangelical religious conservatives had greater trust in Reagan than had been the case with the disgraced former president, Richard Nixon.

There are simply too much material and too many interesting stories and characters to cover adequately in a book review. If you have any interest in modern American religious history and politics, you should be sure to read this fine book.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dochuk highlights the role of Southern California evangelicals in forming the conservative political coalitions of the 1970s and ‘80s. By beginning his narrative with the post-Depression migration of evangelicals from the western South, Dochuk hopes both to undermine the interpretation that the politics of religious conservatism appeared suddenly on the scene with the Moral Majority and to account for its distinctive cultural characteristics.

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

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

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

America's current political climate did not happen over night.It has its origins in the 40's, 50's, and early 60's. To deal with the most recent phase I recommend you read James Davidson Hunter's "Culture Wars: the struggle to define America". For the early period I recommend Rick Perlstein's two books: "Nixonland", and "Before the Storm", and the book shown above, "From Bible Belt to Sunbelt". Darren Dochuk tells the story of the movement of the Southern Evangelicals from the Deep South to Southern California. Many came in search of jobs and a better life. What they did, on arrival, was to change the political landscape and bring the rise of the socially conservative wing of the GOP and the embracing of political activism by the conservative evangelical church. Dochuk does a wonderful job of linking names to the events. In many cases the players have long left the stage and have been forgotten. However, their actions and words became the white conservative backlash to the student movement, the civil rights movement, and the foundation of Nixon's Silent Majority. I can't not praise this book too much or recommend it too highly.

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very useful, enlightening study of the complex relationship between Southern evangelical religion and conservative politics in Southern California. Dochuk avoids simplifications and generalizations, emphasizing the tensions between different strains of fundamentalism and the constantly shifting place of politics in evangelical cultures. He grounds his analysis in the stories of specific ministers, tracking them from the South to their churches, mostly in the LA area. I was particularly impressed by his presentation of Ronald Reagan's forging of a coalition that incorporated but didn't submit to the most problematic elements of the Southern tradition, particularly its commitment to white supremacy. The discussion of Reagan's "Creative Society" should be required reading for students and historians of the 1960s, who tend to reduce a complex movement to a one-dimensional cartoon. I'll never adhere to the values at the core of the movement Dochuk describes, but I understand it much much better for having read his book.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dochuk's From Bible Belt to Sunbelt is a helpful exploration of the convergence of Southerners' migration to Southern California, the emergence of Evangelicals there in the 1940s and '50s and the rise of their political activism, especially in its conservative form that has become known as the Religious Right. It's insightful as it gives us a sixty-year look back on the history that brings us to the current presidential campaigning with its elements of faith and the Republican candidates' (and supporters') inter-party challenging of other candidate's conservatism.

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The popular joke circulating in the Panhandle during the late 1930s and early 1940s, that 'the "rich 'uns" had pilled up and gone to California to starve' while 'the "poor folks" just stayed hungry where they were,' contained much truth." (8)

"The 'Creative Society' idea is that there is present, within the incredibly rich human resources of California, the dynamic solution to every old or new problem we face. The task of a state government committed to this concept is to creatively discover, enlist, and mobilize those human resources." (quoting Ronald Reagan ca. 1966, 259)

[Christian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dochuk traces the movement of southern evangelicals from Texas and Arkansas to southern California, although the book is less about the journey itself than it is about what they did when they got there.

As one reviewer pointed out, private college presidents get an inordinate amount of stage time in this book. On the other hand, it is refreshing to read a book on the history of American Christianity without constant reference to major and minor political figures.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great piece of work. Dochuk exhaustively explains the migration of Southerners to California, and shows how they created a powerful political culture in California which made the nomination of Reagan possible. Because he doesn't go national in scope, I'm not sure he really proves his thesis (that Evangelicals are not a reactionary peripheral group within Conservatism), but this is well-told history on an intriguing subject.

[Jeremy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dochuk provided an in depth look at what sets Southern California apart as a conservative, evangelical stronghold in California. In short, the exodus of Oklahoman and Texan to the Southland brought their conservative interpretations of Scripture into California.

The book is well researched and documented, I recommend a skim reading of it.

[Ean Snell · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of an academic writing tone than I was expecting, and more narrowed in scope than I was expecting. Because of that, it wasn't my favorite, but still learned a lot.

I'm still trying to figure out everything about Billy Graham. I know that's vague, but that's because I can't exactly put my finger on it either.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure if I ever actually got all the way to the end, but I got close enough. Solid read. The way it was written kind of jumped a little too much and was hard to stay invested.

[Louie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here’s my “read this for school” disclaimer and an additional “the professor assigned 200 pages to be read in like 3 days” disclaimer. That being said I really enjoyed this for what it is, politics aren’t my favorite part of history to study but there’s also a lot of crossover with culture which i do enjoy, so that still made this a very cool read. If I’d been able to read it slower and without trying to figure out how to write a book report on it I probably would have enjoyed it more, but then again I was here for the hippies, had to stay for the homophobes.

[Daryl Grigsby]

just started - captivating!!

[Nicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

This answered so many questions for me in my quest to understand where I grew up: the cusp of Los Angeles and Orange Counties.