"'It Has to Come from the Hearts of the People': Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, Race, and the 1964...

Journal of American Studieshttp://journals.cambridge.org/AMS

Additional services for Journal of AmericanStudies:

Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click here

“It Has to Come from the Hearts of the People”:Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, Race, and the1964 Civil Rights Act

RANDALL J. STEPHENS

Journal of American Studies / FirstView Article / June 2015, pp 1 - 27DOI: 10.1017/S0021875815000687, Published online: 18 May 2015

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0021875815000687

How to cite this article:RANDALL J. STEPHENS “It Has to Come from the Hearts of the People”:Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, Race, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Journal ofAmerican Studies, Available on CJO 2015 doi:10.1017/S0021875815000687

Request Permissions : Click here

Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/AMS, IP address: 192.173.4.178 on 16 Jun 2015

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 16 Jun 2015 IP address: 192.173.4.178

“It Has to Come from the Heartsof the People”: Evangelicals,Fundamentalists, Race, and the Civil Rights ActRANDALL J . STEPHENS

In recent years historians and scholars of religious studies have chronicled and debated the crit-ical role that black and white liberal Protestants, Catholics, and Jews played in the civil rightsstruggles of the s and s. At every stage of the movement, mainline and traditionalblack churches proved vital. Less is known about the actions and reactions of conservative ormoderate white believers. The churches that these fundamentalists and evangelicals belongedto would grow tremendously in the coming decades, eventually claiming roughly percentof the American population. From the s forward, conservative Protestants would alsobecome key political players, helping to decide national elections. Their responses to the land-mark Civil Rights Act, which intended to end discrimination on the basis of race, color,religion, or national origin, and the heated debates that led up to the law reveal much about howconservative Christians related to the state and to a changing society. Responses to the billranged from resigned acceptance to racist denunciation. But believers were united in their anti-statism and in their opposition to political and theological liberalism. This article examines howevangelicals and fundamentalists engaged in politics and understood race and racism in personalterms. It also analyzes the religious dimensions of modern American conservatism.

It was Friday, June . President Lyndon B. Johnson had just heard thatthe Senate had passed the Civil Rights Act with a vote of seventy-three totwenty-seven, following a grueling eighty-three-day filibuster. The Presidentphoned Roy Wilkins, head of the NAACP, to relay the good news. Theychatted about the long and winding road to passage and the many barriersovercome for the historic Act that intended to outlaw discrimination byrace, color, religion, or national origin. What seemed impossible had finallybeen accomplished. Wilkins passed on a revealing comment he had heardfrom the US Senator from Georgia, Richard Russell, who “put his finger on

Department of Humanities, Northumbria University. Email: [email protected]. The author would like to thank Hilde Løvdal Stephens for her insights into this topicand the participants in the as a Watershed Year symposium at NorthumbriaUniversity, May , for thoughtful comments and criticisms.

Journal of American Studies, Page of © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies doi:./S

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1017/S0021875815000687&domain=pdf

http://journals.cambridge.org


two things. First he said it was Lyndon Johnson. And second, he said it was theclergy. He hasn’t been wrong – much,” concluded Wilkins.

At every stage in the lead-up to the landmark bill, Protestant, Catholic, andJewish leaders and lay activists rallied churches and the public. The liberal, pre-dominately white, National Council of Churches (NCC) proved tireless in itscivil rights efforts in and . The chief magazine of mid-centuryProtestant liberalism, Christian Century, was the first to publish in fullMartin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Many divines inthe liberal mainstream heeded King’s call for an activist faith and joinedhim at the national mall in August on the march for jobs and freedom.The following spring the nation’s capital was again awash with ministers,

priests, seminary students, and nuns. They joined up with African Americanpreachers from the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the NationalBaptist Convention. A collection of seminarians maintained a round-the-clock vigil at the Lincoln Memorial to show their support for civil rights legis-lation. A group of about men and women set off from the LutheranChurch of the Reformation on Capitol Hill and made their way to theSupreme Court Building for a prayer vigil and commemoration of the tenthanniversary of the Brown v. Topeka decision. The NCC backed this andother symbolic gestures and pleaded with Senators to support the CivilRights Bill and stand up for the rights of all Americans. Such actions were

Lyndon Johnson call to Roy Wilkins, . p.m., June , in Michael R. Beschloss, ed.,Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, – (New York: Touchstone,), . The key passage of the bill was §(a): “All persons shall be entitled to thefull and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, and privileges, advantages, andaccommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section,without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or nationalorigin.” Civil Rights Act, at www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/history/th/thelaw/civil_rights_act.html, accessed April . On the history of the bill see Todd S. Purdum, An IdeaWhose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil RightsAct of (New York: MacMillan, ); Clay Risen, The Bill of the Century: The EpicBattle for the Civil Rights Act (New York: Bloomsbury Press, ); Robert D. Loevy,The Civil Rights Act of : The Passage of the Law That Ended Racial Segregation(Albany: State University of New York Press, ); and Bernard Grofman, Legacies ofthe Civil Rights Act (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, ). On LBJ’smixed earlier record see Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ), xvii–xviii.

“The Vigil for Civil Rights,” Christianity Today, June , ; Philip A. Johnson,“Religious Leaders Lay Groundwork for Action on Race Prejudice,” National Lutheran,March , ; Michael S. Lund, “March on Washington,” National Lutheran, Oct., –; “Conference Joins the March in Spirit,” Christian Advocate, Sept. ;James K. Mathews, “The Bishops Speak on Race,” Christian Advocate, Jan. , –;and see Nov. , March , and Oct. issues of the left-leaning Methodiststudent publication Motive Magazine, with contributions from Martin Marty, VincentHarding, Nat Hentoff, Thomas Merton, and other luminaries of social justice.

Randall J. Stephens

http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/history/35th/thelaw/civil_rights_act.html

http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/history/35th/thelaw/civil_rights_act.html



broadcast on national television news and reported in headlines in majorpapers. On the key role of the black ministers the historian Clarence Taylorobserves, “In many instances black clergy became the spokespeople for cam-paigns articulating the grievances of black people, and they became the strate-gists who shaped the objectives and methods of the movement that sought toredress those grievances.”

Indeed, much is known about the involvement of black and whiteProtestants, Catholics, and Jews. Less is known about actions and reactionsof conservative or moderate white believers in the South and beyond theregion’s borders. Their response to the Civil Rights Bill and the heateddebates that led up to it reveal much about evangelicals’ antistatism whilealso shedding light on their individualistic beliefs concerning sin and salvation.Billy Graham, who would earn the moniker “Pastor in Chief,” summed up thecautious sentiments of many fellow believers. Speaking at a New York Cityprayer breakfast in April , the influential revivalist reflected on the pro-blems facing America: moral decline, the specters of communism andnuclear holocaust, and racial tensions. Racism was a sin and unequal treatmentwas not acceptable in Christian America, he said. But the solution would notcome through demonstrations or a Civil Rights Bill. “It has to come from thehearts of the people,” he assured his thousand listeners. “That’s the answer tothe race problem.”

Clarence Taylor, “African American Religious Leadership and the Civil Rights Movement,”at gilderlehrman.org (June ), accessed on March .

James F. Findlay, “Religion and Politics in the Sixties: The Churches and the Civil RightsAct of ,” Journal of American History, , (June ) – ; Michael B. Friedland,Lift up Your Voice Like a Trumpet: White Clergy and the Civil Rights and AntiwarMovements, – (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ); PaulHarvey, Freedom’s Coming: Religious Culture and the Shaping of the South from the CivilWar through the Civil Rights Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,); David Chappell, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ); Dennis Dickerson, “AfricanAmerican Religious Intellectuals and the Theological Foundations of the Civil RightsMovement, –,” Church History, (June ), –; Andrew Michael Manis,A Fire You Can’t Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham’s Reverend FredShuttlesworth (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, ); Amy L. Koehlinger, TheNew Nuns: Racial Justice and Religious Reform in the s (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, ); Mark Newman, Divine Agitators: The Delta Ministry and CivilRights in Mississippi (Athens: University of Georgia Press, ); Clive Webb, Fightagainst Fear: Southern Jews and Black Civil Rights (Athens: University of Georgia Press,).

Graham quoted in “Graham Speaks at N. Y. Meeting,”News and Courier (Charleston, SC), April , -A. For the most insightful treatment of Graham and race see StevenP. Miller, Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South (Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, ).

“It Has to Come from the Hearts of the People”



Graham, of course, represented one view among many. ConservativeProtestants ranged from militant, separatist fundamentalists – at war withmodernism, communism, encroaching secularism, and theological liberalism –and more middle-of-the-road evangelicals, many of whom would be largely in-distinguishable in their political behavior and religious outlook from mainlineProtestants. Modern American evangelicalism itself emerged in the s, itsadherents breaking with their more strident, hard-line fundamentalist breth-ren. The two movements may have shared a born-again faith, but theirtactics and temperaments differed greatly. The historian George Marsdenput it simply when he observed, “A fundamentalist is an evangelical who isangry about something.” Evangelicals did not share that rage and they alsofound fault in fundamentalism’s narrowness. “Modern Fundamentalismdoes not… challenge the injustices of totalitarianism,” claimed the evangelicalleader and later editor of Christianity TodayCarl F. H. Henry in . Neitherdid it take a stand against “the evils of racial hatred, the wrongs of currentlabor–management relations, the inadequate bases of international dealings.”

