Religion and Populism

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Alvord, Wayne. "T.L. Nugent, Texas Populist." Southwestern Historical Quarterly. 57(1):65‑81. July 1953. Nugent, a Swedenborgian, was Populist gubernatorial candidate in 1892 & 1894. 

Argersinger, Peter Hayes. "Pentecostal Politics in Kansas: Religion, the Farmers' Alliance, and the Gospel of Populism." Kansas Quarterly. 1(4):24-39. Fall 1969. Relationship between economic conditions, politics, and religious behavior.  

Bicha, Karel D. "Prairie Radicals: A Common Pietism." Journal of Church and State 1976 18(1): 79-94.  Pietism was the common tie between prairie radicals following the Populist Revolt.  They had no common ideological ties.  Some were leftist, some rightist, some poor, some wealthy. American History and Life, 15A:2

Bode, Frederick A. Protestantism and the New South: North Carolina Baptists and Methodists in Political Crisis, 1894-1903. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 1975.   

_____. "Religion and Class Hegemony: A Populist Critique in North Carolina." Journal of Southern History.  37(3):417-38. August 1971. Populists' battles with traditional southern Protestant religion and its role as defender of the status quo.  

Creech, Joe. Righteous Indignation: Religion and the Populist Revolution. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006.

Crunden, Robert M. "George D. Herron in the 1890s: A New Frame of Reference for the Study of the Progressive Era." Annals of Iowa 1973 42(2): 81-113.  Congregational minister Herron was a Populist and Progressive.  He belonged to several reform organizations, and made a name for himself by arguing that "economic competition was always opposed to moral development." He was expelled from his church for his radical socialism and from Iowa College for what was regarded as immoral behavior.  America: History and Life, 13A:5362

Cummings, Scott. "A Critical Examination of the Portrayal of Catholic Immigrants in American Political Life." Ethnicity 1979 6(3): 197-214.  The new ethnicity of Catholic minorities cannot be equated with conservatism.  The anti-elitist and anti-privilege sentiments of the Catholic ethnics were galvanized by the Populist Movement.  America: History and Life, 18A:605

Curtis, Peter H. "Lorenzo D. Lewelling: A Quaker Populist." Quaker History 1972 61(2): 113-115.  Lorenzo D. Lewelling was an Iowa Quaker who graduated from a Quaker college.  He joined the People's Party in 1890 and won the Populist-Democratic nomination for governor because of his powerful opening address at the convention and his fusionist views.  His philosophy was essentially socialist. America: History and Life, S:7731

Davis, Rodney D. "Prudence Crandall, Spiritualism, and the Populist-Era Reform in Kansas." Kansas History. 3(4):239-54. 1980. 

Doolen, Richard M. "Pastor in Politics: The Congressional Career of the Reverend Gilbert de la Matyr." Indiana Magazine of History 1972 68(2): 103-124.  Gilbert De La Matyr, a Methodist minister, preached in favor of financial and currency reform.  Fellow ministers forced his retirement from the pulpit in 1878 when he became a candidate for Congress on the Greenback Party ticket.  He was defeated for reelection in 1880 and later returned to the pulpit. America: History and Life, 14A:822   

Goode, Richard C. "The Godly Insurrection in Limestone County: Social Gospel, Populism, and Southern Culture in the Late Nineteenth Century." Religion and American Culture 1993 3(2): 155-169.  The social gospel was the main factor in the emergence of the radical reformist Farmers' Alliance and populism in Limestone County, Alabama.  The Alliance was not linked to denominational religion.  Southern Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians supported the status quo.  America: History and Life, 31:11792

Harvey, Paul. "Southern Baptists and the Social Gospel: White Religious Progressivism in the South, 1900-1925." Fides et Historia 1995 27(2): 59-77.  Those who advocated a public role for religious people and their institutions in reforming and regulating human institutions found poor soil among Southern Baptists in the early 20th century.  The movement was essentially Northern and urban.  The small successes that reformers had were generally outside the traditional denominations and often allied to progressive or populist political movements that considered religion marginal or even a hindrance to progress.  America: History and Life, 34:7185

Khan, Rais Ahmad. "The People's Party (U.S.A.) and the Working Class." University Studies [Pakistan] 1968 5(1): 33-48.  The working class failed to unite with farmers because it lacked a class consciousness, and was influenced by the Church.  America: History and Life, S:2803

King, Keith Lynn. "Religious Dimensions of the Agrarian Protest in Texas, 1870-1908." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1985.  DAI, 46, no. 11A, (1985): 3469.  Texas Populists shared an essentially religious view of society. Many of the ordained clergy left the ministry to devote their careers to Populist reform because organized religion failed to support farmers.  Populism created an awareness among some Texans that individual sins, like alcoholism, were actually symptomatic of the larger corporate evil, poverty. 

