The Pew and the Picket Line collects works from a new generation of scholars working at the nexus where religious history and working-class history converge. Focusing on Christianity and its unique purchase in America, the contributors use in-depth local histories to illustrate how Americans male and female, rural and urban, and from a range of ethnic backgrounds dwelt in a space between the church and the shop floor. Their vivid essays show Pentecostal miners preaching prosperity while seeking miracles in the depths of the earth, while aboveground black sharecroppers and white Protestants establish credit unions to pursue a joint vision of cooperative capitalism. Innovative and essential, The Pew and the Picket Line reframes venerable debates as it maps the dynamic contours of a landscape sculpted by the powerful forces of Christianity and capitalism. Contributors: Christopher D. Cantwell, Heath W. Carter, Janine Giordano Drake, Ken Fones-Wolf, Erik Gellman, Alison Collis Greene, Brett Hendrickson, Dan McKanan, Matthew Pehl, Kerry L. Pimblott, Jarod Roll, Evelyn Sterne, and Arlene Sanchez Walsh.| Cover Title Contents Foreword: A Spiritual Turn? Acknowledgments Introduction: Between the Pew and the Picket Line Part I: Manufacturing Christianity 1. George Lippard, Ignatius Donnelly, and the Esoteric Theology of American Labor / Dan McKanan 2. Catholicism and Working-Class Activism in Providence / Evelyn Sterne 3. Faith Powers and Gambling Spirits in Late Gilded–Age Metal Mining / Jarod Roll 4. Discovering Working-Class Religion in a 1950s Auto Plant / Matthew Pehl 5. Black Power and Black Theology in Cairo, Illinois / Kerry L. Pimblott Part II: Christianizing Capitalism 6. Emma Tenayuca, Religious Elites, and the 1938 Pecan-Shellers' Strike / Arlene Sánchez-Walsh 7. Radical Christianity and Cooperative Economics in the Postwar South / Alison Collis Greene 8. Catholic Social Policy and Resistance to the Bracero Program / Brett Hendrickson 9. Black Freedom Struggles and Ecumenical Activism in 1960s Chicago / Erik S. Gellman Contributors Index | "This is an important collection of essays that for all its many strengths certainly represents only the beginning of what in the coming years promises to be a flood of books on labor and religion."—Labor: Studies in Working-Class History
"Taken as a whole, the articles provide a rich sense of possibilities inherent in the cross-fertilization of labor and religious histories. For the social and cultural historian as well, this is a collection well worth reading."—Journal of American History
"The Pew and the Picket Line is an example of a collection done right. With an outstanding introductory essay on the historiography of religion and labor by Cantwell, Carter, and Drake, along with cutting-edge research throughout the rest of the book, this collection should be essential reading for historians of American religion and labor."—Annals of Iowa
|Christopher D. Cantwell is an assistant professor of public history and religious studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Heath W. Carter is an assistant professor of history at Valparaiso University. Janine Giordano Drake is an assistant professor of history at the University of Great Falls.