​Transcript: "Why Does Religion Play So Prominently in the Saga of American Oil?" Darren Dochuk

​From Edwin Drake's 1859 discovery of oil in Pennsylvania, to our 21st-Century entanglements in the Middle East, oil's influence on America is vast. Religion's role in this American oil story is outsized and relatively unknown. Understanding it will help us more fully comprehend what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion which is understanding America itself. We trust that at the conclusion of this podcast, listeners will have a deeper appreciation of religious freedom as a governing principle in the United States and will see to its protection as an indispensable part of the fragile American experiment in self-government.

Today we have with us Darren Dochuk, the Andrew V. Tackes College Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame and author of Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America.

Mr. Dochuk's primary research interest is 20th Century United States with an emphasis on the intersections of religion, politics, and the rising influence of the American West and Sunbelt Southwest in National Life. He is the author, editor, and co-editor of many books including From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism, God's Businessmen, Entrepreneurial Evangelicals, and Depression and War, and Faith in the New Millennium: The Future of Religion and American Politics. Professor Dochuk received his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame. We encourage listeners to visit storyofamericanreligion.org and sign up for future podcast notifications under the sign-up tab. Darren, thank you for being with us today.


Darren: Chris, thanks for inviting me. This is a great pleasure to be chatting with you. Thank you very much.


Chris: Darren, can you tell us why you wrote this book?


Darren: Thanks, Chris. Yes, that's, a great question. This has been a labor of love. It took me several years to write this book, but I enjoyed every step along the way and in part, because it was personal. I-- as I say in my epilogue or in my acknowledgments, I grew up on an oil patch of North America. Now, it wasn't American, it was Canadian. It was Northern Alberta, Canada. But I always, I guess, sensed there was some kind of relationship between religion and oil. I grew up not just on an oil patch, but within a religious environment in which oil was seen as in some ways sanctified, a divine blessing. And so, not consciously necessarily, but when I came to write about oil and religion I started thinking back about my own background. And so this was a case in point where I thought that the personal, you know, came in conversation with the professional. So it had to do with that. Professionally, in terms of an academic and scholarly progression, I had written my first book as you mentioned on the rise of evangelical conservativism in southern California, which focused especially on migration from Texas and Oklahoma oil patches of America.

And in doing research for that book, it seemed like every corner I turn there was, you know, something to do with the church or church steeple and oil or an oil derrick and there was also, of course, numerous individuals who are part of that story who were you know, generating a lot of profit through the oil industry and supporting very important religious and political causes in Southern California leading ultimately to the rise of Ronald Reagan at the state level and then the national level. So it occurred to me, well, what, what-- if we put these two entities in conversation with one another, is there a story to tell here about religion and oil and again, thinking back of my own kind of upbringing in Alberta, intuitively, I thought there might be something here. And so that's what encouraged me to take on this project. As I said, it's a project that's been years in the making but I'm quite excited with how it evolved and with some of the conclusions that the book makes. And I hope, you know, of significance to where we are today trying to understand where we are today, in North America.


Chris: Well, I'm glad you wrote it. I think you hit on something super fascinating but also very important and we'll get to a lot of that here. So thank you for that. Darren, you write in the introduction to your book that the, "Dual authority of oil and religion rests at the heart of America's modern moment as well as the fulcrum for so much schism in modern American life." That is a very bold statement, can you elaborate a bit?


Darren: For sure. It is a bold statement. Now, it's not necessarily as bold if you consider, the history of oil in American lives and I will say that you know, this is a subfield onto itself. I mean, there is plenty written on the history of oil, in the United States and, you know, most authors, most historians, most scholars of oil in this country will not suggest but claim that this commodity, this material resource has been absolutely essential to American power in the modern era. And that story begins in the immediate post-Civil War period, very telling right there. A nation that has been fractured by war, is going to be brought together, of course, by the late 19th Century, is going to enjoy a rapid economic rise on a global scale. Oil, the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania, the control of that production, of that commodity on an international scale is going to be absolutely essential to the United States’ rise as an empire in the late 19th and early 20th century.

So going, you know, moving that through the 20th century, you know, we have historians, we have pundits in the 1940s who proclaimed the 20th Century Americans, the American Century, this was a century of American global hegemony. Much of that is because of its control of this resource on a global scale. So that's one half of the equation. But as a religious historian, someone who has been trained in, kind of, tracking religious and political changes since the Civil War, religion needed to be part of this story. Think about John D. Rockefeller. Think about the Rockefeller family in the extent to which this one oil family has shaped American Protestantism in such profound ways, but there are so many other family stories of that sort. Deriving from the history of oil, the production of oil from that kind of shaping the course of American Christianity, especially in the modern era.

So my decision-- my hunch was that there's more to say about, the authority of oil in American life and it had to do with a second-- a twin pillar if you will of American authority in hegemony, and that was religion, especially as I focus in the book on Christianity in the way in which Christianity was shaped, fueled, and found its kind of resources for expansion on a global scale through the commodity of oil. So that's why I say that if we want to understand why America developed in its post-civil war period of authority, of hegemony on a global scale, we need to bring these two entities - the church and crude into conversation with one another.


Chris: Well, it's brilliant that you did that. It's a very compelling story. So let's get into some of the details of what you write. You begin, Darren, with the story of Patillo Higgins in Texas though 40 years after the discovery of oil and you go back to that in Pennsylvania, why did you start with this particular story?


Darren: Well, perhaps, first and foremost, as an author you're looking for good stories to tell. As a historian, I, you know, my goal is to reach a broader audience to try to draw in a wider audience, certainly to say something substantive and substantial about American history that historians in the academy will be drawn to and will learn from but also to instruct and entertain a broader audience. And Patillo Higgins is just one of those characters that just kind of draws you in and, you know, in some ways by using his biography as an entry into the book, it was paying homage to someone I came across early in my research. In fact, Higgins has, there was an oral interview, a transcript of his oral interview at the University of Texas archives, and I was actually finishing research for my first book From Bible Belt to Sunbelt and decided to take a pause and just kind of read through his oral interview. And, you know, it's at that point where I really got excited about writing this second book on oil and religion.

So, you know, it was about my own encounter with this individual. Now, as I started reading and researching more heavily into the history of oil, I realized just what an illustrative character Patillo Higgins was. This is someone, kind of a plain-- plain folk, you know, individual from Southeastern Texas in the late 19th century who was just kind of looking for a way to make a living. He became obsessed with oil. He also converted to evangelical Christianity in the late 19th century. This is someone who came out of a pretty rough background and kind of organically saw oil and the potential for its discovery in Texas as a way for him to make not just his own life, and his own, kind of, professional vocation kind of flourish but to make his own community flourish as well.

