Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America
Abstract: In this talk Darren Dochuk will offer a snapshot of his recent book, which places religion and oil at the center of American history. As the book reveals, from the earliest discovery of oil in America during the Civil War, citizens saw petroleum as the nation's special blessing and its peculiar burden, the source of its prophetic mission in the world. Over the century that followed and down to the present day, the oil industry's leaders and its ordinary workers together fundamentally transformed American religion, business, and politics -- boosting America's ascent as the preeminent global power, giving shape to modern evangelical Christianity, fueling the rise of the Republican Right, and setting the terms for today's political and environmental debates. While offering a brief overview of this broader narrative, Dochuk will also pay special attention to a few particularly important oil patches and their pivotal impacts on modern US development, the legacies of which we are still living with today.
GLOBES meeting to follow at 5:30 in the Geddes Hall Coffee House