Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South: White Evangelical Protestants and Operation Dixie

• Published in: Labour Vol. 77; no. 77; pp. 310 - 312
• Main Author: Wilkerson, Jessica
• Format: Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Committee on Canadian Labour History and AU Press 01.04.2016; Canadian Committee on Labour History
• Subjects: American history; Christianity; Christians; Collective action; Community relations; Employers; Evangelicalism; Fones-Wolf, Elizabeth; Fones-Wolf, Ken; Free enterprise; Freedom of religion; Labor history; Liberalism; Modernism; Nonfiction; Protestantism; Religious history; REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS; Social justice; Spirituality; Success; Traditions; Working class; World War II; Southern states
• ISSN: 0700-3862; 1911-4842

The final two chapters trace the "struggle for the soul of the postwar South" by examining the cio's sacred message during Operation Dixie and evaluating the relative successes and limitations of that message. The Community Relations Department led the charge in securing support from southern clergy. While they had significant successes, building support among individual ministers who were committed to social justice, they faced an uphill battle over all. Employers and conservative religious groups had many resources at their disposal, such as radio programming hosted by popular religious (and virulently anti-union) personalities who countered pro-labour messages whenever the cio arrived in a community. Moreover, many of the cio organizers were tone deaf to the religious values of southern ministers and workers. For example, one organizer touted his membership in the Federal Council of Churches, an ecumenical group, with little understanding that the affiliation undermined his success in southern communities, where ecumenicism often went against religious traditions. The authors also emphasize the complex circumstances in which southern ministers weighed the value of unions: Would unions promote or hurt congregational harmony? Did the labour movement promote materialism, consumerism, and bureaucratization, which contradicted individual agency and undermined belief in the Spirit? Was personal salvation or collective action more important for church members? Ministers also lived and worked in communities where employers held the purse strings and controlled law enforcement, making a pro-union message from the pulpit a risky one indeed. Lastly, the ease at which proponents could draw connections between the cio and communism or socialism, as well as the cio's rejection of Jim Crow segregation undermined the cio's efforts among white working people. The authors argue that "Communism, racial advancement, the cio, and modernist religion" could be "easily linked in the minds of many evangelicals," proving a major hurdle to success. (179)