So there is a sense in which Higgins represented this kind of utopian passion for oil, and see this material resource as a way to make life better for himself and for his community. And, you know, despite the odds against him, he promised that oil could be discovered in and around Beaumont, Texas, on the Gulf Coast of Texas and in the early 19th century the early 20th century 1901, January, he, in fact, proved that to be the case. Oil was discovered there. So, in Higgins, I see, so many of these, kind of, forces coming together, at an individual level, oil representing not just something about economics, something about financial gain, but something about reimagining one's community and its future and ultimately reimagining America's future, going forward in the 20th century and Higgins is someone who was very passionate in his devotion to that cause and to that vision.


Chris: Okay, fair enough. Let's go to Pennsylvania with the discovery of oil. And the way you tell it, Darren, religion seemed to be bound up in the discovery of oil and its potential uses for humankind. The oil town antebellum Reverend SJ Eaton of Franklin, Pennsylvania said this, "In this day of sore trial, not only blood but treasure was to be poured out like water in the nation's cause and in the cause of civil and religious liberty. Who can doubt but that in the wise operations of God's providence, the immense oil resources of the country have been developed at this particular time to aid in the solution of the mighty problem of this nation's destiny." Can you elaborate, Darren, on what this preacher's words represent?


Darren: Well, I think Reverend Eaton's words strike - no pun intended, but at the-- the kind of crucial importance of oil to an emerging nation, post-Civil War and it does so on two levels. First of all, Reverend Eaton again is someone who is based in Western Pennsylvania. This is where the first oil strike took place in the early 1860s and for the first 30 years of American petroleum progress and development and production. Western Pennsylvania would very much be the-- the epicenter of this operation. And so he spoke from a regional bias in many ways. He saw oil as coming to Western Pennsylvania. This is in the middle of Appalachia. This is a poor place. This was seen as providential to him, a reward to the faithful in Western Pennsylvania, those tucked away in the mountains, here because of their observance of Orthodox Christianity, and his case Presbyterianism, the people of this place for rewarded with the blessings of oil. And so this is where the providential nature of oil kind of fold it into a regional identity for him.

But more importantly, and this is a point I made earlier, you know, oil is discovered in this region in the Civil War period. I mean, this is a moment of great fissure and-- and devastation. A nation rent asunder by war and it's at that very moment that oil appears on the stage and initially, it's going to help, economically, but also politically. The North wins this struggle against the South. But going forward and most importantly as per-- as Reverend Eaton saw it, oil and its power as an economic and cultural and political force would be able to bind the nation together and allow the nation to reimagine itself as, you know, as a society on the rise. Something to respect and to celebrate as America moved forward not just domestically but again on an international scale. This was a resource that was a divine blessing as far as Reverend Eaten saw it.

Now, again, we can see this going, you know, taking place elsewhere at this very time. Britain, for instance, saw coal as its own kind of divinely blessed resource. This was its divine sanction in terms of its own imperial progress. But oil I think would be uniquely American from the very beginning and it would be seen as evidence that God had bestowed favor on this nation as it tried to rebuild and assert itself on a global stage.


Chris: You also write in your book that, you know, other resources such as coal and timber where oil was set apart from those because you didn't see it. You had to sort of summon it up from the bowels of the earth and just because of that, it adopted some religious flavors that perhaps coal and timber wouldn't or didn't, can you speak to that just briefly? What influence that sort of--


Darren: Right. I think you know, again, as much as other natural resources sparked this kind of religious fervor and this sense of divine destiny progress, oil was unique, and for the reasons you state, oil was under the ground. It had to be summoned. It had to be discovered. How to do so, really was especially in the first few generations of oil exploration, quite difficult to anticipate. The science of petroleum geology was going to be slow to develop and so, by the very fact that it was subterranean made boil a resource that had a certain mystery about it, had a certain supernatural quality about it.

And so for, you know, for the first few generations of oil exploration and it's going to welcome those kinds of wildcatters who are going to do whatever it takes to summon oil to the earth, to the-- to the surface, for many of them that's going to be about prayer, for many it's going to be about utilizing any type of device, spiritualists devices, divining rods, anything that can in their estimation allow them to locate where oil is and then to draw it to the surface. And so unlike timber, unlike coal, all visual there is, you know, a predictability about those natural resources both when they are discovered and when they are going to go away. Oil always elicited this kind of mysterious encounter and it's something as a result, as I say in the book, that made it from the very beginning at a very personal local level, kind of a spiritual endeavor, a spiritual encounter.


Chris: Okay. Well, let's move forward here a little bit. You write that in standardizing the early oil industry, John D. Rockefeller said, "Our efforts were most heroic, well-meant and I would almost say reverently Godlike. Faith and work were the rocks upon which Standard
Oil, [Rockefeller's company] was built." Darren, tell us briefly about the Baptist Rockefeller who married a Congregationalist and the influence of his and her religion on his business approach to the oil industry, which is-- it figures prominently in the book.


Darren: Yeah, it certainly does, and rightly so. And, you know, I did not set out necessarily to write a book about the Rockefellers, but it's impossible to write a book about oil and religion without the Rockefellers and John D. Rockefeller Senior was really part of a second wave of industrialists who moved into Western Pennsylvania. In his case coming from Cleveland in the late 1860s, early-1870s, post-war. He recognized fully just how important this new industry, this new material, this new commodity was going to be to American economic growth in subsequent decades. What despaired him-- what he feared, however, was just the just kind of how radical and decentralized the oil industry was at this point and, certainly, there's reasons we can, you know, go into in some depth, but for our purposes here, in the first 10, 15 years of the oil industry in Western Pennsylvania, it really was a laissez-faire, free for all because of American property rights, because of the legitimation of kind of individual entrepreneurialism. The quest to pursue oil, to find it, to drill it really led to kind of a really chaotic industry.

John D Rockefeller despaired at that and he said, you know, in his mind, it was important that some kind of order was imposed on this industry at that early stage. And that came in many ways out of his own kind of religious belief system. A very devout Baptist, this is someone who of course was a devout Christian. He also saw the workings of the Divine in very clear terms and in his estimation, the workings of the Divine meant bringing some sense of stability, common sense, and morality to this chaotic oil industry in Western Pennsylvania. And so this is why he devoted himself not just a building up a very powerful oil empire, but to consolidating, to bringing together the oil industry and in his mind doing so out of a sense of commitment to an orderly Protestant establishment in American society. Religion and capitalism fold together in one world view and he seeks to impose that on his particular industry of choice and that is oil.


