Cold War defense jobs relocated millions of southern evangelicals to California’s Sunbelt

Evidence

That a celebrity cowboy in the heart of LA would help propel postwar evangelicalism as a religious and cultural movement is not as odd as it may sound. During the middle decades of the twentieth century, millions of southern evangelicals migrated to southern California and other Sunbelt locations. Lured by plentiful work in the burgeoning Cold War defense industry, they brought with them their distinctive faith—one shaped by a combative posture and an absolute certainty in the “inerrant” truths of the Bible, but also marked by an eagerness to experiment with new ways of communicating their uncompromising beliefs. All this unfolded in the shadow of Hollywood, the heartland of American celebrity culture and the crucible of American mythmaking. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 67

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s organizing question about how consumer culture transmitted the militant-masculinity strand — the Sunbelt migration is the demographic foundation for the commercial apparatus that follows.
• CANDY: The irony that the Cold War defense industry — the state apparatus — seeded the evangelical subculture that would later militantly distrust the state is a juicy bit.