Appalachian migrant culture supplied the militarism Falwell packaged as Christianity

Evidence

Among the people streaming into Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church were large numbers of Appalachian transplants. Having left rural America for new opportunities, these blue-collar migrants were searching for new forms of community and identity. They brought with them a culture of militarism (and perhaps also a suspicion of “outsiders”) that some historians trace back to the rough-and-tumble Scotch-Irish borderlands from which their families originally hailed. Falwell fashioned a Christianity that was well suited to this local context—one that was anticommunist, pro-segregationist, and infused throughout with a militant masculinity. Building a religious empire in Lynchburg, Falwell then exported this politicized faith across the nation through his radio and television ministries. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 220

Categorization

• QUESTION: The Scotch-Irish borderlands thesis is contentious — worth verifying how solidly historians back the militarism lineage.
• XREF: Connects to the frontier-honor-culture literature (Fischer’s Albion’s Seed) that traces regional cultures from the Scotch-Irish.
• DEEPTHINKING: The passage shows Du Mez’s method at full power: a local, economic, and migrational context producing a Christianity that then gets exported nationally — faith as manufactured artifact, not revealed theology.