Chris: Okay. And as we see in the book he brought in other organizations and people in the oil industry, that sort of joined him, right? But some resented what he was doing and did not join Standard Oil and so now we're going to move west from Pennsylvania to California in the 1890s where you write, "A major amplifier of oil’s allure in the West was the religious orientation of spiritualism." Darren, can you share with us what oilers moved there and why they moved, and what happened there regarding the story of religion and oil?


Darren: Well, you know, the story of the Rockefellers is one of consolidating and bringing together - monopolizing. And again, this is a familiar story to anyone who knows American history. The late, you know, the second half of the 19th century is-- in Western Pennsylvania are very much about the Rockefellers, imposing their control over the oil industry so-- so much so that by the 1890s, the Rockefellers, through their company Standard Oil is in control of some upwards of 90% of all refining capacities in the world. So this is a dominant oil monopoly, Standard run by John D Rockefeller and then ultimately, his son, John D. Rockefeller Jr. You know, from one side of it, you can see Rockefeller trying to bring again, some sense of godly order as he saw it to this chaotic environment. But in doing so, what he's actually doing is stamping out the potential, vocational, professional potential of thousands of smaller oil producers who are in the region as well and because of American law and the “rule of capture”, which says they have access to any underground pool of oil, they too are pursuing this-- this resource with an effort to, you know, generate profits and to make it rich and to help their own communities, to help their own churches.

When Rockefeller comes to Western Pennsylvania and through the 1870s and 1880s, he basically wipes out thousands of small producers and forces them out of that region. Where are they going to go? Well, by the 1880s, 1890s they're looking west of the Mississippi River and, you know, many of those who are working with Rockefeller scoff at the suggestion that there could be oil west of the Mississippi. In fact, one of Rockefeller's chief executives, at one point in the 1890s jokes that he'll drink every gallon of oil west of the Mississippi. This is how certain he is that it doesn't actually exist out there. Well, he's going to be proven wrong, of course, and it's these small producers, these wildcat oilmen, as I say, those who are willing to take risks, those who are more independent, those who are fiercely individualistic in their worldview who absolutely abhor the monopoly that Standard and Rockefeller are creating, those are the ones who are going to move west of the Mississippi and first in California in the 1890s and then in Texas and Oklahoma are going to strike oil in that region and prove that the Southwest is actually the new epicenter of oil exploration.

So that is going to make, oil, kind of, remap oil in American life. It's going to shift it to the west and with that is going to come to a pronounced political and religious shift as well in the makeup of 20th century America and again, happy to elaborate on that through illustration.


Chris: I think we'll get to some of that here in some more questions. Let's see. I want to talk about Rockefeller's opposite, Lyman Stewart. Darren, opposite Rockefeller in the oil industry was Lyman Stewart, a presbyterian whose strong beliefs in sin, sacrifice, and punishment informed his approach to oil. You write, "Whereas Rockefeller rationalized, industrialized capitalism, [as you've explained], Stewart re-enchanted it." Can you help us understand the ramifications of what Stewart believed and did in the oil industry?


Darren: Well, Lyman Stewart was very much the opposite of Rockefeller and he positioned himself very deliberately in that way. This is someone who was very representative of the small oil producers in Western, Pennsylvania who felt threatened by Rockefeller in the 1870s. Lyman Stewart grew up in Western Pennsylvania, developed Presbyterian, and when oil was discovered just miles away from his home, he was one of the first on the scene to take advantage of this and-- and he did do quite well in the oil industry in the 1860s, 1870s. This is also someone who was a Civil War veteran who came back from the war and like so many wanted to remake himself and reimagine his future and that future of his community and of his church.

And, in fact, when he was discovering oil, he was relying heavily on the investment of his fellow congregants at his local church. So this was all again very much wrapped up - religion, oil, and his economic growth. Rockefeller comes along and basically stamps out his future and so he is going to look elsewhere. He is going to move to California where he is going to become a co-founder of the Union oil company, which will be the-- one of the if not the most successful independent oil companies in California, “Union 76” again, perhaps familiar to us. That's the legacy of Lyman Stewart.

Now, theologically, why is this important to the - in terms of his ecclesiology the way in which he's going to affect the life of the American evangelical church. Stewart is by nature very independent. He is fiercely individualistic in his approach to scripture, to God. This is an Evangelical, who says that "All rests on my own personal relationship with Christ. I need to accept Christ as my savior. I need to encounter and engage scripture on my terms and I need to bear witness to the world as someone who has been redeemed by Christ." And that mirrors really his own work in the oil industry. This is someone who's fiercely individualistic and this is what comes up against in both the church and in the oil industry up against this more kind of collaborative, collectivist view that the Rockefellers hold.

Stewart, then, is going to go to California. He's going to hit it rich and he's going to decide to build, kind of, an oil empire but also a more philanthropic religious empire that he sees as oppositional to the Rockefellers. He's going to fund missionaries in China and Latin America. He's going to build and fund a large tabernacle in Los Angeles. He's going to fund a bible school in Los Angeles. All in his estimation as a way to-- to roll back the liberal, progressive, monopolistic, and in his case, in his eyes, secular progressions that the Rockefeller family and their oil money seem to be encouraging in the late 19th, early 20th century. So from the West coast, looking East, Stewart is determined to use his oil profits to shore up what he sees as the fundamentals of the Protestant faith.


Chris: And what he built in California that you mentioned, was in opposition to the Rockefeller's University of Chicago, correct?


Darren: Very much. He grows-- Lyman Stewart, always anti-Rockefeller to the core. He thinks Rockefeller and Rockefeller-money is corrupting the church by making it more liberal, by centralizing it, and so as I said, he is going to look for any opportunity to build institutions that will fortify what he sees as the essentials of his deeply personal Evangelical faith, and that will include, again, a tabernacle - the Church of the Open Door, and it's also going to include the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, which he sees as, and aspires to be, kind of the counter to the University of Chicago, which John D. Rockefeller Sr. funds at its creation in the late 19th, early 20th century. And again, this is also going to include missionary work abroad. We're going to see in the early 20th century, Lyman Stewart funding more conservative missionaries, for instance, in China and they are going to go toe-to-toe really in a theological and political battle with those more liberal missionaries funded in China by the Rockefellers and Standard Oil. So this is a battle that is local, it's national, and ultimately by the 19th, global as well.


