Books
In progress for 2028-29.
Most books about the Great Depression begin with Wall Street’s crash in 1929 and end with U.S. entry into World War II. My next book -- Hard Times in Glory Land: Religion, Memory, and the South's Long Great Depression -- tells a different story. It is a cultural and religious history of the Great Depression's long southern afterlife.
The book focuses on the U.S. South, a region remade by the Depression and by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Whether experienced directly or indirectly (or not at all), the economic traumas of the 1930s became a source of personal and intensely political remembrance and forgetting. Religion was a critical vehicle for carrying private and public memories forward.
Hard Times in Glory Land opens where FDR died: at the Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia, transformed into a postwar memorial shrine to New Deal liberalism. It then traces the landscapes of secularized memory surrounding 1930s labor battles and racial violence, before turning to the unlikely and partial Sunbelt redemption of Herbert Hoover and the Republican Party by the time of his death in 1964. Southern fiction writers next receive their due as religious memory-makers, as the book shows how the “tobacco road” tradition of rural poverty writing persisted and changed as a form of political preaching by white and Black writers and their interpreters.
Other sites of public memory follow. New Deal public works projects (TVA, CCC, WPA) are reconsidered as not just infrastructure but memorials framed by liberalism's developmental faith, even as that faith faltered as the Great Society encountered rejuvenated southern anti-New Dealism. A vignette history of the Carter Family’s folk song “No Depression in Heaven” offers a means for revisiting the southern music industry’s approach to race, religion, and nostalgia. Depression-era religion’s place in television and film rounds out the book, focusing on the recessionary 1970s. On the small screen, The Waltons offered post-Jim Crow and post-New Deal moral guidance. Meanwhile, on the silver screen Bonnie and Clyde popularized stylish sinning and violent transgression while movies like Sounder provided a vision of redemptive Black family values.
By the time of the Great Depression's half-century anniversary, the South was a changed region, moving beyond Jim Crow and headlong into "southernizing" the national and global economy. At that time, memories became the stuff of competing neo-New Deal and neoliberal faiths, preached by the children of the Depression now grown up into some of the South's most notable and influential politicians, religious activists, and business leaders. (Jimmy Carter, for instance, was all three.) Later, mythic movies like O Brother, Where Art Thou? won awards while prayerful songs that might "thank God for the TVA" provided remnants of a New Deal almost wholly forgotten in public memory, at least until the South's Great Recession briefly brought a renewal in the New Deal as a regional and national redemption story. More recently, supernatural retellings of race as tales of Sinners and songs suggested the continuing relevance of hard times recalled and retold with a southern accent. Such perennial revivals in the South's 1930s will continue as long as precarity marks the region, nation, and world as much as it did a century ago. Hard Times in Glory Land explains why.
The book focuses on the U.S. South, a region remade by the Depression and by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Whether experienced directly or indirectly (or not at all), the economic traumas of the 1930s became a source of personal and intensely political remembrance and forgetting. Religion was a critical vehicle for carrying private and public memories forward.
Hard Times in Glory Land opens where FDR died: at the Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia, transformed into a postwar memorial shrine to New Deal liberalism. It then traces the landscapes of secularized memory surrounding 1930s labor battles and racial violence, before turning to the unlikely and partial Sunbelt redemption of Herbert Hoover and the Republican Party by the time of his death in 1964. Southern fiction writers next receive their due as religious memory-makers, as the book shows how the “tobacco road” tradition of rural poverty writing persisted and changed as a form of political preaching by white and Black writers and their interpreters.
Other sites of public memory follow. New Deal public works projects (TVA, CCC, WPA) are reconsidered as not just infrastructure but memorials framed by liberalism's developmental faith, even as that faith faltered as the Great Society encountered rejuvenated southern anti-New Dealism. A vignette history of the Carter Family’s folk song “No Depression in Heaven” offers a means for revisiting the southern music industry’s approach to race, religion, and nostalgia. Depression-era religion’s place in television and film rounds out the book, focusing on the recessionary 1970s. On the small screen, The Waltons offered post-Jim Crow and post-New Deal moral guidance. Meanwhile, on the silver screen Bonnie and Clyde popularized stylish sinning and violent transgression while movies like Sounder provided a vision of redemptive Black family values.
