Overview

Evangelicals and MAGA is a historical case study of the Fulton Cotton Mill neighborhood in Atlanta where Christian nationalism took root in the late 1960s and 1970s as people transitioned out of the Jim Crow era. During the transformative decades between the 1954 (Brown vs Board of Education) and 1973 (Roe vs Wade), the Federal government banned segregation, Bible reading and prayer in schools, and discrimination against women and minorities, producing a White backlash and re-alignment of American politics. I was doing research in Cabbagetown during that time, looking at at racial attitudes, churches and religious life, and gender and family. I saw the messaging of Evangelical leaders becoming more politicized as they protested those bans on their traditional values and called to make America great again by returning to traditional Evangelical values. Preachers used the Christian ontology of good and bad, God and the Devil, as a framework to understand the changes. They saw their lifestyle as God given and good; the changes were bad. Their calls for Christian leadership in government to enact laws based on the Bible would later emerge as elements in the Christian nationalism movement and MAGA.

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9781935604907

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"""In this well-crafted ethnography, Hart convincingly describes Milltown as a 'microcosm of America' where many of its disillusioned white residents turned to Christian nationalism as the solution to their perceived loss of cultural and political influence... Hart is a skilled researcher who blends academic rigor...with observations..."" Kirkus Reviews ""Evangelicals and MAGA offers brilliant insights from the late 1960s into the world of white, working-class America that would become Trump's fan base...Today, every progressive political strategist MUST read this book to understand what Trump's supporters need, to heal their scars."" Alma Gottlieb, Professor Emerita of Anthropology, University of Illinois. Visiting Scholar, Brown University. Past President, Society for Humanistic Anthropology ""This rich anthropological exploration provides a deeper, empathetic, and even more alarming comprehension than reams of political commentary and polemics."" Paul Harvey, Distinguished Professor of History University of Colorado, Colorado Springs ""It is a very good ground-level view of how the current white Christian nationalist movement coalesced in an urban setting...The interview material you cite is excellent - really illustrative. And the discussion of ""born to lose"" is something that is crucial but gets glossed over these days. The 'I will be your God' discussion also is startlingly relevant to the current political scene."" John Corrigan, Professor of Religion The Florida State University ""No more timely book could be conceived...to gain insight into White Christian Nationalism..."" Jack Shlachter, Physicist and Rabbi Past Director of the Theoretical Division. Los Alamos National Laboratory ""The research is excellent and...easy to read and easy to follow...excellent insight into...Milltown religion."" Bill Bruster, Ph.D. Retired Minister Southlake, Texas ""This timely publication provides a socio-cultural and religious context and explanation for the historical rise of cultural divisiveness we are witnessing today."" Linda Goff, Ph.D. Anthropologist President, New Mexico Jewish Historical Society. Retired U.S. State Department ""A fascinating, insightful, respectful report of first-hand research that helps us understand the origins of important aspects of today's political scene."" J. Harry Feldman, Historian Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Wilmington, DE"

Author Information

Ron Duncan Hart is a cultural anthropologist (Ph.D. Indiana University) with postdoctoral work in Jewish Studies at the University of Oxford, Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. He has awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, and New Mexico Jewish Historical Society among others. Duncan Hart has done research on Sephardic traditions in Spain, North Africa, and South America with special attention to the Andalusian exchange among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. He is former Dean of Academic Affairs at InterAmerican University of Puerto Rico. He was Project Director in Latin America with the Ford Foundation, the International Development Research Centre of Canada, and UNICEF. He is a former Research Associate of the Latin American and Iberian Institute at the University of New Mexico. He served a number of years as editor of HaLapid, the journal of the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies. He is author of several books on religion, cultural history and social change, including Fractured Faiths: Spanish Judaism, the Inquisition and New World Identities (author/editor), and historical consultant for the exhibition of the same name at the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe (2016). Fractured Faiths won the Gold Medal for the best book on a religious topic in 2018. Other books include Judaism, Sephardic Jews: History, Religion and People, and Jews and the Arab World. He has been an invited lecturer on Jewish life and culture for the New Mexico History Museum (Santa Fe), Neustadt Lecture (Oklahoma City University), the National Labor Relations Board (Washington, D.C.), and the Schlezinger Annual Lecture (Ohr Kodesh in Chevy Chase, Maryland), University of the Andes, Bogota, Colombia, University of Xinjiang, Urumchi, China among other venues.

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