Chris: Before we move, Darren, from-- by the way, thank you for all of that. Before we move from California to Texas, can you tell us a little bit about the spiritualism in California where “Oil” landed first there? That was a fascinating story and religion is wrapped up there a little bit. Can you briefly tell us that story? It's a fascinating one, I think.


Darren: Yeah. Thanks, Chris. No, I agree. I-- you know, I was quite intrigued I-- you know, moving into the research for this book. I was and this is perhaps a bit of a side note, but my first inclination was to follow the money and to tell the story of powerful oilmen like Lyman Stewart and John D. Rockefeller who were devoutly Christian. As I got into the research though, I became much more intrigued with both at the national level, what oil meant to the nation as a whole in the way in which it envisioned itself in kind of exceptional terms in the modern era. But then, ultimately, at the local level too, how oil would animate individuals and local communities and as they try to and--or aspired to-- to create kind of their own utopia on a very grassroots local level. And, certainly, out west in the late 19th, early 20th century, the pursuit of oil generated those types of ambitions and aspirations. And it's no accident, I think, that spiritualism, you know, this-- this broad kind of movement of spiritualist worship in the 1890s and 1900s, early 1900s, was very much entrenched already in western landscapes.

San Francisco was an epicenter of the spiritualism of the late 19th century, this movement that grew up in the second half of the 19th century. But as we move also into more remote locations, for instance, in the coal mines of Colorado of the Mountain West, many of those miners in their own right had kind of spiritualist beliefs. Again, the notion that they in their own work and labor had direct kind of contact with spiritualist forces, those forces that put them in direct communication with another realm of being. This is something that came from coal mines, for instance, in Wales in England. This is something that was practiced there. So, spiritualism, again in more general terms, was already implanted, very much popular in the Mountain West. And when oil is discovered and becomes a hot commodity, it's no wonder that the pursuit of this material resource, in turn, takes on its own kind of sense of spiritualist-- spiritual questing after a brighter future, something that is mysterious something that is of another realm, of being, and understanding.


Chris: Yeah, right.


Darren: Does that help? I was kind of rambling there a bit.


Chris: That does. That does. And I-- I think I'm accurate in saying that spiritualism got quite a bit of a boost after the Civil War because so many families were interested in trying to get in touch with their-- their, you know, sons who died in that war. So that's, I think, I'm correct. Is that-- is that right?


Darren: Very much. No, it was-- it was born out of, you know, pain and trying to make-- trying to-- trying to understand the devastation of the post-war period or what was experienced during the war. I think in terms of its importance to the West, it was also born out of an awe of nature, and-- and, you know, the splendors, the natural splendor of the West and this sense of connectedness to a higher being through this splendid kind of, natural environment. Be it the coast of California, which was home to spiritualism during its first kind of dispensation in the late 19th century or the Mountain West where whether it was viewing the mountains and the forest or being down in the coal mines and encountering face-to-face, you know, the realities of a stark, dark, kind of natural existence. All of this kind of stirred up these-- these passions to try to make sense of the world through the supernatural.


Chris: And it's fascinating how you weave that into the story of oil or how that was woven into the story of oil in America. Let's move now, Darren, from California back east to Texas. Texas and oil - that phrase looms large in the American mind. You might revise that as “Texas, religion and oil.” At this point in the narrative, can you talk to us about Wildcat Christianity's premillennialism and the postmillennialism of the “Civil Religion of Crude” including the story of the Pew family? So help us understand those two phrases “Wildcat Christianity”, “Civil Religion of Crude”, and then the post and premillennialism and how that's all wrapped up together. It's fascinating, helpful.


Darren: I'll do my best. So we've talked at length about the Rockefellers - John D. Rockefeller Sr. and then his son who will very much take over the family holdings in the early 20th century, you know, and as I say their worldview can be summed up as a “Civil Religion of Crude.” They-- they see in their control of oil the ability to shape American Protestantism's engagement with the world going forward in the 20th century. They control this commodity. That brings with it certain confidence in progress. A confidence in American development into the modern age and shaped very much in their mind by a reliance on Christianity, a Christian morality, and a belief in God. This is a nation that is on the rise because of its possession of oil and because this possession of oil is divine in its own right. And so all of this, you know, again, forges this very kind of positive sense of growth of development and-- but in terms of its theology and eschatology by a postmillennialism that believes that Christians, are they to commit to building a better world at the local level, at the national level, will ultimately usher in the kingdom of God prophesied in scripture.

And so the point being here is this is a very, again, an eschatology that is positive, it's optimistic and it places a lot of emphasis on the ability of humans collectively to welcome in a better society, to usher in a better society. Ultimately, a new millennium of, kind of, the divine.

Premillennialism, I think, is an eschatology that comes to-- becomes popular in the late 19th early, 20th century. It is a much more kind of darker worldview, a belief that humans do not have the ability to forge and improve society and ultimately to usher in a new millennium. The best that they can do as they-- as premillennialists see it through biblical prophecy is to wait for Christ's return and that is going to happen suddenly. It's going to happen in a moment, at which the world is declining, which catastrophe seems to be at every corner. So it's a darker world view. It's very much in keeping with I think what many working-class Americans, for instance, saw in-- in the rise of industry in American cities in the late 19th, early 20th century.

So, this, I see as essential to Wildcat Christianity. It's these smaller producers who have already felt so much pain. They've been forced out of Western Pennsylvania. They are still devout evangelical, holding on to the fundamentals of the faith. They move into California, they move into Texas, and they discover oil but they always have kind of a darker worldview, the notion that oil is going to arrive and disappear suddenly just as they believe that their own kind of economic and-- and community life, will appear and disappear suddenly in anticipation of Christ's return. This is the essence of kind of the premillennialists worldview that is very much operational at the heart of Wildcat Christianity in the Southwest, especially from the early to the late 20th century.


Chris: This is super helpful, Darren. As we approach just generally, American history, but specifically with-- with oil. So, thank you for those findings and those descriptions.

We are talking with Darren Dochuk, the Andrew V. Tackes College Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame about his very insightful book, Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America. We encourage listeners to visit storyofamericanreligion.org and sign up for future podcast notifications at the sign-up tab.

Darren, about the early decades of the 20th century you write this: "The collateral damage of Stewart and his oil-fueled animosity against the Rockefeller worldview would be a permanently fractured Protestant church." Can you weave us a shortened version of this tale that has such profound ramifications for American Christianity and America itself?