Henry and other so-called neo-evangelicals had a moderating impact on themovement. So writes the historian David Swartz: “They articulated a morecomprehensive evangelical agenda for the twentieth century that proposedincreased political, scholarly, and social activity. Henry himself emerged asthe preeminent prophet and theologian of the emerging neo-evangelical move-ment.” By these lights fundamentalism was out of touch, cut off.In the s, in particular, evangelicals engaged world events and called for a

renewed America in new ways. The historian Jonathan P. Herzog observes that“religious arguments marshaled against Communism during the s pro-vided a platform from which both modern religious and political conservatismgrew.” Billy Graham first built his evangelical career on white-hot denuncia-tions of Godless communism and calls for a return to America’s foundingprinciples. Graham, in these years, dominated headlines and appeared regularlyin color features in Life magazine. At mid-century, evangelicalism had becomean even more global, highly visible movement. The world famous revivalist

George M. Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids,MI: William B. Eerdmans, ), .

Carl F. H. Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (Grand Rapids, MI:Eerdmans Publishing Company, ; first published ), . On the evangelical fear ofbecoming too isolated and irrelevant see John Goodwin, “Separate } But =,” Eternity, Aug., –.

David R. Swartz, Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, ), , see also –.

Jonathan P. Herzog, The Spiritual–Industrial Complex: America’s Religious Battle againstCommunism in the Early Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, ), , seealso –.

Randall J. Stephens



certainly agreed with Carl Henry and Harold Ockenga, principle founder ofthe National Association of Evangelicals, Fuller Theological Seminary, andGordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Believers had shrugged off theirmoral and political responsibilities for far too long when it came to race,injustice, and engagement with the world of ideas.

At the same time as evangelicals considered racism or social inequality, theywanted to distance themselves from Social Gospel Protestants, who, theyfelt, in their rush to the left, had neglected personal conversion andprivate morality. The sociologists Christian Smith and Michael Emersonfind that evangelicals practiced “engaged orthodoxy.” “In keeping with theirnineteenth-century Protestant heritage,” write Smith and Emerson, “theywere fully committed to maintaining and promoting confidently traditional,orthodox Protestant theology and belief, while at the same time becomingconfidently and proactively engaged in the intellectual, cultural, social, and pol-itical life of the nation.” To that end, in Billy Graham helped found thechief magazine of the movement, Christianity Today, which after its early yearsin Washington, DC was later based in the evangelical stronghold of CarolStream, Illinois. In this publication, evangelical pastors, theologians, andlaypeople charted out positions on politics, ecumenism, world affairs, and,increasingly in the early s, race relations.

By evangelicalism encompassed a large swath of the American public.The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), founded in as acounter to the NCC, represented millions of members in the s, unitingsome of the largest denominations in the country. In the year the CivilRights Act became law, evangelicals totaled roughly million. Moreover,the movement would grow extraordinarily in the last decades of the century.

Garth M. Rosell, The Surprising Work of God: Harold John Ockenga, Billy Graham, and theRebirth of Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, ), –, –.

Miles S. Mullin, “Neoevangelicalism and the Problem of Race in Postwar America,” inJ. Russell Hawkins and Philip Luke Sinitiere, eds., Christians and the Color Line: Raceand Religion after Divided by Faith (New York: Oxford University Press, ), .

Christian Smith and Michael Emerson, American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, ), , original emphasis.

See, for example, evangelical awareness of domestic and foreign news: “This PresentWorld … News and Notes on Our Times,” Pentecostal Evangel (Springfield, MO), Jan. , –; “The Church and Political Pronouncements,” Christianity Today, Aug. , –; “Politics and the Protestant Press,” Christianity Today, Nov. ,; and the “Editorial” and “News” sections in Christianity Today, –.

See denominational statistics in Benson Y. Landis, ed., Yearbook of American Churches(New York: Office of Publication and Distribution, National Council of Churches ofChrist in the U.S. A., ), –. A tabulation of the membership numbers of pre-dominately white denominations in the evangelical and fundamentalist camp for comes to ,,. On growth from the s to the late s see ConstantH. Jacquet, ed., Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches (New York: Office of




In evangelicalism boasted million adherents in the US, or percentof the population. By contrast, liberal mainline Protestant groups sufferedenormous losses from the s to the present. The evidence does notshow that opposition to the Civil Rights Act or antistatism helped the evan-gelical movement to grow. Still, in that same time frame evangelicals wouldbecome vital players in regional and national elections. In the coming yearsborn-again Christians gained Senate seats and the presidency, would formenormously well-funded think tanks and political action groups, and woulduse direct-mail campaigns in the s to inspire millions of conservativeChristians to vote and devote themselves to national campaigns. In theirresponses to the civil rights movement, evangelicals and fundamentalistsengaged in politics in new ways, too, offering moderate to segregationist alter-natives to mainline Protestant liberalism. Such alternatives, from the center tothe far right, severely critiqued the modern welfare state.

But had stalwarts engaged in politics even before? The dominant story hasbeen that conservative Christians, stung by the cultural defeat of the Scopes Trial – and William Jennings Bryan’s botched exegesis – and mesmer-ized by fiery apocalypticism, remained apolitical until the rise of the Christianright in the s. The harsh rebukes of H. L. Mencken and other cultureddespisers relegated them to the dustbin of history. “The position ofFundamentalism,” wrote Frederick Lewis Allen in , “seemed almost hope-less. The tide of all rational thought in a rational age seemed to be running

Publication and Distribution, National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S. A.,), –.

On evangelical demographics see “Religious Landscape Survey: U. S. Religion Map andReligious Populations,” at http://religions.pewforum.org/maps (), accessed Dec.; and David A. Roozen, “Oldline Protestantism: Pockets of Vitality within aContinuing Stream of Decline,” Hartford Institute for Religion, Hartford Seminary,, at http://hirr.hartsem.edu/bookshelf/roozen_article.html, accessed April .

Shaun Casey, The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy vs. Nixon (New York:Oxford University Press, ), . For another estimate of evangelical numeric strengthsee Albert J. Menendez, The Religious Factor in the Presidential Election: An Analysis ofthe Kennedy Victory over Anti-Catholic Prejudice (Jefferson, NC: MacFarland and Company,), . The Assemblies of God, one of the NAE’s member denominations, charted aworldwide growth from million in to million in the s. AllanH. Anderson, To the Ends of the Earth: Pentecostalism and the Transformation of WorldChristianity (New York: Oxford University Press, ), . See UPI religion writerLouis Cassels, “Pentecostals Have Fast Growth Rate,” Lodi News-Sentinel (Lodi, CA), April , ; and Louis Cassels, “Movement Includes Large, Small Groups,” EugeneRegister-Guard (Eugene, OR), Jan. , .

Paul Boyer, “The Evangelical Resurgence in s American Protestantism,” in BruceJ. Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer, eds., Rightward Bound: Making America Conservativein the s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), –, , –.

Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U. S. Interests in the Middle Eastsince (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), .

Randall J. Stephens

http://religions.pewforum.org/maps

http://religions.pewforum.org/maps

http://hirr.hartsem.edu/bookshelf/roozen_article5.html

http://hirr.hartsem.edu/bookshelf/roozen_article5.html



against them.” Indeed, fifty years later a Milwaukee reporter ventured that“conservative Christians always regard politics as ‘a dirty business’ unworthyof men of the cloth,” until fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell and theReagan landslide victory proved otherwise. So said Falwell himself in hisMarch sermonic response to civil rights activism, “Ministers andMarches.” “Our only purpose on earth is to know Christ and make Himknown,” he counseled members of his Thomas Road Baptist Church inLynchburg, Virginia. Preachers were not called to win votes for politicians,but to win souls for God. Yet even while publicly shunning politics, Falwellcampaigned to uphold school segregation. He and other fundamentalistsand evangelicals thought that preaching against communism, statism, andtheological liberalism or social action did amount to a holy calling. Indeed, his-torians like Axel Schäfer, Daniel Williams, Daren Dochuk, Matthew Sutton,and Andrew Preston have recently described that long-standing politicalengagement of evangelicals with great precision and skill. Each has shownquite clearly that believers participated in political activities long beforeFalwell’s supposed epiphany or the Milwaukee journalist’s surprisedsummary of the sudden rise of the Christian right. Evangelicals, goaded asthey were by liberal Protestantism, the millennial expectations of the age, ora greater awareness of the threats to Christian America, voted and campaignedin growing numbers. The very public conservative response to national politicsin the s and s amounted to a repudiation of a revived Social Gospel,civil rights agitation, and ecumenism. This article, then, takes the work ofthese and other scholars as a starting point.