By the time of the Great Depression's half-century anniversary, the South was a changed region, moving beyond Jim Crow and headlong into "southernizing" the national and global economy. At that time, memories became the stuff of competing neo-New Deal and neoliberal faiths, preached by the children of the Depression now grown up into some of the South's most notable and influential politicians, religious activists, and business leaders. (Jimmy Carter, for instance, was all three.) Later, mythic movies like O Brother, Where Art Thou? won awards while prayerful songs that might "thank God for the TVA" provided remnants of a New Deal almost wholly forgotten in public memory, at least until the South's Great Recession briefly brought a renewal in the New Deal as a regional and national redemption story. More recently, supernatural retellings of race as tales of Sinners and songs suggested the continuing relevance of hard times recalled and retold with a southern accent. Such perennial revivals in the South's 1930s will continue as long as precarity marks the region, nation, and world as much as it did a century ago. Hard Times in Glory Land explains why.
Southern Religion, Southern Culture, co-edited with Ted Ownby and James G. Thomas, Jr., examines the intersections of region, religion, and culture. Essays focus on African-American religious education, religion in blues culture, borderland Episcopalian missionaries, sports and religion, Pentecostal print culture, southern relic-making, and the religious meanings of Elvis. The volume honors the career and work of Charles Reagan Wilson, Professor Emeritus at the University of Mississippi and a leading scholar of religious studies and southern culture.
Published in 2019 by University Press of Mississippi.
REVIEWS
"Here broad interpretations of religion are not a gimmick; they are instead testaments to the pervasiveness of religious impulses, and to the reciprocal influence between the churches and culture of the American South. Wilson gave scholars permission to grapple with this dynamic church-culture interplay in new and creative ways, and since each essay bears his unmistakable imprint, Southern Religion, Southern Culture is a fitting tribute to one of the most influential scholars of southern religious history."
- Christopher C. Moore, Journal of Southern Religion
"Specialists in the field will find some of the topical essays in this volume useful as they teach and undertake further research. More general readers of American or religious history will benefit from the introductory and concluding essays, which could lead them into Wilson’s own books and articles, a body of scholarship worthy of the celebration this book intends, featuring methods that can tell the story of religion better in almost any region or tradition. "
- Nicholas M. Beasley, Anglican and Episcopal History
"In this Festschrift, Southern Religion, Southern Culture: Essays Honoring Charles Reagan Wilson, editors Darren E. Grem, Ted Ownby, and James G. Thomas Jr. have compiled a collection that is appropriately diverse in its content and consistent in employing the creativity cultivated by the honoree. On topics that range from antebellum Episcopalians in politics to African American education, Holiness media innovation, football goalposts, and macabre southern relics, the essays in this volume successfully reflect the powerful impact that Wilson has had on the field of southern history. "
- Charity W. Rakestraw, The Journal of Southern History
Published in 2019 by University Press of Mississippi.
REVIEWS
"Here broad interpretations of religion are not a gimmick; they are instead testaments to the pervasiveness of religious impulses, and to the reciprocal influence between the churches and culture of the American South. Wilson gave scholars permission to grapple with this dynamic church-culture interplay in new and creative ways, and since each essay bears his unmistakable imprint, Southern Religion, Southern Culture is a fitting tribute to one of the most influential scholars of southern religious history."
