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This chapter discusses how Christian Reconstructionism had grown out of Rushdoony’s hostile relationship with the editors of Christianity Today, most notably Carl F. H. Henry, as he tried to challenge other conservative Christians to see Mosaic law as the antidote to the perceived lawlessness of the 1960s. After failing to create an expedient alliance with businessman and philanthropist J. Howard Pew in an attempt to influence Christianity Today and the neoevangelical coalition it represented, Rushdoony turned his attention to fully articulating his vision of Biblical law as an alternative to the “law and order” discourse emerging among his fellow conservatives. He argued that Biblical law could provide the necessary mechanism to reconstruct America into a neofeudal Protestant state that would eventually usher in Christ’s second coming.

This chapter tells the story of how J. Howard Pew and a band of conservative activists attempted to infiltrate the National Council of Churches with the aim of undermining religious support for the welfare state. As with many odd pairings, financial considerations helped bring the parties together. The courtship began when the NCC’s architects hatched the idea of a National Lay Committee—a body of prominent laymen and women that would help the Council keep its finger on the pulse of lay opinion while also boosting the Council’s budget. From Pew’s perspective, the Lay Committee offered a potential backdoor into the citadel of the Social Gospel. The NCC needed money, and he was willing and able to supply it. In return, he asked only that the Council cease issuing pronouncements in favor of government aid to the less fortunate and instead transform itself into a champion of the free-enterprise system. The plan sounded simple enough on paper, yet it ultimately failed to accomplish its principal objective of prompting the NCC to abandon its commitment to a robust social welfare state. And, perhaps surprisingly, it was a group of prominent business leaders, not the alleged communists in the ranks of the clergy, who led the opposition to Pew’s short-lived Lay Committee.

This chapter examines the founding and rise to prominence of Christianity Today, the most important religious magazine of the 1960s and 1970s. It details the magazine’s founding by the revivalist Billy Graham and his father-in-law L. Nelson Bell, both of whom envisioned a periodical that would target ministers with a mix of theological content and conservative political commentary. With financial backing from J. Howard Pew and long list of conservative businessmen, the magazine soon outpaced its liberal rivals; and under the editorial guidance of Carl Henry, a noted theologian, it developed a novel critique of mainline religious authority that may well have exacerbated the divide between mainline elites and average churchgoers. Yet Henry’s insistence that evangelicals were obligated take notice of social problems such as racial discrimination ultimately created an inbridgable rift between the magazine’s editor and its financial backers, and in 1967 Henry was forced to relinquish his post.

Covering the period from 1945 to 1960, this chapter examines a series of clergy education initiatives that attempted to build support for libertarian economic ideas. Launched by conservative activists and organizations, these programs sought to undermine clerical support for the New Deal–era welfare state, but they mostly ended in failure. With financial support from the wealthy oil executive J. Howard Pew, organizations like Spiritual Mobilization and the Christian Freedom Foundation spread the gospel of free enterprise using newsletters, radio broadcasts, and sermon contests. But polls funded by Pew himself found they had little impact on the political or economic views of rank-and-file ministers. The National Association of Manufacturers’ (NAM) clergy-industry program was marginally more successful, though its organizers were similarly disappointed at their inability to stoke clerical opposition to the New Deal/Fair Deal agenda. The chapter concludes with a series of observations on why Christian Libertarianism gained little traction with either ministers or lay people during the 1950s.

This essay examines the history of the Great Canadian Oil Sands enterprise between the 1950s and 1970s, through the lens of religion and politics. Focusing on two architects of the project—Alberta Premier Ernest Manning and Sunoco executive J. Howard Pew, the essayunderscores the unique bond that transnational evangelical Protestantism and the petroleum sector shared during the Cold War. It also demonstrates the need to embed matters of faith in global histories of money and raw materials. Commodities like oil have always elicited millennial dreams, stirred notions of exceptionalism, and driven religious laborers and imperatives to distant shores. Last, it underscores the multilateral, multidirectional nature of this transnational exchange. This enterprise was the product of a world system, in which theologies of resource management, corporate and churchly alliances, financial and political incentives, and outcomes of lasting import flowed into and out of Alberta from multiple angles.

Focusing on the business elites and ideas behind Billy Graham’s early career, this chapter shows the expanding network of businessmen behind postwar fundamentalism as it transitioned into a more socially engaged, pragmatic, and results-minded form, namely the “new evangelicalism.” Graham is also reinterpreted in this chapter as more than a religious figure but also as a savvy big businessman who used corporate culture to frame, advance, and order his ministry in the 1950s and 1960s. The contributions of businessmen like oil tycoon J. Howard Pew to evangelical startups like Christianity Today magazine and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association also receive attention in this chapter.