Frederick Allen Lewis, Only Yesterday: Informal Treatment of the s (New York: JohnWiley & Sons, ; first published ), . Christopher Pieper and MichaelP. Young, “Religion and Post-secular Politics,” in Kevin T. Leicht and J. Craig Jenkins,eds., Handbook of Politics: State and Society in Global Perspective (New York: Springer,), –, . Arthur Emery Farnsley, Southern Baptist Politics: Authority andPower in the Restructuring of an American Denomination (University Park: PennsylvaniaState University Press, ), .

James M. Johnston, “Conservatives Shook Religious World in ’,” Milwaukee Sentinel, Jan. , .

Falwell’s “Ministers and Marches” sermon quoted in Macel Falwell, Jerry Falwell: His Lifeand Legacy (New York: Simon and Schuster, ), .

Daniel K. Williams,God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, ), . On communism and evangelicals and fundamentalists see M. J.Heale, American Anticommunism: Combatting the Enemy within, – (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, ), –. For typical evangelical critiques of mid-century liberalism see Carl F. H. Henry, “Liberalism in Transition,” Christianity Today, Dec. , –; Jesse J. Roberson, “Liberalism’s Fatal Weaknesses,” Christianity Today, April , –; and “No Reason for Liberalism,” Christianity Today, July , .

See, for example, the essays in Axel R. Schäfer, ed., American Evangelicals and the s(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, ); Williams; and Matthew Avery Sutton,




The faithful participated enthusiastically in debates and campaigns. In thedecades before Reagan left the back lots of Hollywood for balloon-filled conven-tion halls, evangelicals in the Sunbelt weighed in on a host of publicmatters. Theiropposition to the big-government innovations of Franklin D. Roosevelt, admir-ation for J. Edgar Hoover (who contributed regular articles on the joys ofChristian patriotism and the perils of lawlessness in Christianity Today),support for General Douglas MacArthur, and avowed anticommunismplunged them into political realities. In the s, Nazarenes, Baptists, andPentecostals fought to ensure that their children received a godly, nonsecular edu-cation, free from liberal indoctrination and sex education. The stormy s andthe “narcissistic” s made their political activities all the more urgent. Theyweighed in on what they perceived as threats to the separation of church andstate. In , denominations representing around million members issuedofficial statements against the election of a Catholic President. A Pentecostal edu-cator asked rhetorically, “Haven’t the American people enough ‘security risks’ asit is without placing another in the President’s office?” As the decade pro-gressed, others rallied behind-land usage propositions; some meant to keepgovernment from encroaching on sacred space, others to keep their suburbslily-white. Vocal fundamentalists, especially in the South, became strident oppo-nents of civil rights measures. A few, sensing conspiracies at home, joined upwith the John Birch Society and rallied to get the US out of the UN. Theyalso wondered about the role that big government would play in securing civilrights for African Americans. Like other Americans on the right and centerright, they cast a suspicious eye at federal laws intended to enforce equality at

American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Pressof Harvard University Press, ).

“Evangelicals and Public Affairs,” Christianity Today, Jan. , –; “ChristianConscience and the Vote,” Christianity Today, Feb. , . See Matthew AverySutton, “Was FDR the Antichrist? The Birth of Fundamentalist Antiliberalism in aGlobal Age,” Journal of American History, , (March ), –; John Turner,Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in PostwarAmerica (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), ; and Williams, ,–, –.

Vinson Synan, Old Time Power: A Centennial History of the International PentecostalHoliness Church (Franklin Spring, GA: LifeSprings Resources, ), –.“Assemblies of God Opposes Kennedy,” Leader and Press, n.p. (newspaper clipping atthe Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center, Springfield, MO). Mickey Crews, Church ofGod: A Social History (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, ), . For anearlier view see C. Stanley Lowell, “Will a Roman Catholic Be President,” ChristianHerald, Nov. , –, –.

Clive Webb, Rabble Rousers: The American Far Right in the Civil Rights Era (Athens:University of Georgia Press, ), , –, , –, .

Darren Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and theRise of Evangelical Conservatism (New York: W. W. Norton, ), –.

Randall J. Stephens



the same time as they questioned the lawfulness and leftist slant of civil rightsactivism. Fittingly, as Axel Schäfer has pointed out, evangelicals were somewhatambivalent when it came to potential aid to churches from Great Society pro-grams. Believers also offered sharp rebukes when legal decisions – like thebanning of school prayer and Bible reading – offended them so deeply.

The religious opposition to the Civil Rights Bill, especially in the South, wasall the more important considering how serious the stakes were in . Thehistoric legislation faced enormous resistance, whether it was Kennedy orJohnson backing the law. In the summer of , while Kennedy still occupiedthe Oval Office, the Gallup Poll registered popular opinions about the pro-posed legislation. When asked about racial equality in public arenas, percent of those polled favored the Act, while percent opposed it.Polling conducted several months after passage of the Act revealed that sixin ten Americans supported the new law. At the same time, percent ofAmericans polled said that the speed of implementation was too fast.A January poll also pointed to a deep regional split, showing that percent of whites outside the South supported the new measure, while amere percent of white southerners approved of it.

In the previous two decades, evangelicals charted a self-consciously middleground on civil rights. The movement, heavily represented in the formerConfederacy by the Southern Baptist Convention, Pentecostal denominations,separatist fundamentalist groups, and southern Presbyterians, championedwhat it called “biblical principles,” spoken of as timeless truths. Thestrong evangelical focus on personal conversion, embrace of free-market

On the perceived intrusion of the federal government into racial matters see Mark A. Noll,God and Race in American Politics: A Short History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, ), –. J. Edgar Hoover, “The Danger of Civil Disobedience,” King’sBusiness, Feb. , ; and Frank Farrell, “NCC Pleads for Racial Justice,” ChristianityToday, Jan. , –. Axel R. Schäfer, “The Great Society, Evangelicals, and thePublic Funding of Religious Agencies,” in Schäfer, American Evangelicals and the s,–, –.

George Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, (Wilmington, DE: ScholarlyResources Inc., ), .

There surely was much opposition to civil rights among believers in the North and West aswell. But on the very strong southern evangelical and fundamentalist reaction see, forexample, the demographics of conservative Protestantism in Scott Gaustad and PhilipL. Barlow, New Historical Atlas of Religion in America (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, ), ; and Landis, Yearbook of American Churches, –; see also the extensiveregional survey on racial attitudes taken by the evangelical publication Christian Herald:“The Poll Report: Integration and You,” Christian Herald, Feb. , –. Finally seethe strong sectional evidence in Carolyn Renée Dupont, Mississippi Praying: SouthernWhite Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement, – (New York: New YorkUniversity Press, ); and Jane Dailey, “Sex, Segregation, and the Sacred after Brown,”Journal of American History, , (June ), –.




ideals, and a reaction against an activist federal government heavily informedoutlooks on race. One historian has called their stand “moderate individual-ism.” In Baptist minister and University of North Carolina professorof religious studies Samuel Hill offered up a searing critique of fellow Baptists.Their indifference to the ongoing civil rights struggle, he observed, “is found tobe consistent with the general Evangelical stance, which simply does not viewresponsibility toward God or man in the light of a social ethic.” WhiteChristian duty toward blacks was to convert and befriend, wrote Hill, “notto consider altering the social traditions and arrangements which govern his(and everyone else’s) life to so significant a degree.”

Equipped with their moderation shibboleth, very few evangelicals would goas far as one writer in the pages of the evangelical Eternity magazine in ,who compared segregationists to Nazis. Like America’s current crop of racists,he said, Nazis also held that “each race on this earth represents an idea in themind of God.” He went on to demolish fundamentalist segregationist argu-ments as unbiblical in the extreme. At the same time few evangelicals whopenned letters to magazines, preached on the topic, and issued public state-ments would have occupied the other end of the spectrum. One suchexample, albeit rare, also appeared in Eternity magazine two years after theabove. A white Baptist preacher from the Mississippi Delta town ofGreenville, which had the largest proportional black population in thestate, wrote in response to a piece on color-blind Christianity. The originalarticle described the successful integration of a Presbyterian church inPennsylvania. Christians, the enraged Greenville pastor argued, “would actthe fool and be instruments in the hands of the devil to bring spottedbabies into the world.” Apparently, he scoffed, “you think spotted babies

Mullin, “Neoevangelicalism,” . See also Henry, Uneasy Conscience, –, . For a goodexample of a middle-of-the-road approach to the issue of civil disobedience see“Editorials: The Bible and Civil Disobedience,” Eternity, Oct. , . See the San Diegopastor Tim LaHaye’s letter to the NAE asking for “the scriptural position” on the“racial situation,” Tim LaHaye, San Diego, CA, to the National Association ofEvangelicals, Whittier, CA, March , National Association of EvangelicalsRecords, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, Series : executive director files, Subseries :Clyde W. Taylor, Box , Folder : Civil Rights, –.

Samuel S. Hill Jr., Southern Churches in Crisis Revisited (Tuscaloosa: University of AlabamaPress, ; first published ), lxvi, –, –. Charles Marsh, God’s Long Summer:Stories of Faith and Civil Rights (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ), .Dupont, –.

