FROM BIBLE BELT TO SUNBELT
FROM BIBLE BELT TO SUNBELT
Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism
DARREN DOCHUK
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY
NEW YORK LONDON
For Debra
CONTENTS
Map of Southern California, CIRCA 1980
Introduction: “AT HOME WITH THE ANGELS”
I. SOUTHERN ERRAND
1. PLAIN FOLK
2. PREACHERS
3. ENTREPRENEURS
II. SOUTHERN PROBLEM
4. LABOR WARS
5. NEW ALLIES
III. SOUTHERN SOLUTIONS
6. PLAIN-FOLK PREACHING MAINSTREAMED
7. THE NEW GOSPEL OF WEALTH
8. DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
9. SENTINELS OF FREEDOM
IV. SOUTHERN STRATEGIES
10. CREATIVE SOCIETY
11. JESUS PEOPLE
12. MORAL MAJORITY
13. BORN AGAIN
Epilogue: WILDERNESS AGAIN
Acknowledgments
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Photograph Credits
People streaming out of Billy Graham’s “Canvass Cathedral” in downtown Los Angeles, 1949.
The eight-week revival vaulted Graham onto a national stage as the country’s rising star
evangelist.
Billy Graham’s preaching platform straddles second base in Anaheim’s brand-new “Big A”
stadium, 1969. The ten-day revival broke records for the Graham evangelistic team and
underscored the dramatic transformation that had turned Bible Belt evangelicalism into a
Sunbelt phenomenon in just two decades.
Created in the 1930s as an industrial, blue-collar suburb with a distinctive rural feel, Bell
Gardens always had a split personality, even into the 1950s, when this photo was taken.
“Fighting” Bob Shuler served twenty days in prison in 1930 for using his religious radio program
to champion his controversial politics. As is evident in this photo, he did not seem to mind the
inconvenience or media attention that came with his detention.
Like the churches southern migrants built in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Pepperdine College
was comfortably embedded in its neighborhood. George Pepperdine wanted his students to have
access to the city but also shelter from its vices on a campus surrounded by (and attuned to)
suburban values.
The founding members of Pepperdine College’s Alpha Gamma, a women’s honor organization,
here pictured in the spring of 1938. A young Helen Mattox, recently relocated from Oklahoma,
stands in the first row, second from right.
Carey McWilliams, reclining here in 1941, was instrumental in bringing the “southern problem”
to light for California progressives. His impatience with southern evangelicalism lacked the
biting edge of H. L. Mencken’s, but not the intensity.
Chester Estep, a nonstriker opposing union action at Warner Bros., finds himself in the middle
of bloody violence during Hollywood’s “labor wars” immediately following World War II.
Finding herself embroiled in the controversy, Marie King used her position in the legal offices at
MGM to document violence against nonstriking workers like Estep and report on other union
activities to MGM executives, all in hopes of curtailing communist influence in Hollywood and
Los Angeles.
With McWilliams’s help, Mobilization for Democracy organized large public protests outside
meetings held by Ham and Eggs and Gerald L. K. Smith. These protestors are part of the fifteen
thousand that surrounded the Polytechnic High School on October 16, 1945.
The Church of the Open Door, here pictured in the early 1950s, was a grand, classical monument
to the conservative Protestant establishment that had gained cultural power in Southern
California during the early twentieth century.
With over four thousand theater-style seats, an eight-story skylight covering the entire ceiling,
and the city’s grandest pipe organ, the Church of the Open Door’s interior was every bit as
spectacular as its exterior. The resplendent church auditorium also served as a stunning venue
for the Bible Institute of Los Angeles’ graduation ceremonies, here photographed just prior to
World War II.
Two generations of southern preachers pose for a photograph in Los Angeles during the late
1940s. A green Billy Graham stands between the Reverend Bob Shuler and a younger,
unidentified associate.
J. Vernon McGee preaching from the pulpit at the Church of the Open Door.
A sign outside a revival tent in the middle of an undeveloped Los Angeles suburban
neighborhood announces the arrival of southern evangelist Doug Winn. The revival, held
sometime in the early 1950s, was sponsored by John Brown’s KGER radio station, along with
several churches and parachurch ministries.
These eight students were judged the best in the Heritage Schools’ patriotic costume contest.
More importantly for Pastor Bob Wells, they were considered prime examples of Central Baptist
Church’s theological, pedagogical, and political vision.
Twenty-five years earlier, Helen Mattox had been photographed outside this same building as a
young transfer student from Harding College, in Arkansas. Here, in the 1960s, she is pictured
with her husband and Pepperdine’s president, M. Norvel Young, displaying the refinement and
confidence of a leader in her church, school, and community.
In August of 1961, sixteen thousand young people and their parents packed Los Angeles’ Sports
Arena for “youth night” at Fred Schwarz’s Southern California School of Anti-Communism. Pat
Boone, pictured here onstage next to Ronald and Nancy Reagan and other famous anticommunist
crusaders, delivered the evening’s signature line when he declared he would rather have his four
daughters shot than subject them to communist rule.
Senator Barry Goldwater arrived at Pepperdine College’s third freedom forum in 1961 with
great fanfare as the politician with the “conservative conscience” ready to lead a right-wing
revolution. Here he playfully points to the Pepperdine flag as Norvel Young and another dinner
guest look on. An elderly George Pepperdine is peering over Young’s shoulder.
Pepperdine College students declaring their support for Republican candidate Barry Goldwater
in 1964.
Family values and cowboy conservatism blended together at a Republican rally in Dodger
Stadium, held just as the Goldwater movement was beginning to gather steam for the 1964
election.
Billy Graham found a friend and natural ally in Ronald Reagan, here pictured with Nancy
Reagan during the 1969 Anaheim crusade.
In the wake of the Watts riots, Billy Graham and other evangelical leaders in Southern
California began building a “color-blind conservatism” and interracial coalition. Reverend E. V.
Hill, looking up at the famed evangelist, was always eager to have Graham occupy his pulpit at
Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church in South Central Los Angeles.
Ruth Graham preferred to avoid the spotlight, but during her husband’s 1969 meetings in
Anaheim she broke the pattern by speaking to eleven thousand women gathered for the largest
sit-down meal held west of the Mississippi River.
Evangelical youth, like this young man, joined housewives in providing crucial grassroots
support for Billy Graham’s 1969 Anaheim crusade.