Defense-industry employment gave evangelical congregations material stakes in cold war militarism

Evidence

General Walker may have resigned, but he did not go quietly. He was later arrested for “inciting rebellion” among segregationists as federal marshals attempted to desegregate Ole Miss, and in 1963 he took up with Hargis to lead anticommunist “crisis crusades,” persisting in his charge that the government was soft on communism and hamstringing the military. Pastor Bob Wells of Los Angeles’s Central Baptist Church hosted many of these crusades. Wells thought it crucial that Americans “not be deceived about all of this talk about peace and safety”; disarmament would imperil both American sovereignty and Christianity. For the many members of Wells’s congregation whose livelihood was wrapped up in the defense industry, disarmament was problematic for other reasons as well. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 99

Categorization

• QUESTION: The material-interest thread — congregation livelihoods tied to defense spending — is a promising angle for contesting Du Mez’s cultural emphasis: how much was theology, how much economics?
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing interest in the cultural apparatus vs. material-structure debate — echoes how moral panics are often read as class/interest signaling. — connects to: Segregationist homeowners mobilized church congregations whose members also led the defense corporations. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 212