James O. Buswell III, “Segregation: Is It Biblical?”, Eternity, Oct. , . For a similarevangelical left-of-center response on race see George A. Turner, Wilmore, KY, to ClydeW. Taylor, Wheaton, IL, June , National Association of Evangelicals Records,Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, Series : executive director files, Subseries : ClydeW. Taylor, Box , Folder : Civil Rights, –. See also Swartz, Moral Minority,–.

Randall J. Stephens



bring honor and glory to our lord Jesus?” A minority of evangelicals wouldhave applied this racist, antimiscegenationist logic. More often than not,though, in the years leading up to , evangelicals condemned racism inmild tones, while also watchfully avoiding overt political language or any pos-sible alignment with the Rauschenbuschian or Niebuhrian Protestant left.Occasionally matters of personal holiness and behavior trumped more

weighty issues like integration or equality. An alumnus of an upstateNew York evangelical college, looking back on his undergrad experience inthe early s, recalled that while students across the country were participat-ing in the civil rights movement and arguing about the war in Vietnam,“we fought our administration over whether the yearbook could picturemale swimmers without T-shirts, struggled for the right to watch TV in thelounge on Sunday, and wondered if the Christian should attend the theater(legitimate or cinema) or read twentieth-century literature.” It is not entirelysurprising, then, that white evangelicals quite often seemed unaware of or un-concerned by racism. In the National Association of Evangelicals didnot address the Brown v. Topeka decision at its national convention. Still, inthe late s and early s key evangelical publications did begin tocover racial inequality with greater interest and frequency. Reluctance toembrace the modern civil rights movement, as liberal Protestants did, likelyowed to a lingering suspicion of the Social Gospel and ecumenical Christianity.Few helped to open up white believers to a more nuanced position on race

than did Billy Graham. Graham held his massive integrated revival meetings inthe Jim Crow South at a time when unreconstructed Christian confederatesclutched dearly to segregation. There should be no color line before thealtar, the evangelist insisted. The September issue of Ebony magazine

Jan Whitt, Burning Crosses and Activist Journalism: Hazel Brannon Smith and theMississippi Civil Rights Movement (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, ),–. “Letters: Color-Blind,” Eternity, June , . For a typical middle-of-the-roadstance see “What of Racial Intermarriages?” Christianity Today, Oct., –.

Donald W. Dayton, Discovering an Evangelical Heritage (New York: Harper and Row,), . On the behavioral “ethic of separation” and personal holiness among theAssemblies of God and the Nazarenes see Edith Blumhofer, Restoring the Faith: TheAssemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture (Urbana: University of IllinoisPress, ), –; and Timothy L. Smith, Called unto Holiness: The Story of theNazarenes (Kansas City, MO: Nazarene Publishing House, ), –. TimothyE. Fulop, “The Wheaton College Pledge: Student Behavior Codes and ReligiousIdentity,” Fides et Historia, , (Winter–Spring ), –.

Mullin, –. Rogers M. Smith, “An Almost-Christian Nation? ConstitutionalConsequences of the Rise of the Religious Right,” in Steven Brint and Jean ReithSchroedel, eds., Evangelicals and Democracy in America, Volume I, Religion and Society(New York: Russell Sage Foundation, ), –, –. Frank E. Gaebelein, “TheMarch to Montgomery,” Christianity Today, April , .




included Graham’s piece “No Color Line in Heaven.” On his tours to Asiaand Africa, Graham preached the same message. Christianity was not a whiteman’s religion, he proclaimed. At home, during his New York Crusade,he shared the podium with Martin Luther King Jr. In , amid heateddebates over the Civil Rights Bill, and its filibuster, Graham conducted anintegrated Easter Sunday rally in a football stadium in Birmingham.Approximately , black and white congregants attended the revival,which received massive media coverage.

Regardless, liberal critics found Graham’s, and by extension evangelical-ism’s, message of personal conversion wanting. They also recoiled at theNorth Carolina evangelist’s premillennial pessimism. Asked what hethought of Martin Luther King’s March on Washington, Grahamremarked, “Only when Christ comes again will little white children ofAlabama walk hand in hand with little black children.” Reinhold Niebuhrclearly thought Graham and others in his camp missed the vital social pointof Christianity. In , the same year that Senator Lyndon Johnsonpushed a weak civil rights law through Congress, Niebuhr composed an op-ed for Lifemagazine, declaring that Grahammight well exemplify a comfortingkind of individualistic, nineteenth-century, frontier evangelism. Yet, warnedNiebuhr, then the vice president of Union Seminary, bastion of the liberalProtestant establishment, Graham’s “solutions are rather too simple in anyage, but particularly in a nuclear one with its great moral perplexities.”Graham might have “sound personal views on racial segregation and othersocial issues of our time,” said Niebuhr, but “he almost ignores all of themin his actual preaching.”

Even the middle ground that Graham staked out riled his fundamentalistdetractors. And there were many. Surely the celebrity preacher was a com-promiser, they roared. An observer in Christianity Today noted that “thegreat irony of [Graham’s] career is that his most vehement opponents arefellow Bible believers.” It may have looked like the narcissism of minordifference to outsiders, but the issues that divided fundamentalists and

Billy Graham, “No Color Line in Heaven,” Ebony, Sept. , . Graham, “Billy GrahamMakes Plea for an End to Intolerance,” Life, Oct. , , , , , , .

Purdum, An Idea, . Graham quoted in Kenneth L. Woodward, “The Preaching and the Power,” Newsweek,

July , . Reinhold Niebuhr, “A Theologian Says Evangelist Is Oversimplifying the Issues of Life,”

Life, July , . See also Niebuhr, “Literalism, Individualism, and Billy Graham,”Christian Century, May , –.

“Graham in Greenville,” Christianity Today, April , . See also Bob Jones Jr. quotedin “Jones Says Graham Trying to Socialize Christianity,” Spartanburg Herald-Tribune(Spartanburg, SC), April , .

Randall J. Stephens



evangelicals, even with regard to race and civil rights legislation, were very realand pressing for those involved.In a host of fundamentalist preachers and editors had theCivil Rights Bill

in their sights. Among the most influential of these were Billy James Hargis, CarlMcIntire, and Bob Jones Jr. The last of these refused to bring his Bob JonesUniversity (BJU) in line with the new law’s guidelines because he viewed themas an authoritarian move to draw all schools under the tight control of federalpower. BJUalso awardedhonorary doctorates to staunchdefenders of segregation,like Governor George Wallace () and Hargis ().

Hargis established his anticommunist Christian Crusade, Tulsa, Oklahomaministry in the early s. At the peak of his career the Texas-born preacherwas furiously blasting away at communists and liberals on five hundred radioand television stations from coast to coast and in the pages of his ChristianCrusade magazine. In he mocked the “social crises” of racism and seg-regation. It was “one of the most artificial of all such crises, instigated byCommunists within America to add racial hatred to class hatred, and thusbetray America into communist hands through the betrayal of theAmerican Negro.” In addition to warning against this red menace Hargiscalled out an intrusive federal government that was determined to eliminatethe basic freedoms necessary for a thriving Christian, capitalist system.From his New Jersey headquarters, Carl McIntire raised a similar complaint.

His Christian Beacon newspaper claimed a maximum circulation of ,,while his Twentieth Century Radio Hour was carried by stations.The state had no business meddling with private enterprise, warned

Julia Kirk Blackwelder, “Southern White Fundamentalists and the Civil RightsMovement,” Phylon, , (), –; John W. Oliver, “Evangelical Campus andPress Meet Black America’s Struggle for Civil Rights, –: Malone College andChristianity Today,” Fides et Historia, (Fall ), –. Mark Taylor Dalhouse, AnIsland in the Lake of Fire: Bob Jones University, Fundamentalism, and the SeparatistMovement (Athens: University of Georgia Press, ), –. Bob Jones Sr., IsSegregation Scriptural? (Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, ). The hardlinesouthern fundamentalist newspaper Sword of the Lord regularly lashed out at MartinLuther King Jr., integration, and the civil rights movement: G. Archer Weniger, “MartinLuther King, Negro Pro Communist,” Sword of the Lord, Nov. ; John R. Rice,“Editor’s Note,” Sword of the Lord, Aug. ; Rice, “White Minorities Have Rights,Too,” Sword of the Lord, Sept. .

Dalhouse, . “Curtained Control,” Dothan Eagle (Dothan, AL), June , . Adam Bernstein, “Evangelist Billy James Hargis Dies. Spread Anti-Communist Message,”

Washington Post, Nov. , B. Billy James Hargis, Communist America … Must It Be? (Tulsa, OK: Christian Crusade,

), . See also issues of the Christian Crusade magazine from the early s; andHargis, Facts about Communism and Our Churches (Tulsa, OK: Christian Crusade,). Jeff Woods, Black Struggle, Red Scare: Segregation and Anti-communism in theSouth, – (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, ), , .