Darren: I will try to weave a shortened version. I'll do my best. But we have already talked about Lyman Stewart. Lyman Stewart and his brother Milton Stewart who were quite the tandem. They ran Union Oil in California. We've also talked at length about the Rockefellers and these are kind of two oppositional families, oil families here that I use to illustrate a larger and more profound divide within American oil and Protestantism. One that stresses again the Civil Religion of Crude, which is more collective, more liberal-progressive, has more faith in again humanity to improve upon itself. This postmillennialism clashing with the more fiercely independent individualistic fundamental Evangelical views of the Stewart brothers. And this divide again is going to become reified in the early 20th century, the 1900s into the 1920s.
When these two families because of their own use of oil funds to build institutions are going to create very literally a divide within American Protestantism.

One that we know of from former kind of historical works as the “modernist” represented by the Rockefellers and the “fundamentalists” represented very much by the Stewarts. Lyman Stewart, in fact, is going to use his oil money to fund the publication of a series of articles between 1910 and 1915 called The Fundamentals, which basically confirm and reify his own faith in, kind of, Orthodoxy. An Orthodoxy that he sees privileging especially the individual's privilege to-- to kind of accept Christ and to accept the fundamentals of the Evangelical faith based on a literal reading of the scriptures. And that term, “the Fundamentals” is going to become really the label that is going to be placed on all Christians, all evangelicals in the early 20th century who adhere to this-- this conservative Protestant faith in opposition to what they see is a more liberal modernist faith supported by the Rockefellers.

The 1920s again is going to see this divide become much more concrete, it's going to be driven by concerns among more fundamentalist of those supported, for instance, by the Stewarts that American Missionary Enterprise abroad is becoming much more liberal and progressive than they would like. They are more focused on a social gospel of economic uplift, for instance, instead of personal salvation. And that is in opposition to again what they see is as the Rockefeller-funded liberal progressive Protestantism. That is, in their minds, in the fundamentalists' minds, kind of taking out the essence of true Christianity from the American Protestant church.

So this is the structure. This is the battle that takes place in the first half of the 20th century. And as I say in my book, it is very much funded by two competing sectors of oil, two competing families within oil who have very different worldviews grounded in their Christian faith.


Chris: Okay, and this, of course, has ramifications as we look at today, and we'll talk about that at the end of our time together. Fascinating. You write, Darren, about Sundays in 1930s, Texas, East Texas when, "Church folks dressed in their best make their way to oil viewing picnics." Can you paint for us the picture of East Texas oil and Pentecostal impulses that, and I'm quoting you again here, "Once and for all overtook Presbyterian impulses as the heart of a movement that now dreamed of greater glory for oil's average people."


Darren: Well, right, you know, I have a whole chapter on east Texas and what is so striking about this and-- and as I've alluded to earlier, once oil exploration moves less of the Mississippi River, it makes its way into these tucked away regions of the country, often the poorest of all, be it in Texas or in Oklahoma. And so you have this-- this real kind of stark divide between the reality on the ground of poverty and on the other hand the potential of great wealth in spectacular arrival and spectacular fashion. This is what oil, more so than any other resource, natural resource, can bring to a community which is why it sparks kind of what I say, this Prosperity Gospel. This belief that - if God shows favor on us, we will do-- we will discover oil and oil will make us rich and in turn, allow us to reimagine our communities, our nation, and, our churches in a way that will honor God in respect. So this is the cycle of this kind of belief system.

In east Texas in the 1930s, I think we see the most dramatic illustration of this. In 1930, what's happening, of course, the depression is beginning and for the next decade, the entire nation will be mired in this great economic depression. In East Texas, we are going to see some of the worst economic conditions. This is the poorest region of Texas which is itself, of course, one of the poorer sections of the country as a whole at this point. But it's in that very place that oil is going to be discovered in spectacular fashion in 1930. And for the next 15 years, east Texas will become the epicenter of oil exploration and production in the entire world. Placing it basically at the heart of the map of oil development across the globe.

So, you know, it's no wonder that these local church folks are going to see oils arrival in biblical terms. In fact, they're going to help usher in this new epoch of oil exploration. They are going to, as you draw in this quote, they're going to find time on Sunday afternoons to visit oil drill sites, to pray over them, and to wait attentively for oil's arrival as if it is in its own right a religious observance. And when oil arrives, it's no wonder that these average folks are going to celebrate it as a blessing from God and to see it as evidence of divine favor upon them.


Chris: You have several stories in the book about people going to-- like someone took a Sunday school class out in the field and he smelled oily substances in the air. It's just that. It's just really fascinating stuff - oil and religion here, and just ordinary folk and how they interacted with this idea.


Darren: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, again like as, you know, as I said earlier, I mean it was-- oil was always a mystery. It wasn't, you know, geologists were playing catch-up for the first few generations and it just seemed like anyone, you know, could smell it or taste it. I mean, Lyman Stewart claimed that he found oil through smell and so there was always something about this-- this resource that stirred up a kind of an unusual response from-- from locals.


Chris: Sure and-- and religion was the framework that they could then interact with it, and science had to catch up. That was what they had to-- that was the natural framework that they-- that they used. Darren, you describe Wildcatter J. Edgar Pew talking to the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 1920. So now we're moving further into the 20th century and actually will now leave the country and move internationally a bit, right? So he was talking to this Association of Petroleum Geologists in 1920 about searching for oil internationally, and he said it in this way: "For encouragement--" or you write, "For encouragement, Pew turned to the Old Testament, the story of Elijah, banished to the desert by King Ahab. Elijah wandered until Jehovah guided him to a widow who only possessed a bit of meal and a cruse of oil. And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil failed. That's directly from the Old Testament. Pew told his listeners to keep wandering in the deserts and listening to Jehovah. The fate of the world rested on their ability to perform such miracles."

Darren, can you tell us about America's involvement in Middle East oil and we're going to skip our involvement in finding oil elsewhere in the international community, but we'll focus on the Middle East, and how religion is woven into that narrative?


Darren: Well, right. By the 1920s, especially, but moving forward, American oilmen are going to be very intent, very determined to find oil abroad. We always have - not always, but by the 1920s, of course, we have the rise of the automotive-- automobile industry in the United States, which requires fuel. There's going to be an ongoing worry, rising in cycles of peak oil as we know, fears that American domestic reserves are going to run out but they're not going to be enough to fuel the American economy quite literally. And the 1920s sees one of those first, kind of, rounds of fears of peak oil and that's at the point when J. Edgar Pew is talking to this constituency of American oilmen encouraging them again to go out into the world to explore for oil. The Middle East is at that juncture going to become one of the most important targets of oil exploration, especially in the 1930s, war is on the horizon. There is a great fear, globally, back on American soil as well that the American war machine, should it be called upon, is going to need more fuel, and that's going to be a concern going forward throughout the 20th century. And that's why the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, especially, initially, in the 1930s and early 40s is going to become so important to this expansion of American influence and growth on a global scale.

