by John Ellis
Readers of this blog are (should be) aware of my thoughts on white evangelicalism. The deeper I dive into the history of the movement, the more convinced I’ve become that white evangelicalism is a false religion. This past summer, historian Matthew Sutton published an article in Oxford Academic: Journal of the American Academy of Religion titled “Redefining the History and Historiography on American Evangelicalism in the Era of the Religious Right.” An article that speaks directly to my concerns with the movement. A professor at Washington State University, Dr. Sutton teaches classes on 20th century American history, cultural history, and religious history. I believe he is one of the most cogent and coherent thinkers and writers working today on the topic of white evangelicalism. I encourage you to read his article by clicking here.
In his article, Dr. Sutton explains, “I argue that post–World War II evangelicalism is best defined as a white, patriarchal, nationalist religious movement made up of Christians who seek power to transform American culture through conservative-leaning politics and free-market economics. [emphasis kept].”
There’s a lot in that sentence that deserves to be unpacked. Even though I’m not touching on most of the quote, I’m hoping the quote in its entirety will whet readers’ appetites for Dr. Sutton’s article. For this article, I’m homing in on the last part of the sentence that points out white evangelicalism’s marriage to free-market economics.
I’m currently and slowly watching HBO’s Succession. The critically acclaimed show is deeply flawed yet well-crafted and often compelling TV. The patriarch Logan Roy, the multi-billionaire media mogul closely patterned after Robert Murdoch, has a moment during the first episode of the final season where he explains to his body man/security guard how humans are defined by the market – by what they consume. I have heard his speech, sometimes almost word for word, from various friends and acquaintances throughout the years. Some of those who have given me a version of that speech have their names on the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and one of them gave Stephen Miller his start in national politics. My point is that Logan Roy’s unbiblical anthropology sits at the center of free-market economics and the worldview of the Republican Party.[1] The belief that people are defined by the market, as distasteful as most people may find that belief, is not an outlier even though expressing it out loud is outside the “common person’s” Overton Window. And this brings me back to white evangelicalism.
Yesterday, on April 9, Lifeway Research published the article “3 Reasons Why Contentment Ought to Set Christians Apart (And Why It May Not).” The article points to a study conducted by Lifeway Research in 2024 that looked at “issues of consumerism and contentment.” In their words, “embedded in [the study’s] results, however, is a rather alarming revelation.” You see, to their surprise, although not to mine, “Lifeway Research found those who attend church more than once a week are more likely to fall into consumeristic thinking. Those without evangelical beliefs and who attend church less frequently are less likely to be consumeristic. In other words, professing Christians are more likely to be consumers who find personal worth in their material possessions. According to the study, ‘Religious service attendance is correlated to embracing a consumeristic mindset.’”
If they had consulted me beforehand, I could’ve warned them that that result was coming. It makes perfect sense to me that a study conducted and published by an arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, for the record, (this isn’t some “liberal” thinktank seeking to discredit evangelicalism) found that regular church attendance in this country is “correlated to embracing a consumeristic mindset.” As Dr. Sutton argues, white evangelicalism is a relatively new phenomenon that is intimately connected to specific political and cultural objectives.
As 1940 came to a close, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) landed on the perfect strategy to fight FDR’s New Deal and the accompanying spirit of demonizing capitalism and capitalists: they enlisted the help of the prominent pastor James Fifield to create a curriculum aimed at teaching pastors around the country that Christianity and free-market economics go hand in glove. During a speech at a meeting of the US Chamber of Commerce in December 1940, Rev. James Fifield Jr. had condemned the attacks on industrialists, convincing NAM, and others, “that clergymen could be the means of regaining the upper hand in their war with Roosevelt.”[2]The historian Kevin Kruse goes on to note, “Thus, throughout the 1940s and the early 1950s, Fifield and like-minded religious leaders advanced a new blend of conservative religion, economics, and politics that one observer aptly anointed ‘Christian libertarianism.’”[3] With the financial backing of the Texas oilman Sid Richardson, Billy Graham picked up the Christian libertarian torch and began trumpeting America’s Christian founding as well as the connection between capitalism and Christianity. While not a Christian, and so caring little for Graham’s evangelicalism in the religious sense, Richardson was a huge fan of Graham’s libertarianism and his willingness to conflate Christianity and capitalism, hence the oilman’s eager willingness to bankroll the evangelist. Furthermore, following WWII, as the Cold War heated up, the US State Dept., FBI, and CIA all got involved in promoting Christian libertarianism as the bulwark against the godless Soviets.[4] It’s not an accident that church attendance began soaring post-war. As I’ve stated many times, Jim Davis and Michael Graham’s book The Great Dechurching is falsely titled. Instead, it would be more accurate to call it Never Churched to Begin With. From its genesis, white evangelicalism was deliberately seeded, watered, and fertilized with a level of syncretism that has created generations of professing Christians who view their faith as just another aspect of their curated individualism – in a nutshell, a consumeristic Christianity that views worldly power as its birthright and winning contemporary cultural wars as its mission. Don’t believe me? Read Lifeway’s study by clicking here.
While you may not find the study conclusive in and of itself, it’s another piece of evidence that supports Dr. Sutton’s (and others, including myself) thesis that white evangelicalism is a post-WWII “white, patriarchal, nationalist religious movement made up of Christians who seek power to transform American culture through conservative-leaning politics and free-market economics.”
[1] I understand that not all who subscribe to free-market economics have that anthropology. I understand that many conservatives believe that hearken back to the moral philosopher Adam Smith’s teachings with little understanding that contemporary capitalism traces its birth back to Jeremy Bentham’s bastardization of Smith’s book after the latter’s death and not to the so-called founder of capitalism. I would also argue that it’s difficult to hold to free-market economics without reducing humans to consumers, at least a little. I mean, it’s integral to the system.
[2] Kevin Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (New York: Basic Books, 2016), 171.
[3] Kruse, One Nation Under God, 171.
[4] Christianity Today published weekly “sermons” by J. Edgar Hoover (ghostwritten by others, of course). Pastors were encouraged to use the head G-man’s thoughts and words in their own churches. In fact, pastors with a strong enough stomach to handle a “little” plagiarism could subscribe to a newsletter from the FBI that provided them sermons and talking points “by” Hoover. I mean, what’s a little plagiarism when the godless commies are at the gates, am I right? … also, since the topic of plagiarism has come up, I want to point out that I’m aware of the allegations against Kevin Kruse. Two things: 1. the ombudsman at his university cleared him of wrongdoing. 2. Even if you don’t believe that, none of the allegations challenge the veracity of his argument. In other words, assuming the worst about Kruse doesn’t change the fact that the history he presents, like that of James Fifield and Billy Graham, is accurate and damning of white evangelicalism. It – assuming the worst – just means that he made money and prestige off the work of others. Again, though, he was cleared of wrongdoing.
Practically Known Theology 