McIntire. An ardent supporter of the Mississippi State SovereigntyCommission and the John Birch Society, he penned an open letter toMartin Luther King in his newspaper, castigating him for his communist sym-pathies and lawless activities, and telling the future Nobel Laureate that he un-wisely sought solutions in Washington instead of the changed human heart.“In order to bring about the kind of integrated society and schools that youadvocate,” he cautioned, “the principle of individualism upon which ourconcept of capitalism and a free society is built must be abandoned. Your ap-proach is the road to tyranny, not freedom.”

Never short of confidence, McIntire had published a similar note to LBJ twomonths earlier. “There are church leaders who have been backing your legisla-tion,” he lectured the President, “but the theological basis on which they ask thepeople to accept the legislation is not found in holy Scripture.” McIntirepleaded that the Bible did not teach the brotherhood of man. In typicalfashion he went on, declaring, “We are very sensitive to increasing federal dir-ection and control over the lives of all our people.”He concluded by telling thePresident that getting prayer and Bible reading back into public schools was farmore critical than the ill-conceived legislation under debate.

Johnson, needless to say, did not reply. In his quest for support for theCivil Rights Bill, the President made little attempt to reach such hard-liners. Helikely classed them with John Birchers, “a bunch of screwballs in California,” ashe described them to a newspaper executive in the summer of . Still,more moderate southern evangelicals, hoped the President, might be persuadedwith a dose of the Johnson treatment. Expert at cajoling, courting favors, orflatter-ing, LBJ looked to garner white conservative religious support. He reached out toBilly Graham, trusting the evangelist would sway others on the proposed law. ThePresident also made an ambitious, high-pressure pitch to churchmen, with the im-pressiveWhitehouse Rose Garden as a backdrop. On March , as the CivilRightsBillmadehalting progress throughCongress, Johnsonhosted a groupof

Thomas J. Ferris, “Christian Beacon, –”, in Ronald Lora and William Henry Longton,eds., The Conservative Press in Twentieth-century America (Westport, CT: GreenwoodPress, ), –, . Markku Ruotsila, “Carl McIntire and the FundamentalistOrigins of the Christian Right,” Church History, , (June ), –. CarlMcIntire, Private Enterprise in the Scriptures (Collingswood, NJ: Twentieth CenturyReformation Hour, ), . Heather Hendershot, What’s Fair on the Air? Cold WarRight-Wing Broadcasting and the Public Interest (Chicago: The University of ChicagoPress, ), –. Webb, Rabble Rousers, –, –, .

“An Open Letter to Martin Luther King, from Dr. Carl McIntire,” Christian Beacon(Collingswood, NJ), June , , –.

“From Dr. McIntire: A Letter to President Johnson,” Christian Beacon (Collingswood, NJ), April , , .

Lyndon Johnson call to Houston Harte, . a.m., June , in Beschloss, TakingCharge, .

Randall J. Stephens



leading southern Baptist ministers. The President used the occasion to scold themabout their Christian duties. Johnson sermonized,

no group of Christians has a greater responsibility in civil rights than SouthernBaptists. Your people are part of the power structure in many communities of ourland. The leaders of States and cities and towns are in your congregations and theysit there on your boards. Their attitudes are confirmed or changed by the sermonsyou preach and by the lessons you write and by the examples that you set.

The President rightly knew that Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was oneof the largest, most influential white denominations in the country, and espe-cially the South. But the Rose Garden pitch did not go over as well as planned.Some bristled at Johnson’s intervention. A deacon of the First Baptist Churchof Sumter, South Carolina wrote to the president of the SBC in vigorousprotest of the President’s attempt to influence the views of church leadership.“President Johnson’s unprecedented action,” he challenged, “is in our opiniona deplorable breach of the constitutional statute of the separation of churchand state.” It was also a clear sign of Johnson’s “power hungry” attempt todominate every aspect of citizens’ lives.

In the Southern Baptist Convention claimed approximately .millionmembers and nearly , churches. In May of that year a southern Baptistcommission recommended that the denomination support legislation thatwould secure legal rights for blacks. The SBC, along with the southernPresbyterians, would come out, at least officially, in favor of the law. In July,after Johnson signed the Act, Wayne Dehoney, the president of the denomin-ation, called the Civil Rights Act a test to citizenship and faith. From his pulpitat First Baptist Church in Jackson, Tennessee he conceded, “asChristian citizens,

Quote from Lyndon B. Johnson, “Remarks to Members of the Southern Baptist ChristianLeadership Seminar,” March , online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, TheAmerican Presidency Project, at www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=, accessed March . See also Samuel Walker, Presidents and Civil Liberties from Wilson toObama: A Story of Poor Custodians (New York: Cambridge University Press, ), ;and Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, – (New York: Simonand Schuster, ), –.

Fulton B. Creech, Sumter, SC, to K. Owen White, Houston, TX, “Letters to the Editor,”Sumter Daily Item, May , .

Landis, Yearbook of American Churches, . “Negro Rights Backing Urged: Southern Baptists Receive Proposal,” The Blade (Toledo,

OH), May , . David L. Chappell, “A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Faith, Liberalism, and the Death of Jim

Crow,” Journal of the Historical Society, , (March ), –, ; and Joel L. Alvis,Religion & Race: Southern Presbyterians, – (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of AlabamaPress, ), , , . For the more militant end of the spectrum see Dailey, “Sex,Segregation,” –. See also “Free Will Baptists Take Racial Stand,” ChristianityToday, Aug. , .


http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26130



we are charged by the word of God to give voluntary, peaceful obedience to everyletter of this law.” The editor of the Texas Baptist newspaper, with a massive cir-culation of ,, largely agreed. Every citizen must obey the law of the land,E. S. James declared. But James, providing a loophole large enough for aGreyhound bus to drive through, added, “unless it contravenes his obligationsto God.”

Looking beyond official statements and the tepid support of moderates revealsa different picture. The SBC’s rank and file remained staunchly conservative in. Added to that some editors of state Baptist newspapers were defiant segre-gationists. This mattered a great deal in a denomination that maintained a highlevel of church-by-church autonomy. And as historian Andrew Manis observes,“the more local the responses, the more likely southern Baptists were to reject thecivil rights movement.” A similar division occurred among the southernPresbyterians, with Mississippi harboring a bulwark of determined opposition.

The official statements of the southern Baptists stopped far short of celebrat-ing the bill or endorsing civil rights tactics. When northern Baptists approved aresolution in May that urged members to participate in civil rights cam-paigns and demonstrations, the SBC considered a similar resolution, but left itto local churches to decide on the issue. Those in favor of some measure ofsupport for the Civil Rights Act looked for guidance to the Apostle Paul,who wrote in his Roman epistle, “Let every soul be subject unto the higherpowers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordainedof God.” Others thumbed through their Bibles for a dissenting opinion.The SBC made up a substantial segment of the biblical literalist evangelical

and fundamentalist communities. And evangelicals in general followed a pathsimilar to that which the southern Baptists had taken. Evangelicals grappled,however sporadically, with race and injustice. Key movement publicationsregistered rumblings of concern. In Christianity Today had a circulationof , and in the next decade it would become the most widely read

Wayne Dehoney and E. S. James quoted in “Civil Rights Law Viewed as a Test,” NewsService of the Southern Baptist Convention, July (Southern Baptist HistoricalLibrary and Archives, Nashville, TN), , .

Andrew M. Manis, “‘Dying from the Neck Up’: Southern Baptist Resistance to the CivilRights Movement,” Baptist History and Heritage, , (Winter ), –, . See alsoMark Newman, Getting Right with God: Southern Baptists and Desegregation, –(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, ), , , , , . “Sou. BaptistsChided to Be More Active in Politics, Public Life,” Biblical Recorder (Raleigh, NC), April , . For an earlier, staunch segregationist take see Leon Macon, “TheSegregation Problems,” Alabama Baptist, March , ; and Macon, “Integration,”Alabama Baptist, May , . On the Southern Presbyterian split see Dupont,Mississippi Praying, , –.

“Amendment Opposed by Baptists,” Daytona Beach Morning Journal, May , . KJV, Romans :.

Randall J. Stephens



magazine for American clergy. It was the voice of white evangelical opinion.Yet while civil rights dominated national headlines and journalists scrutinizedKing’s and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s every move,Christianity Today infrequently reported on the African American freedomstruggle and very rarely mentioned King. Contributors in the stended to call for individual political action rather than corporate orchurch-sponsored engagement. Christians were to support the civil authorities,its writers declared. Yet believers should not demand that others take a specificstand on state intervention or race relations.

An May editorial in Christianity Today spelled out a characteristicevangelical position on the legislation. “While the church should not engage inpolitics,” wrote editor Carl Henry, “it is nevertheless an inescapable obligationfor Christians to take part in public affairs.” If some of the faithful chose tosupport the cause of black equality, then so be it. But what about a civilrights bill? asked Henry. Without officially endorsing it, and cryptically allud-ing to problems of enforcement, he concluded by remarking that fellow believ-ers had far too often lagged behind on matters of racial justice. If conscience ledmen and women to support legislation, then they should do so.