- Christopher C. Moore, Journal of Southern Religion
"Specialists in the field will find some of the topical essays in this volume useful as they teach and undertake further research. More general readers of American or religious history will benefit from the introductory and concluding essays, which could lead them into Wilson’s own books and articles, a body of scholarship worthy of the celebration this book intends, featuring methods that can tell the story of religion better in almost any region or tradition. "
- Nicholas M. Beasley, Anglican and Episcopal History
"In this Festschrift, Southern Religion, Southern Culture: Essays Honoring Charles Reagan Wilson, editors Darren E. Grem, Ted Ownby, and James G. Thomas Jr. have compiled a collection that is appropriately diverse in its content and consistent in employing the creativity cultivated by the honoree. On topics that range from antebellum Episcopalians in politics to African American education, Holiness media innovation, football goalposts, and macabre southern relics, the essays in this volume successfully reflect the powerful impact that Wilson has had on the field of southern history. "
- Charity W. Rakestraw, The Journal of Southern History
The Business Turn in American Religious History, co-edited with John Corrigan and Amanda Porterfield, is a collection of essays that reconsiders the role of business in American religious culture and politics. Subjects include Protestant fundamentalists and corporate culture, Jewish women and philanthropy, Mormon struggles with capitalism, the "guru" as business icon, conservative Catholic CEO's, Native American casinos, and evangelical media empires.
Published in 2017 by Oxford University Press.
REVIEWS
"Rich in historical detail and fresh with theoretical insight, The Business Turn in American Religious History challenges and inspires new ways of reading and constructing American religious history." -- Daniel Jones, Religious Studies Review
"Rare is the essay collection that advances a scholarly paradigm shift. The Business Turn in American Religious History is one of those exceptions. Amanda Porterfield, Darren Grem and John Corrigan's volume offers a definitive word on the history of faith and corporate capitalism in America... From beginning to end, then, The Business Turn in American Religious History delivers one rich and surprising insight after another... In sum, this volume is a state of the art/state of the field address, one that scholars will find invaluable for their work in the archives and on the written page, as well as in the classroom." -- Darren Dochuk, Journal of Ecclesiastical History
"Together, the essays collected here offer new ways of conceptualizing the interdependence of religion and business in the United States, establishing multiple paths for further study of their intertwined historical development." --The Southern Register
"As the authors of the essays in this volume show, examining religion and religious institutions through the lens of business provides numerous insights into how religions gain influence, how they spread, both in the United States and throughout the world, and how their members come to terms with serving both God and mammon. The book is highly recommended for scholars of both religious history and business history." -- Matthew C. Godfrey, Reading Religion
Published in 2017 by Oxford University Press.
REVIEWS
"Rich in historical detail and fresh with theoretical insight, The Business Turn in American Religious History challenges and inspires new ways of reading and constructing American religious history." -- Daniel Jones, Religious Studies Review
"Rare is the essay collection that advances a scholarly paradigm shift. The Business Turn in American Religious History is one of those exceptions. Amanda Porterfield, Darren Grem and John Corrigan's volume offers a definitive word on the history of faith and corporate capitalism in America... From beginning to end, then, The Business Turn in American Religious History delivers one rich and surprising insight after another... In sum, this volume is a state of the art/state of the field address, one that scholars will find invaluable for their work in the archives and on the written page, as well as in the classroom." -- Darren Dochuk, Journal of Ecclesiastical History
"Together, the essays collected here offer new ways of conceptualizing the interdependence of religion and business in the United States, establishing multiple paths for further study of their intertwined historical development." --The Southern Register
"As the authors of the essays in this volume show, examining religion and religious institutions through the lens of business provides numerous insights into how religions gain influence, how they spread, both in the United States and throughout the world, and how their members come to terms with serving both God and mammon. The book is highly recommended for scholars of both religious history and business history." -- Matthew C. Godfrey, Reading Religion
The Blessings of Business: How Corporations Shaped Conservative Christianity argues that evangelical fandom for big-name business moguls and strategic culture warriors like Donald Trump is nothing new. Sweeping from the late nineteenth century to the present, with substantial focus on the American South, the book reveals how corporations and corporate leaders, money, organizations, and power proved essential to the creation and proliferation of conservative brands of Christian culture and politics.
Published in 2016 by Oxford University Press.
