732 The Journal of American History December 2018

God’s Businessmen: Entrepreneurial Evangeli- and evangelical union. Evangelical business- cals in Depression and War. By Sarah Ruth men such as Babbitt could also be modern. Hammond. Ed. by Darren Dochuk. (Chi- They used sophisticated advertising to brand cago: University of Press, 2017. xiv, the nae, which lobbied in Washington, D.C., 228 pp. $45.00.) in another concession to pluralism. They dis- agreed about the role of government and ap- While historians have treated American plied psychology to chaplaincy in the work- Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jah/article/105/3/732/5248008 by guest on 27 September 2021 evangelicals and business in other eras, God’s place. These white businessmen wore suits, Businessmen covers the largely untold story of also a statement about class. LeTourneau, evangelical entrepreneurs in the 1930s and however, favored vocational training, a blue- during World War II. During those times collar emphasis. Key leaders had connections these individuals funded and managed re- to elite colleges and advocated on ligious organizations and causes, believing college campuses. Hammond favors complex- that God had charged them with preserving Christian America. Spiritual opportunities ity over contradiction in explaining her lay- and greater profits could prevail. Influen- men. tial managers included the heavy-equipment This study complements work done on manufacturer R. G. LeTourneau, the Club fundamentalism’s founding generation—­ Aluminum Products Company executive innovative pastors, evangelists, educators, and Herbert J. Taylor, the realtor turned preach- journalists—who used film, radio, publishing, er J. Elwin Wright, the Sun Oil Company and advertising. Evangelical and business col- president J. Howard Pew, and the shoe store laboration helps explain fundamentalism’s re- owner C. B. Hedstrom. Their organizations silience in American culture, an important his- were varied: Christian Business Men’s Com- toriographical shift from origins and identity. mittee International, Chaplain Counselors for Hammond aptly describes her laymen as those Industry, the Association of Business Men’s who believed in supernatural Christianity, and Evangelistic Clubs, Christian Workers Foun- their boardrooms and pews are an evangeli- dation, the Gideons, LeTourneau Evangelistic cal version of Bruce Barton’s liberal Protestant Foundation, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellow- Christ and business. ship, National Association of Evangelicals, These businessmen underscore continuity and Youth for Christ. in the history of fundamentalism; they shared Taylor’s aluminum company provides one the orthodoxy of the founding generation and illustration of evangelical and corporate uni- built the framework for the new evangelical- ty. Taylor in 1932 had composed the Rota- ism of the postwar era. ry Club’s “four-way test,” a code of business Darren Dochuk is to be commended for ethics that would appeal to evangelicals, yet editorial work on the book, after Hammond’s was, in a nod to religious pluralism, nonsec- passing. With the manuscript, a revised disser- tarian and important in the workplace. Dur- tation, already under contract, he incorporated ing World War II he became treasurer of the her intended changes, and did some rewriting National Association of Evangelicals (nae), and reorganization. He assures readers that her the most important layman among clerics, and “ideas and voice remained front and center” there he shaped its appeal, broader than the separatist fundamentalists. In 1944 he spon- (p. x). sored a radio program, Club Time, to promote Douglas Carl Abrams the gospel and Christian democracy. Psalms and hymns—sung by — Greenville, South Carolina alternated with advertisements for Taylor’s company. Sales, ratings, and numbers of con- doi: 10.1093/jahist/jay391 versions were impressive. Sarah Ruth Hammond artfully argues that Claiming Turtle Mountain’s Constitution: The Sinclair Lewis’s George Babbitt, not Elmer History, Legacy, and Future of a Tribal Nation’s Gantry, provides a better view of corporate Founding Documents. By Keith Richotte Jr.