Earlier at a winter convention the National Association of Evangelicalsadopted a vague statement of approval for laws that intended to insure basicequality. Arkansas native Clyde Taylor, who served as secretary of publicaffairs for the organization from to , helped explain their cautiousposition to millions of constituents across the country. In a “pros-and-cons”letter, Taylor dissected the proposed bill months before its passage.Unfortunately, he worried, many religious leaders were equating desegregationwith integration. Said Taylor, “Integration is basically a privilege that must beearned. It is equally as wrong and unconstitutional to force integration as it isto force segregation.” Then he went on to call for Congress to guarantee thatthe bill would not coerce integration or attempt to correct racial imbalances.

For an insinuation of immorality and duplicity on the part of King and other activists see“To Tell the Truth,” Christianity Today, Dec. , .

Kenneth W. Shipps, “Christianity Today, –,” in Lora and Longton, Conservative Press,–, , . On Christianity Today’s coverage of King and the civil rights movementsee Curtis J. Evans, “White Evangelical Responses to the Civil Rights Movement,”HarvardTheological Review, , (), –, , . “The Racial Turmoil,” ChristianityToday, Aug. , ; William Henry Anderson Jr., “Evangelicals and the RaceRevolution,” Christianity Today, Oct. , –.

“Civil Rights and Christian Concern,” Christianity Today, May , . National Association of Evangelicals, Office of Public Affairs, “Pros and Cons of the Civil

Rights Bill,” Feb., , , National Association of Evangelicals Records, WheatonCollege, Wheaton, IL, Series : executive director files, subseries : Clyde W. Taylor, Box, Folder : Civil Rights, –. For a similar moderate, cautious position see“Civil Rights Legislation,” Christianity Today, Nov. , .




This well matched what Carl Henry championed in the pages of ChristianityToday and elsewhere. Christians should respect the law and push for just legis-lation while opposing a coercive, overbearing government.

Regardless of Taylor’s careful position and his exposition of the subtleties ofdesegregation versus integration, the NAE’s stand prompted considerable,largely hostile, reactions from evangelicals, especially those in Dixie. Whiteevangelical anxieties about an intrusive, tyrannical federal government randeeper than NAE leaders ever imagined. For instance, in February a rep-resentative from a missions organization in Dallas, Texas, a city which just afew months before had been the scene of a national tragedy, wrote toTaylor’s Washington, DC office in protest. This disgruntled Texan thoughtthe bill would clear “the way completely for a socialistic–communistic typegovernment.” He threateningly quoted Dante to drive home his point aboutthe need for action against the unjust law: “The hottest fires in Hell arereserved for those who in times of grave moral crisis, maintain their neutral-ity.” Others wrote to Taylor to let him know their severe displeasure withthe NAE’s statement on the bill. “My wife said right away,” wrote a manfrom Bakersfield, California, “don’t you send them any more money.”Writing from Senator Barry Goldwater’s home state of Arizona, anotherassured Taylor that “the government cannot replace God. If this nationtrusts in the government, doom is it’s [sic] fate.”

In a barrage of damage-control missives Taylor replied that the organizationdid not officially endorse the bill. He also reminded constituents that whenrepresentatives from the National Council of Churches asked for NAE partici-pation in civil rights vigils and marches the evangelical organization refused totake part. His protestations mattered little. The more conservative members of

Carl F. H. Henry, “What Social Structures? Some Remarks on Professor Smedes’sAlternative,” Reformed Journal, , (May–June ), –.

Dan Merrick, Dallas, TX, to Clyde Taylor, Washington DC, Feb. , NationalAssociation of Evangelicals Records, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, Series : executive dir-ector files, Subseries : Clyde W. Taylor, Box , Folder : Civil Rights, –.

W. R. Kliewer, Bakersfield, California, to Cylde W. Taylor, Washington, DC, March ;and Paul Gray, Tucson, Arizona, to Clyde Taylor, Washington, DC, June , , NationalAssociation of Evangelicals Records, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, series : executive directorfiles, Subseries : ClydeW. Taylor, Box , Folder : Civil Rights, –. And see Taylor’sreplies in Clyde W. Taylor, Washington, DC, to I. F. Scott, Brooks, GA, April ; ClydeW. Taylor, Washington, DC, to P. H. Radke, Westwego, LA, June ; Clyde W. Taylor,Washington, DC, to Elton Crowson, Memphis, Tennessee, June ; Clyde W. Taylor,Washington, DC, to Ralph A. Vanderwood, June ; and Clyde W. Taylor,Washington, DC, to Herbert S. Mekeel, Schenectady, NY, March , NationalAssociation of Evangelicals Records, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, Series : executive directorfiles, Subseries : ClydeW. Taylor, Box , Folder : Civil Rights, –. For a similar re-sponse concerning the Mississippi Freedom Summer see Paul H. Leber, Moss Point, MS,letter to the editor, “In Mississippi,” Christianity Today, Sept. , .

Randall J. Stephens



the NAE, many in the South, could not be calmed. One particularly riled cor-respondent appended a typed note to a form letter that Taylor mailed topastors. “I regret that you got mixed up in the civil rights bill,” lamentedthe Louisiana minister. In his opinion, “the negroes have gotten too muchsympathy and federal handouts now … why don’t you sponsor a resolutionto get them to go to work and get off the charity rolls[?]”

The NAE’s timid acceptance of the Civil Rights Bill could hardly be calledenthusiastic. Indeed, such groups emphasized the law and public order in waysthat Martin Luther King Jr. so effectively criticized in his “Letter from aBirmingham Jail.” “I have heard numerous southern religious leaders ad-monish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because itis the law,” King bluntly observed from his cell, “but I have longed to hearwhite ministers declare: ‘Follow this decree because integration is morallyright and because the Negro is your brother.’” Graham did not supportKing’s epistle.

Many in the evangelical fold, Graham among them, believed that Kingasked for Christians to let the state solve the nation’s problems. A fiercebrand of antistatism ran through the evangelical and fundamentalist move-ments. The historian Matthew Sutton has shown that even in the s ands conservative Christians bristled at what they considered a growingfederal presence. Observes Sutton, “Under Franklin Roosevelt and the NewDeal the federal government, [Harold] Ockenga asserted, had become a directthreat to true Christianity.” “White evangelicals’ long-standing antistatism,”Sutton also notes, “reinforced their reluctance to act on racial issues or tosupport the nascent civil rights movement. They remained highly suspicious ofany attempt by the federal government to encourage integration as socialistand suspect.” For Billy Graham the power to save or redeem an individualrested in the hands of God, not in the hands of the federal government. On

P. H. Radke, Westwego, LA, to Clyde W. Taylor, Washington, DC, May–June ,National Association of Evangelicals Records, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, Series : ex-ecutive director files, Subseries : Clyde W. Taylor, Box , Folder : Civil Rights, –.

On the law-and-order point of view see “Editorials: Wrongs Do Not Make Civil Rights,”Eternity, June , –, ; and “Christian Responsibility and the Law,” ChristianityToday, July , –.

Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Christian Century, June , ,. Miller, Billy Graham, , .

Sutton, American Apocalypse, , , . Andrew Preston suggests that at a fundamentallevel evangelicals feared that the government might have a hand in regulating religion.Andrew Preston, “Tempered by the Fires of War: Vietnam and the Transformation ofthe Evangelical Worldview,” in Schäfer, American Evangelicals and the s, –, n. . See also Schäfer, Piety and Public Funding: Evangelicals and the State inModern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, ).




a related theme the historian Steven Miller has charted what he calls the “re-ligiously informed antiliberalism” of evangelicals. Miller rightly states that forkey leaders like Carl Henry a critique of liberal Protestantism could also serveas a critique of the liberal state. Since liberal churches had become so identifiedwith the Social Gospel since the early twentieth century, it is little wonder thatconservatives reacted with such suspicion to the social-uplift schemes of thereligious and political center and left. And yet many evangelical leadersand laity would have called for a strong federal presence when it came tothe defense industry, protecting traditional families, regulating public morality,or keeping prayer and Bible reading in public schools. Meaning that, for themost part, believers were content to have the federal government’s backingwhen it came to their conservative agenda.Fundamentalists, far more agitated by what they viewed as an overly activist

and socialist government, stiffened at the thought of Kennedy’s and Johnson’splans to enact and enforce federal civil rights laws. Civil rights legislationwould do away with the free market and would make Americans slaves tothe state. Jerry Falwell actively campaigned against civil rights and warnedhis congregants and radio listeners of this new red peril. The Virginia pastorwas also instrumental in fusing conservative Protestantism and free-marketcapitalism. Others were doing the same during the civil rights era and atleast part of their opposition to the bill had to do with its potential threatto businesses.

Business leaders long courted evangelical support and vice versa. When BillyGraham wrote to oil titan J. Howard Pew asking for sponsorship of the con-servative, anticommunist Christian Today, Pew responded with a generous$, donation. Many American conservatives, evangelicals amongthem, lauded the work of the invisible hand, while slapping the visible, med-dling hands of the government. “Take your hands off!” Barry Goldwaterseemed to say in his manifesto, The Conscience of a Conservative.Evangelicals largely agreed with his principal points. “Our tendency to concen-trate power in the hands of a few men deeply concerns me,” the senatorfretted. “We can be conquered by bombs or by subversion; but we can alsobe conquered by neglect – by ignoring the Constitution and disregardingthe principles of limited government.” The popular evangelical preacherTim LaHaye, who would later go on to co-author multimillion-selling

Steven P. Miller, “The Persistence of Antiliberalism: Evangelicals and the Race Problem,” inSchäfer, American Evangelicals and the s, –, , .

Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade against the New Deal(New York: W.W. Norton ), –. Ibid., .

Barry Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative (Memphis: Bottom of the HillPublishing, ; first published ), .

Randall J. Stephens



apocalyptic thrillers, pledged his support for Goldwater in and others fol-lowed suit. At a Dallas summer convention for his Christian Crusade or-ganization, Hargis made clear his “one million percent” support forGoldwater. The Arizona Republican’s stand against the Civil Rights Billdrew Hargis to his cause. “The persecuted minority in America is not theNegro,” said Hargis to a reporter, “but the white folks of the South.”

That kind of overheated rhetoric would not play well among more moder-ate evangelicals. Indeed, Goldwater’s no vote on the Civil Rights Act, his un-abashed states rights rhetoric, and the specter of Birchism that his campaignconjured left many evangelicals cold. His candidacy appealed far more tofundamentalists and especially those in the South. Still the pro-business,hidden-hand capitalism that Goldwater espoused was agreeable. Believersalso appreciated his tough stand on crime and social disorder.Social problems plagued the nation, Billy Graham told an audience of stu-

dents at the University of Michigan on February . The evangelistapplauded President Johnson’s early efforts to address the crippling povertythat still gripped the nation. A little more than a month before Graham’sMichigan speech the President had launched the War on Poverty during hisState of the Union Address. Graham, like millions of other conservativewhite Christians, had his doubts about state-sponsored welfare and social-justice schemes. He looked out over the sea of college students in Ann Arborand spoke of the “race problem.” Graham spoke of the civil rights bill thatthe House had passed and the Senate was now considering. Even if it didbecome the law of the land, he warned his young audience, the race problemwould still not be solved. Race prejudice was the result of a sinful humanheart. No law could change the heart. Sin, as always, was personal. Andreally only those individuals who knew Jesus could truly overcome race hatred.

Billy James Hargis quoted in “Ike Called Dictator, Group Hears Cry for Press Purge,”Tuscaloosa News, Aug. , .

On evangelical support and/or disapproval of Goldwater see Dochuk, From Bible Belt toSunbelt, –; Williams, God’s Own Party, –. The anticommunist Oklahomapreacher Billy James Hargis used his magazine to endorse Goldwater. Richard V. Pierard,“Christian Crusade, –,” in Lora and Longton, Conservative Press, –, .See also Iola B. Parker, “Our Church’s First Negro,” Christian Herald, Feb. , ;and John Edgar Hoover, “Bad Men Cannot Make Good Citizens,” Christian Herald,Oct. , –.

Billy Graham, “Message to Students,” University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Michigan, Feb. , Sermon , Box , Folder , Archives of the Billy Graham Center,Wheaton, Illinois, . See also Graham’s remarks on the civil rights bill in “Billy GrahamHolds Press Conference,” News and Courier (Charleston, SC), April , -A. On evan-gelical worries about LBJ’s raft of Great Society legislation see “Churchmen Ponder Blitz ofBills,” Christianity Today, Aug. , .




Beyond Graham, what did rank-and-file white evangelicals think about in-tegration in the wake of the bill? One way to answer that is by looking at theopinions of readers of the Christian Herald, based in New York City. It wasone of the most popular magazines in the country, amassing an enormousreadership of , by the early s. The magazine had developed intoa kind of Reader’s Digest of conservative Protestantism. Its contributors andcorrespondents praised the virtues of individualism and decried the welfarestate just as they counseled each other on personal and family matters. Ittried to steer a middle ground for moderate evangelicals, supporters of BillyGraham, and readers of self-help pop psychologist Norman Vincent Peale.

In theHerald’s editor hoped to gauge what readers thought of race andintegration. Late in the year the magazine sent out survey forms to its nearly halfa million subscribers. Would you object to a neighbor who was of a differentrace than you? they asked. The poll also wanted to know if readers from thefifty states would accept a person of another race as a member of theirchurch if that person met the criteria for membership. The cross-denomination-al poll showed that, in the abstract, most readers were likely to accept persons ofcolor into their churches and neighborhoods. But the numbers were skewedheavily by region. On the question of race and church membership percent of Alabama respondents said they would not accept a person of adifferent race into their church, even if that individual met membership require-ments. The same percentage of South Carolina readers answered that way aswell. By contrast, only percent of Californians and percent ofNew Yorkers answered “no” on the church membership question.

The editor of the Herald was discouraged by the segregationist views stillpresent in Protestant churches across the country. To some extent, so toowas Graham, who had become a kind of folk hero of moderation for the maga-zine’s readers. A native southerner, Graham tried desperately to reach beyondregional barriers in his message of personal salvation.

Graham’s message did influence America’s power elite. Some determinedopponents of the bill cited Graham for support. US Senator WillisRobertson, a conservative Democrat from Virginia and an admirer of

Martin E. Marty, “The Protestant Press: Limitations & Possibilities,” in Martin E. Marty,John G. Deedy Jr., David Wolf Silverman, and Robert Lekachman, eds., The Religious Pressin America (New York: Holt Rinehart, and Winston, ), –, . Stephen Board,“Moving the World with Magazines: A Survey of Evangelical Periodicals,” in QuentinJ. Schultze, ed., American Evangelicals and the Mass Media (Grand Rapids, MI:Zondervan, ), –, –.

“The Poll Report,” –. Elesha J. Coffman, The Christian Century and the Rise of the Protestant Mainline (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, ), . “How Do You Feel about Integration,” ChristianHerald, Nov. , ; “The Poll Report,” –.

Randall J. Stephens



Graham, had opposed the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education de-cision as a horrible overstep of federal power. Now, ten years later, the devoutBaptist and father of future GOP presidential candidate Pat Robertson wasfighting aggressively against the Civil Rights Bill on the floor of the Senate.Filibustering in the chamber on April , Robertson mused about theSouth’s unique Christian heritage and what he considered proper Christianrace relations, illustrated with a story of Confederate General StonewallJackson and his faithful slave.

The senator then turned his attention to another example of southernChristian living, Billy Graham. Robertson quoted Graham:

The racial question in America will never be solved by either street demonstrations orlegislation. The burden of responsibility does not rest upon the white citizens of thisNation any more than it rests upon the Negro citizens … Only a spirit of humanityand a turning back to God in true repentance for sin will save America from the strife,recriminations, and trumped up hatreds which threaten our very existence at thishour.

Having made his point about the tragedy of enforced integration by citingAmerica’s most famous evangelist, Robertson went on to hint at the nefarioussouls behind the planned legislation: “Satanic forces are at work to delude eventhe most wary among us.” Though he claimed not to impugn the motives ofthe bill’s supporters, he remarked, “the road to hell is paved with good inten-tions, and some have been badly deluded.”

In the coming years, violent protests, cultural upheaval, and the rise of thecounterculture confirmed believers’ worst fears about national moral and spirit-ual decline and the government’s utter inability to work for the good of thenation. Late in the summer of , as riots broke out in Los Angeles and, national guardsmen and law-enforcement officials tried to quell unrestin which thirty-three died, Graham pleaded for calm. He asked MartinLuther King to “call on civil rights leaders to declare a moratorium on demon-strations until the people of the North and West have an opportunity to digestthe new civil rights acts.” The evangelist also said that Congress should drop allother legislation for the time being in order to pass new laws dealing with riots

Ronald L. Heinemann, “A. Willis Robertson (–),” at www.encyclopediavirginia.org, accessed on June .

Senator Willis Robertson (VA), “Civil Rights Act,” Congressional Record, , ( April), –. Ibid., .

“Ours Is the Generation,” Christianity Today, Oct. , . Paul M. Weyrich, “BlueCollar or Blue Blood? The New Right Compared with the Old,” in RobertW. Whitaker, ed., The New Right Papers (New York: St. Martin’s Press, ), –, .


http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org

http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org



and violence. Lingering not far behind statements about civil rights was thefeeling, shared by numerous evangelicals, that the marches and protests were dis-orderly or had had some hand in lawlessness. Eight years after King’s assassin-ation Graham recalled, “yes, [MLK] had his demonstrations out in thestreets, while I had mine as lawful religious services in stadiums.”