Kinzer, Donald L. An Episode in Anti‑Catholicism: The American Protective Association. 342 p. U of Washington Publications in History. Seattle: U of Washington P, 1964.  Refutes Hofstadter on Populism and nativism.  

Lengel, Leland L. "Radical Crusaders and a Conservative Church: Attitudes of Populists Toward Contemporary Protestantism in Kansas." American Studies [Lawrence, KS] 1972 13(2): 49-59.  Populists attacked Protestant churches and churchmen for their hypocrisy and corruption.  Populists saw religion as a vehicle for social reform. America: History and Life, 13A:2444

_____. "The Righteous Cause: Some Religious Aspects of Kansas Populism." 365 pp. Ph.D. dissertation, U of Oregon, 1968. Dissertation Abstracts, 29:07A:2184.  

McMath, Robert C., Jr. "Populist Base Communities: The Evangelical Roots of Farm Protest in Texas." Locus 1988 1(1): 53-63.  Evangelical Protestantism was an important conditioner of the form agrarian protest took.  The reformers especially appropriated the camp meeting and language and ideas about the historical message of holy writ.  America: History and Life, 26:12532

Miller, Timothy A. "Religion and Populism: A Reassessment." Religion: The Scholarly Journal of Kansas School of Religion at the University of Kansas.  January 8, 1971.  

Powers, Felicitas. "Prejudice, Journalism, and the Catholic Laymen's Association of Georgia." U.S. Catholic Historian 1989 8(3): 201-212. Anti-Catholicism was a dominant and recurring theme in Georgia politics during the first half of the 20th century.  Tom Watson's prejudicial theories were part of this. America: History and Life, 30:2823   

Raybon, S. Paul. "Stick By the Old Paths: An Inquiry into the Southern Baptist Response to Populism." American Baptist Quarterly 1992 11(3): 231-245.  Baptist ministers in the South rejected Populism and the Social Gospel. Sermons and Baptist newspapers insisted that the cure to the problem was hard work. America: History and Life, 31:3132

Stephens, Randall “The Convergence of Populism, Religion, and the Holiness-Pentecostal Movements”Fides et Historia, 32, Number 1, 2000. p. 51-64

Walker, Samuel. "George Howard Gibson, Christian Socialist Among the Populists." Nebraska History 1974 55(4): 553-572.  Gibson served as editor of the Populist official organ in Nebraska, the Alliance-Independent (which he renamed the Wealth Makers) from October 1893 to January 1896. He proved to be too extreme for most Nebraska Populists, who wished to stress free-silver and fusion. He relinquished his editorship of the paper to lead a group of Nebraskans to found the Christian Commonwealth Colony in Georgia. America: History and Life, 12A:1780

Walsh, Julia. "'Horny-Handed Sons of Toil': Mill Workers, Populists and the Press in Augusta, 1886-1894." Georgia Historical Quarterly 1997 81(2): 311-344.  Uses three Georgia newspapers (the Democratic Augusta Chronicle, the Populist People's Party Paper, and the Wool Hat of Richmond County) from 1892-93 to examine the Populist appeal to textile mill workers and Democratic opposition to the Populist perspective.  Tom Watson stressed class issues, particularly the need for an alliance between both farmers and industrial workers against upper-class owners. There was apparently substantial sympathy for the Populist cause among some mill workers in Augusta.

Walsh, Julia Mary. "Horny-handed Sons of Toil": Workers, Politics, and
            Religion in Augusta, Georgia, 1880-1910." Ph.D. dissertation,
            University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1999. DAI, 60, no.
            09A (1999): 3501. An examination of New South politics through
            the lens of religion of the textile strike of 1886, rise of urban
            Populism, and the success of the white supremacist, anti-Catholic,
            Cracker Party in early twentieth century Augusta. The presence of
            so many transported rural folk provided a human bridge between
            rural Populists and urban workers. A politically-active working
            class found common cultural and religious ground with rural
            workers and identified with their political struggles. Ultimately,
            Populists were doomed, by a combination of electoral fraud,
            internal division, and race baiting.