And what you just highlighted here from J. Edgar Pew, even though he is part of a family that runs an independent oil company called Sun Oil or Sunoco, even though he is technically opposed to the larger multinational corporations run by the Rockefellers, for instance, he is going to articulate a vision shared by all, kind of, oilmen, certainly all Christian oilmen, at this point. And that is the sense that American Destiny lay, rest in its ability to go out into the world, especially into the Middle East to find new resources of oil and by extension, to bring with it kind of the opportunity for those societies to benefit from economic growth and ultimately benefit from the message of Christian democracy, of Christian capitalism in that region. Saudi Arabia is going to become as I said, one of the first testing epicenters of that with the founding of the discovery of oil there in the 1930s and the establishment of Aramco, the American-Arabian Oil Company in the late 30s, early 40s.


Chris: Darren, I'm glad you brought up Aramco. They play a large role in the American oil and religion story from that point on, the 1930s on, to this present day. You wrote about it in this way that they, "Sought to cloak their entire operation in mutual respect for the holy." Can you explain a bit about this entity, Aramco, and its religious elements?


Darren: I can-- I can touch on some of those aspects. I hope, here. So, Aramco, you know as we know the largest corporation in the world right now, I believe. Its history has been told by historians of oil, of economics, of politics. And you know, its birth in the 1930s moving into the 1940s and 50s, of course, absolutely crucial to the rise of Saudi Arabia as such a powerful empire. You know, the story has been told typically through a lens of coercion, the ways in which Aramco, you know was a capitalist endeavor that allowed a more conservative, even fundamentalist, sect of Islam to rise to power in Saudi Arabia with the legacy that we're still living with today. My book doesn't, you know, challenge that but what it does do or hopes to do is to bring religion much more into the center of the conversation from the very beginning.

So, for instance, Aramco as I said, this is a conglomeration of major oil companies whose leaders, whose managers are in many ways shaped by the religious and political views of the Rockefellers, kind of, the Civil Religion of Crude. They see the discovery of oil and the production and refining of oil in Saudi Arabia from the late 30s forward as, in many ways, kind of more internationalist terms. This is about developing the world, making it modern. This is about using oil to uplift a backward society and to bring with it the potential to, kind of, achieve all the benefits of modernity without-- without doing away of traditional beliefs in monotheism, for instance, be it Allah, be it God, you know, the Protestants and the Christian Divine. And so their own work in Saudi Arabia in the 40s, certainly in the 50s, very much has kind of, a respect for the holy at the middle - at the center of this endeavor.

And so, Aramco has, basically encases itself in this own kind of spiritual aura in the 1950s going into the early 1960s. Many of those who are running its operations at the executive and managerial level are devout Christians, they're Arabists. They see their operation in Saudi Arabia as being an extension of their own vocation to uplift this region and to bring it into harmony with kind of again, a Judeo-Christian order that is in fashion back in the United States in the 1950s as well.


Chris: Absolutely. And I read in your book how they were very-- so Aramco's leadership worked with the Saudis and even though it's-- it was illegal to practice any other religion but Islam in Saudi Arabia, they allowed them to do so and they organized very robustly at Aramco for the various denominations of Christianity. It was just so fascinating. There was just a lot of religion wrapped up in that and then you put it over there where there's this religion of Islam. It was about, you know, I guess a balancing act might be the correct phrase to use but it was-- it was quite a venture. And still is today. Although things have changed. Now, it has been nationalized, it's owned by Saudi Arabia itself, right? So it's no longer, it has American ownership.


Darren: I have to say that was one of the more enjoyable chapters to write. It was actually a number of chapters that had to get boiled down to one. But just on the ground how you know around Amarco's Arabists, organized these different religious communities all undercover, I think was-- was quite intriguing and fascinating.


Chris: Right. Thank you for writing that, doing that research. Because of time I'm going to skip a question or two, but let me-- let me get to this one. Now, moving up into the 1940s and 50s, you write this: "The expansive doctrine of major oils proponents inspired them to expand their role in the great game of securing souls and oil sources for Christian democracy not only in the Middle East but around the entire globe, all amid the death struggle with the Soviets." Would you elaborate on this? And include in what you say a little bit about this phenomenon called Petroleum Sunday and this guild called the Catholic Petroleum Guild? I thought that was fascinating.


Darren: Sure, you know, again the backdrop to this obviously the Cold War, the late 40s, 1950s, and you know, what we know-- that you know is going on back in the United States, of course, is this rallying around what President Dwight Eisenhower especially is trying to forge as this kind of tri-faith America Protestant-Catholic-Jew using civil religion as a way to rally the American nation as a whole in opposition to what is deemed secular communism. This is the great threat, the Communist menace is going to stamp out globally any potential for religious observance, for religious freedom. So religion and politics are very much combined in the, kind of, American mythology of exceptionalism, especially in the 1950s the height of the Cold War. Other historians have written about the way in which corporate leaders, CEOs helped fashion this notion of a Protestant-Catholic-Jewish nation using not just politics and religion but bringing capitalism into this equation as well as essential to the salvation and the preservation of the nation.

And, you know, in my book I emphasize the degree to which oilmen, whether they be more independent or part of these like multinational major companies, are in the face of a common enemy are going to come together and say, "We need to bring our resources together and we need to domestically and globally fight the Communist menace," and they're going to do so in quite successful fashion. As I say in my book, I believe, you know, of the 20 largest corporations in America in the 1950s, eight of them are oil companies. So oilmen have a lot of power, in other words. And that is going to be felt in Latin America, in the fight against communism. It's going to be felt across the globe.

I think the second part of this story that you reference here that's of interest too, is the way in which organized labor is going to join that campaign. Now, throughout much of my book, I show how, you know, oil-- the oil industry is going to be a site of great contestation at the class level between oil executives, for instance, and oil workers. But in the face again of this global menace, the red menace of the 1950s, I think what's surprising also is the degree to which oil workers, laborers in refineries on production sites are also going to rally behind this vision of a tri-faith America fighting against secular communism. And you mentioned this-- this example of this kind of corporate communion of the Catholic Petroleum Guild in New York City in April 1950. This annual event is going to take place. It's going to welcome workers of the Judeo-Christian Faith, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish to come together and celebrate communion and in essence, reaffirm their own commitment to the religious traditions and establishment of American society. All, against the backdrop of this Catholic menace-- of this communist menace, rather, in the fear that communism will overtake freedom and American society as a whole.


