Red State Religion

by Wuthnow, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780691150550
• ISBN10: 0691150559
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-11-14
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

No state has voted Republican more consistently or widely or for longer than Kansas. To understand red state politics, Kansas is the place. It is also the place to understand red state religion. The Kansas board of education has repeatedly challenged the teaching of evolution, Kansas voters overwhelmingly passed a constitutional ban on gay marriage, the state is a hotbed of antiabortion protest--and churches have been involved in all of these efforts. Yet in 1867 suffragist Lucy Stone could plausibly proclaim that, in the cause of universal suffrage, "Kansas leads the world!" How did Kansas go from being a progressive state to one of the most conservative? In Red State Religion, Robert Wuthnow tells the story of religiously motivated political activism in Kansas from territorial days to the present. He examines how faith mixed with politics as both ordinary Kansans and leaders such as John Brown, Carrie Nation, William Allen White, and Dwight Eisenhower struggled over the pivotal issues of their times, from slavery and prohibition to populism and anticommunism. Beyond providing surprising new explanations of why Kansas became a conservative stronghold, the book sheds new light on the role of religion in red states across the Midwest and the United States. Contrary to recent influential accounts, Wuthnow argues that Kansas conservatism is largely pragmatic, not ideological, and that religion in the state has less to do with politics and contentious moral activism than with relationships between neighbors, friends, and fellow churchgoers. This is an important book for anyone who wants to understand the role of religion in American political conservatism.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vii
Preface	p. ix
Prologue	p. 1
Murder at the Glenwood	p. 10
Piety on the Plains	p. 17
Abraham Lincoln in Kansas	p. 18
Establishing a Civic Order	p. 29
Public Religion
Serving the Community	p. 42
Church Expansion	p. 47
Cooperation and Competition	p. 57
An Evolving Political Style	p. 67
Prairie Politics	p. 72
Populism and Religious Politics	p. 79
Protesting against Inequality	p. 90
A Divided Party	p. 95
Law and Order	p. 101
For the Children	p. 104
Redefining the Heartland	p. 110
Harvest of Progress	p. 112
Consolidation and Expansion	p. 117
Forward-looking Initiatives	p. 124
Church and State	p. 130
Hunkering Down	p. 134
Fundamentalism and the Great Depression	p. 142
Simian Peasants	p. 152
Novel Movements	p. 162
Quiet Conservatism	p. 169
Grassroots Resentments	p. 171
The Senator from Pendergast	p. 183
Hometown Religion	p. 187
I Like Ike	p. 200
A Well-Qualified Catholic	p. 208
An Era of Restructuring	p. 215
Stirrings on the Right	p. 217
From Desegregation to Black Power	p. 229
Nixon at Kansas State	p. 241
Division in the Churches	p. 252
The Religious Right	p. 267
Mobilization on the Right	p. 269
Government Is the Problem	p. 279
The War in Wichita	p. 287
Shifting the Focus	p. 294
Questioning Evolution	p. 303
Continuing the Struggle	p. 312
The Churches and Activist Networks	p. 314
Electing George W. Bush	p. 321
Regulating Abortion	p. 326
The Campaign against Gay Marriage	p. 330
Evolution Revisited	p. 338
The Death of Dr. Tiller	p. 347
Swatches of Purple	p. 354
Epilogue	p. 361
Notes	p. 71
Selected Bibliography
Index	p. 655
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