Named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title
REVIEWS
"Stellar... The Blessings of Business is, in short, a strikingly comprehensive synthesis, brilliant in its combination of sweeping and probing analysis." -- Darren Dochuk, Business History Review
"A worthy contribution[. . . .] Grem is especially adept at teasing out the interconnections among these various individuals and groups, as well as pointing out the racism and homophobia that underlies many of these companies and the labor practices in their supply chains." -- Randall Balmer, American Historical Review
"Packed with fascinating biographical and institutional details. . . . Grem astutely details the increase in social, cultural, and political power resulting from the millions and millions of dollars [businessmen] donated to evangelical organizations. In this invaluable book . . . [are] gems . . . born of assiduous historical research [that] ought to secure for The Blessings of Business a lasting place on reading lists in twentieth-century religion, business, and politics." -- Alexis McCrossan, Journal of American History
"The book's greatest strength is in its careful analysis of the records, and production, of Christian businesses...he successfully addresses southern religion, and the ways that many of the businesses he follows are both southern- and Christian-identified." - Janine Giordano Drake, Journal of Southern Religion
"This is an excellent and ambitious book. Grem has done a tremendous amount of research, his writing is clear, and his examples are consistently engaging. The book is a welcome addition to the exploding historiography on modern American evangelicalism. . This is a wonderful book certain to have a major impact for years to come." -- Matthew Avery Sutton, Journal of Religion
"Darren E. Grem's The Blessings of Business . . . offers a necessary glimpse into the world of conservative evangelical Christianity and the businessmen and corporations that supported its rise to religious and cultural dominance in public life. This is a helpful book for those interested in both history and religion, and is sure to be an enlightening read." --Blake I. Campbell, Journal of Markets & Morality
"The foremost criteria for a historical book is whether it meets its stated objective. Grem succeeds in meeting all three of his explicit objectives: he shows how corporations shaped conservative Protestant Christianity; exposes the business side of American religion, with its cultural and political ramifications; and places the construction of American religion within the history of corporate capitalism. Provocative, informative, and required reading for all who wonder how conservative evangelicalism became linked at the hip with modern free-market capitalism, Grem's book shows how many Christians came to reconcile serving both God and mammon." -- Brandon J. Payne, H-Net
Published in 2016 by Oxford University Press.
Named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title
REVIEWS
"Stellar... The Blessings of Business is, in short, a strikingly comprehensive synthesis, brilliant in its combination of sweeping and probing analysis." -- Darren Dochuk, Business History Review
"A worthy contribution[. . . .] Grem is especially adept at teasing out the interconnections among these various individuals and groups, as well as pointing out the racism and homophobia that underlies many of these companies and the labor practices in their supply chains." -- Randall Balmer, American Historical Review
"Packed with fascinating biographical and institutional details. . . . Grem astutely details the increase in social, cultural, and political power resulting from the millions and millions of dollars [businessmen] donated to evangelical organizations. In this invaluable book . . . [are] gems . . . born of assiduous historical research [that] ought to secure for The Blessings of Business a lasting place on reading lists in twentieth-century religion, business, and politics." -- Alexis McCrossan, Journal of American History
"The book's greatest strength is in its careful analysis of the records, and production, of Christian businesses...he successfully addresses southern religion, and the ways that many of the businesses he follows are both southern- and Christian-identified." - Janine Giordano Drake, Journal of Southern Religion
"This is an excellent and ambitious book. Grem has done a tremendous amount of research, his writing is clear, and his examples are consistently engaging. The book is a welcome addition to the exploding historiography on modern American evangelicalism. . This is a wonderful book certain to have a major impact for years to come." -- Matthew Avery Sutton, Journal of Religion
"Darren E. Grem's The Blessings of Business . . . offers a necessary glimpse into the world of conservative evangelical Christianity and the businessmen and corporations that supported its rise to religious and cultural dominance in public life. This is a helpful book for those interested in both history and religion, and is sure to be an enlightening read." --Blake I. Campbell, Journal of Markets & Morality
"The foremost criteria for a historical book is whether it meets its stated objective. Grem succeeds in meeting all three of his explicit objectives: he shows how corporations shaped conservative Protestant Christianity; exposes the business side of American religion, with its cultural and political ramifications; and places the construction of American religion within the history of corporate capitalism. Provocative, informative, and required reading for all who wonder how conservative evangelicalism became linked at the hip with modern free-market capitalism, Grem's book shows how many Christians came to reconcile serving both God and mammon." -- Brandon J. Payne, H-Net