Chris: Okay, and then the Petroleum Sunday, those were-- were those annual events?


Darren: Petroleum Sundays were organized as an annual event and they were held in multiple locations. I think, principally, on the east coast where those larger epicenters of workers in refineries, in New Jersey, for instance, and in New York, they could come together as a large body and again, celebrate in religious fashion, their own commitment to the American kind of religious establishment.


Chris: Okay, so Petroleum Sunday, that would have been a good title for your book that captures a lot of it.


Darren: Yeah.


Chris: Although I like Anointed With Oil. That's a great title. Fantastic title.


Darren: Yeah, you know, as soon as I came up with that title-- and frankly, that title came before any of the book was researched or written and to me, it just-- it kind of encapsulated what I wanted to do and it-- it kept me going. It kept me motivated and also aware of just what was at stake here for the book as a whole.


Chris: Right. Let's-- let's bring us up to closer to where we are, to the famous Goldwater Revolution in the 1964 GOP or at the 1964 GOP Convention and then we'll accelerate to our day even more. So just flat out tell us, Darren. What did Barry Goldwater's rise and defeat of Nelson Rockefeller at that convention have to do with oil? Describe the landscape, the actors, and the significance of the ramifications here.


Darren: So the tension, you know, in my book driving much of the narrative and as I've highlighted here already is between these two sectors of oil - Civil Religion of Crude versus Wildcat Christianity. And those are representative of, on one hand, the Civil Religion of Crude being, you know, the Rockefellers east coast more cosmopolitan much more liberal progressive in their worldview because of the confidence they have as being control of their own oil sector and over the church itself, you know. In contrast to Wildcat Christianity and these fiercely independent, fiercely evangelical oilmen who are going to set up shop and excel in Texas, Oklahoma, and California. This is the battle that's going to go on. It's going to compete, it's going to play out not just in oil. It's going to play out also within the politics of American Protestantism and of the Republican Party ultimately.

Both sectors are going to find a home in the Republican Party. The Pews on one hand are going to be fiercely, you know, advocating the libertarian wing of the Republican party from the 1930s forward. They are going to come head-to-head with the Rockefeller branch of the Republican party, which tends to be again more liberal-centrist and progressive. 1964, the campaign between Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller for the Republican ticket is a perfect, I think, way to encapsulate the struggle to show how it has progressed to this point and also to see-- to show what the stakes were for both sides. We know, of course, that Barry Goldwater is ultimately going to win the ticket. This is going to be a bloody battle between these two sides both sides within the Republican Party funded by oil and when ultimately Goldwater wins the ticket and, you know delivers, his famous or infamous speech in San Francisco at the Cow Palace. He is going to again declare just the virtues of fierce libertarianism. This is the gospel of Wildcat Christianity that his independent oil supporters have been advocating for so long and in seeing him deliver that speech, they are going to celebrate it as affirmation of their own kind of political-economic religious journey.

And, of course, to see the ultimate Nelson Rockefeller being vanquished is also going to be something that they're going to celebrate. Again, representative of a long history of struggle within the oil industry, struggle within American Protestantism.


Chris: I had no idea of that background, of the-- of the weaving of religion and oil in the GOP Convention in 1964. It is just fascinating. So they finally vanquished Rockefeller and that's when they did it. Finally.


Darren: They did. Now, of course, Nelson Rockefeller would stick around for a while and still have his own, you know, political career to build upon but quite frankly, I don't think you know, he was ever the same and we know of course that the Republican Party would shift to the right after Goldwater essentially kind of firming up Wildcat Christianity's hold of the party which I would say, you know, is still in existence today.


Chris: So, Darren, let's come up to the 1970s and you write that the "Saudis embraced their oil windfalls as signs of a shining destiny to lead a global religion and that Saudi Arabia stood as the city on the hill of this theology of exceptionalism." Can you paint this picture for us, which I think is a very important one, as we consider the present day?


Darren: Well, what I'm saying there is and again, you know, the book brings religion and oil together in a narrative on multiple levels, or if you want, to see at different altitudes. And you know at the highest altitude, what I was trying to show is the degree to which beginning in the Civil War and immediate post-Civil War period the imagining and reimagining of the American Nation. The re-constituting of its economic and political power was so much driven by its control of oil and that would-- that would again elicit not merely kind of material or economic aspirations but forge kind of a narrative about American exceptionalism as divinely blessed that would carry it through the heart of the 20th century. We want to understand the American Century, this notion of the American Century that Henry Luce articulated in the 1940s is very much built on these twin pillars of strong religion and Big Oil.

Now, what happens when that relationship begins to crumble? What happens when American's sense of might begins to face an opposition that has its own authority built on the power of oil, its control of oil? That begins to happen in the late 60s, especially the 1970s with the rise of OPEC and Muslim oil-producing nations. None more important than Saudi Arabia. And so what I argue in the book is that by the late 70s, early 80s, this-- this kind of sense of-- of exceptionalism that is facilitated by one society's control of oil is a narrative that is going to be passed on from the United States to Saudi Arabia in the 1980s and beyond signaling what I would say as the end of the American Century the end of the dominance of American oil-fueled political ambitions on a global scale.

Of course, that's not the end of American exceptionalism or power on a global scale. It is just going to make it much more problematic. And Saudi Arabia, and again, I use the-- to illustrate, I mean, Aramco in the late 70s, early 80s, becomes fully under the control of the Saudi government. So in essence American oil corporations hand over the reins of that company to Saudi Arabia. It's at that juncture that Saudi elite in the oil sector and in the political elite, again use this symbol of this transference of power, this corporate power. They reframe it as a notion that, you know, Allah is now blessing Saudi Arabia with control of this resource and by extension, proclaiming Saudi Arabian kind of hegemony on a global scale.

So the sense of exceptionalism that we see earlier in the United States is now by the late 20th century passed on to Saudi Arabia and to the present-day, of course, I think that notion of hegemony, that notion of divine blessing continues to organize and animate and certainly legitimate in their eyes Saudi power on a global scale.


Chris: Darren, you begin the epilogue with the description of an epiphany by a future esteemed scholar of American History who was unloading drums of oil from a barge on the shores of the Congo River in the mid-1920s. You write it in this way: "In the physical forms of oil drums pervading the jungles of Africa, the historian identified the psychic desires of a restless nation and the very essence of its soul." Why did you start the epilogue with that story? And what do you mean when you write later in the chapter that the social vision of major oil and its religious allies failed in the early 2000s?