Despite such remarks, in just ten years’ time, quite a few evangelical ministersand laypeople would make an about-face on the civil rights issue. Some wouldeven admit that they had been wrong and that the supposed “biblical view” onwhich they had stood was not the “biblical view” at all. Locked into a literalreading of Scripture, the faithful would have still agreed with a writer in theconservative Moody Monthly who in insisted that Christians must lookto the Scripture with pressing contemporary questions in mind: “what is theBible’s teaching on sex and morality? What does it say about the home?And what does it say about race?” Eventually Graham, prodded by sociallyconscious evangelicals like the English John Stott, and pushed by changing pol-itical winds, would open up his views to a slightly more progressive position onrace and social justice. Still, the individualistic view of salvation and the distrustof the federal government would remain. So would the evangelical mantra ofmoderation and a fear of govenment tyranny.Those fears, linked as they were to the enforcement of the Civil Rights

Act, became full-blown in the s and actually helped generate the newChristian right. Seven years after the passage of the Civil Rights Actthe District Court of Washington, DC supported the Internal RevenueService (IRS) position in the Green v. Connally case. That ruling madeclear that any organization that discriminated on the basis of race couldnot maintain tax-exempt status. In the s the Carter-appointed

Graham quoted in AP, “Graham Asks Congress Act on Violence,” Florence Morning News(Florence, SC), Aug. , . “Graham Predicts Worse Violence: Calls Riots in LosAngeles ‘Only a Dress Rehearsal,’” New York Times, Aug. , ; Gladwin Hill,“Relief Begun: Agencies Give Aid to Riot-Torn Area,” New York Times, Aug., . See also Edward R. Fiske, “Billy Graham Links Concern with Social Issues toReligious Conversion,” New York Times, Dec. , .

Graham quoted in Marshal Frady, Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righteousness(New York: Simon and Schuster, ; first published ), .

Oliver, “Evangelical Campus,” ; “Editorial,” Christianity Today, Jan. , ; and“Editorial,” Christianity Today, June , . See also the shift in opinions within theSBC: Manis, “Dying from the Neck Up,” –.

“A Nation in Social Upheaval,” Moody Monthly, Feb. , . Randall Balmer, “The Politicization of Evangelicalism,” in Charles H. Lippy and Peter

W. Williams, eds., Encyclopedia of Religion in America (Washington, DC: CQ Press,), . C. Robert Zelnick, “High-Court Tax Rulings: Bob Jones University,Church–State Group Receive Setbacks,” Christian Science Monitor, May , ; and“Court Upholds U. S. Fund Cutoff in College Discrimination Case,” Atlanta DailyWorld, Aug. , .

Randall J. Stephens



head of the IRS argued that private Christian academies and universities,primarily in the South, should have to prove that they were not segre-gated, or lose tax-exempt status. Even before that, though, the fundamen-talist Bob Jones University came under scrutiny. In BJU was stillexcluding unmarried black students because of the fear of miscegenation.The policy applied to other non-whites as well. “We will acceptOrientals,” said a university spokesman in June , “but they mustnot date out of their race.” The Justice Department, under the CivilRights Act, branded the school discriminatory. Yet since BJU receivedno federal funds, withdrawing tax-exempt status was the only federalrecourse.

White evangelical and fundamentalist critics cried foul and rallied aroundBJU and schools that faced a similar fate. Before antiabortion activism or anti-feminism drew millions to the cause, government threats to Christian schoolsdrove political protest. The leaders of the rising Christian right pointed to theenforcement of the Civil Rights Act and federal actions against BJU aschief factors prodding greater political activism and support for RonaldReagan. So said Paul Weyrich, conservative activist, cofounder of theHeritage Foundation, and coiner of the term “moral majority.” Lookingback on the origins of the Christian right Weyrich recalled that

what galvanized the Christian community was not abortion, school prayer, or theERA. I am living witness to that because I was trying to get those people interestedin those issues and I utterly failed. What changed their mind was Jimmy Carter’sintervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt statuson the basis of so-called de facto segregation.

Smith, “An Almost-Christian Nation?”, ; BJU spokesperson quoted in Robert H. Reid,“At Bob Jones University Disciplined Life Stressed,” Daily News (Bowling Green, KY), June , . “Supreme Court Will Hear Bob Jones Suit,” Spartanburg Herald-Journal, Oct. , A-. Tax-Exempt Status of Private Schools: Hearings before theSubcommittee on Oversight of the Committee on Ways and Means, House ofRepresentatives, Ninety-Sixth Congress, First Session (Washington, DC: US GovernmentPrinting Office, ), .

Ralph Reed, Active Faith: How Christians Are Changing the Soul of American Politics(New York: The Free Press, ), . Randall Herbert Balmer, Thy Kingdom Come:How The Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America, an Evangelical’sLament (New York: Basic Books, ), –; Richard J. Meagher, “Right Ideas:Discourse, Framing, and the Conservative Coalition,” PhD diss., New York University,, –. Joseph Crespino, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and theConservative Counterrevolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ), .

Paul Weyrich’s comments in Michael Cromartie, No Longer Exiles: The Religious NewRight in American Politics (Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, ),–.




That also rang true for the former vice president of the Moral Majority, wholater recalled that the “Religious New Right did not start because of a concernabout abortion.”He added, “I sat in the non-smoke-filled back room with theMoral Majority, and I frankly do not remember abortion ever being men-tioned as a reason why we ought to do something.” Similarly, RichardViguerie, who pioneered direct mailing for the Christian right, rememberedthat the IRS enforcement “kicked the sleeping dog” and “galvanized the reli-gious right.” Switching metaphors again, the high-profile figure concluded,“It was the spark that ignited the religious right’s involvement in real polit-ics.” University of Pennsylvania political scientist Rogers M. Smith thinksthat such pronouncements are largely accurate. After feds targeted schools,writes Smith, “It seemed clear to many conservative evangelicals that theirorganizations were indeed at risk of losing forms of beneficial governmentaltreatment they had long enjoyed, whatever their other dissatisfactions withmodern American life.” When the case went on to the Supreme Court theCenter for Law and Religious Freedom filed an amicus brief on behalf ofBJU and so did the National Association of Evangelicals. ConservativeChristians, on the defensive, felt pressed by federal power. They asked them-selves, would they have control over the education of their children? Werethe sanctions against BJU just the beginning of more intrusive federalpolicies?

Weyrich’s gambit worked. Evangelicals voted solidly Republican from thes forward. Sixty eight percent of them cast their ballots for GeorgeW. Bush in the year ; in , percent did so. By then the once belea-guered movement had entered the halls of power. With that came otherchanges. In the s organizations like Promise Keepers and Focus on theFamily, and Pentecostal denominations such as the Assemblies of God, spon-sored events that would attempt to bridge the racial divide and pushed forracial reconciliation. Fundamentalists, by contrast, did not launch similar

See Edward G. Dobson in ibid., . Richard Viguerie telephone interview withWashington Post reporter Thomas Edsall, Jan.

, quoted in Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall, Chain Reaction: The Impact ofRace, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, ), . Seealso Joseph Crespino, “Civil Rights and the Religious Right,” in Schulman and Zelizer,Rightward Bound, –.

Rogers M. Smith, “Church, State, and Society: Constitutional Consequences of the Rise ofChristian Conservatism,” unpublished paper in the possession of the author, .

Weyrich quoted by William Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Rightin America (New York: Broadway Books, ), . Randall Balmer, Redeemer: The Life ofJimmy Carter (New York: Basic Books, ),–.

Frances FitzGerald, “The Evangelical Surprise,” New York Review of Books , , ( April ), .

Emerson and Smith, Divided by Faith, –.

Randall J. Stephens



initiatives. Yet fundamentalist and evangelical suspicions of an overbearing gov-ernment lingered. As of far fewer conservative white Christians supportednational health care than those in other denominations. It is not surprising thatsurveys showed that the Tea Party – the most significant protest against biggovernment and the Affordable Care Act – drew disproportionate strengthfrom evangelical ranks. In a poll, when Tea Partiers were asked if theyagreed that the government was almost always wasteful, percent of themsaid yes. At the same time evangelicals have tended to call for greaterfederal action on issues like the defense of traditional marriage, military spend-ing, or limits to abortion laws.

In the more than fifty years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act evan-gelicals have grappled in new ways with important questions concerning race,the individual and larger society, as well as local versus national political issues.Yet in many ways certain features have remained the same. Racism, like adul-tery or blasphemy, was still considered the product of a sinful heart. Indeed,notions of personal responsibility and individual salvation, along with a suspi-cion of an impersonal, controlling state, have continued to shape evangelicaland fundamentalist beliefs and behavior.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Randall J. Stephens is a Reader in History and American Studies at Northumbria University. Heis the author of The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South (HarvardUniversity Press, ) and The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age (The BelknapPress of Harvard University Press, ), coauthored with Karl Giberson.

“Religious Groups Weigh in on Health Care Reform,” Pew Research: Religion and PublicLife Project, at pewforum.org, Oct. , accessed April . “The Tea Party andReligion,” Pew Research: Religion and Public Life Project, at pewforum.org, Feb., accessed April .

Mark A. Noll, “What Lutherans Have to Offer,” in Michael Shahan, ed., A Report from theFront Lines: Conversations on Public Theology: A Festschrift in Honor Robert Benne (WilliamB. Eerdmans, ), –, .



"'It Has to Come from the Hearts of the People': Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, Race, and the 1964...

Documents

Transcript of "'It Has to Come from the Hearts of the People': Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, Race, and the 1964...