Darren: Well, you're referencing Perry Miller there who is, of course, famed for or writing about the Puritans, you know, in the mid-twentieth century, an esteemed scholar, a literary scholar who focused on-- on the Puritans and wrote about the puritan errand into the wilderness as very much kind of the heart, in the essence, of what American identity was all about from its very founding. The sense of people going out into the world to discover, to explore, and to establish itself as a beacon of hope and light to those they had left behind. In the case of Puritans, of course, back in England. And as a light to the rest of the world as a way to go forward into this kind of more resplendent future.

So this is Perry Miller's, you know, writing about the Puritans of yesteryear, and what struck me in revisiting his work is how he opens with his own kind of epiphany and that is and, of course, it is contested whether he actually was in Congo or not. But the point is this image of these oil drums being unloaded in Africa was in his mind a way to connect this American errand into the wilderness on broader global scales. This commodity, this material form was, as I read it in his mind, an illustration of how the United States was continuing in the 20th century, in the modern era to kind of again proclaim its exceptionalism, to extend its influence through economic endeavors and none being more important than the oil industry itself. So the restless nation always looking for a new frontier, always looking for a new market remains the essence of its soul and that's I think what Perry Miller was saying in this illustration.

Whether that continues to be the case in the 2000s, I don't know. But as I said earlier, I think American control of oil and the oil industry is far diminished from what it was at the time that Perry Miller would have written this book and that's I think helpful to explaining so much of the more recent conflicts and the more recent contestations over oil and oil politics in places like the Middle East.


Chris: Okay. Well, let's get to the second-to-last question. And this one is about-- this is bringing us into the 2010s, and then we'll just ask for your sort of parting comments. You write about the work of the self-described Methodist Sunday School Teacher, Bill McKibben, who after his 2012 essay, Global Warming's Terrifying New Math, was called by some as nature's prophet and a “new Noah.” Can you share with us briefly how religion and oil are intertwined in the 2000s in this environmental movement?


Darren: Well, I think we've been emphasizing here and maybe to a fault I emphasized in the book these two competing sides within American crude and Christianity - the Wildcat Christianity versus the Civil Religion of Crude. These two, you know, kind of major sector, major oil companies versus the independence and how that plays out in-- in the church. There's a third wave here. There's a third dimension to the story and it's one that we can trace back to the very beginning of the oil industry. And that is the way in which many Americans leaned on their own faith commitments, drew on their own faith commitments to critique the oil industry, to see from the very beginning that the ways in which American commitment to this one powerful industry came with heavy cost and a whole lot of pain. Whether that be the destruction of local communities, the destruction of local small producers, or environmental disaster, oil always brought with it to local communities fire and pain and death and devastation. And there are many American journalists and commentators and local citizens who are very fully aware of that and were not willing to make-- to stand still in terms of that commitment.

I write at length about one of the most famous of those being Ida Tarbell who, you know, raised in a Methodist Family at the turn of the 20th century would become the most important muckraking journalist of her time and would basically take down the standard monopoly through her exposure, through her exposés of the corruption of this industry. Bill McKibben, I think very much stands within the tradition of Ida Tarbell, someone who is drawing on his faith, his Methodism, his own kind of view of Christianity and environmentalism to stir up passions in opposition to fossil fuels and the domination that this industry continues to have over America today. And so I think he just illustrates a strand within American history that is something we also need to respect and embrace and that is the way in which theology, the way in which religious beliefs and practices are informing the politics of protest against this very powerful industry.

Going forward we will see what fruit that commitment, you know, bears out, but I will say that if we want to look at the roots of some of our kind of environmental-- current environmental politics and protest against fossil fuels, be it coal or oil, even in the southwest, even the oil patch, I think we would do well-- do well to respect and appreciate the power of faith commitments within that equation as well. And so when we look at religion and politics in oil we need to look at this dimension of it as well.


Chris: Okay. Thank you. Well said. Well said. Darren, as we conclude, do you want to share any lessons or takeaways from the book either in terms of important historical transformations you are charting or in terms of helping us better understand our present moment? Anything that we haven't talked about that you think we should or any summaries that you think would be helpful to our listeners.


Darren: Well, you know again as I said earlier, I hoped to work at different altitudes when writing this book. What does oil mean to the nation? How does oil at the corporate level create relationships, institutional relationships, for instance, between churches and schools and particular sectors of oil? But I think the altitude at which I enjoyed working most was the most local and that was about the oil patch itself and we were just talking about Bill McKibben and we're talking about more recent kind of environmental politics. This goes back also to my own personal background growing up in Alberta, Canada on the oil patch, having-- while writing this book, I came to appreciate just how much energy regimes such as oil dictate the day-to-day existence and shape the day-to-day culture, economics, and politics and also life in the pews of local communities and it might not be the most, kind of, clearly stated or explicit. But as we look at the hold oil has on us and has on particular regions of the country, I think we would do well again to appreciate the way in which this one resource is not just about money. It's not just about politics but it shapes the way we work, we play, and we worship at the local level. And I think that also speaks to the commitments that oil patch Americans have to this resource.

This is about-- this is an existential. This is a theological as well as political and economic commitment to this resource. Going forward, again, trying to imagine a different future. One, perhaps, based on more alternative resources, alternative fuel resources, and energy regimes, I think this-- this raises the point that this will be not an easy transition for American society going forward. So, you know, I perhaps that-- that helps add some-- some context here to where I am, uh, and where I came from in writing this book.


Chris: Thank you, Darren. Well, we have been talking with Darren Dochuk, the Andrew V. Tackes College Professor of History and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Notre Dame about his book, Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America.

Here at the conclusion of this episode, we trust that listeners have a deeper appreciation of religious freedom as a governing principle in the United States, and we'll see to its protection as an indispensable part of the fragile American experiment in self-government. Certainly, today, we've learned throughout the discussion with Darren how religion has changed America and how America has changed religion. We encourage listeners to visit storyofamericanreligion.org and sign up for future podcast notifications under the signup tab.

Darren, thank you so much for the hard work you put into writing this book. It is very enlightening. It helps us with our present moment as oil continues to have a huge impact on us and the world and now we know that there's quite a bit of religion wrapped up into that. I hope you've enjoyed the time with us as well.

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Darren: Very much Chris. Thanks so much for the invitation and it's been a real pleasure to talk with you and thank you for taking the time to digest the book.