Download Rough Country: How Texas Became America's Most Powerful Bible-Belt State AudioBook Free
Tracing the intersection of religious beliefs, race, and electricity in Texas from Reconstruction through the go up of the Faith based Right and the failed presidential bet of Governor Rick Perry, Bad Country illuminates American history because the Civil Warfare in new ways, demonstrating that Texas' report is also America's. In particular, Robert Wuthnow shows how distinctions between "us" and "them" are perpetuated and why they are frequently shaped by religious beliefs and politics. Early settlers called Texas a hard country. Making it through there necessitated determining evil, preventing it, and building institutions in the hope of improving civilization. Religion played out a decisive role. Today, more evangelical Protestants reside in Texas than in any other state. They may have inspired every presidential election for 50 years, mobilized powerful attempts against abortion and same-sex marriage, and been a driving a vehicle force in the Tea Party movement. And religious beliefs is definitely complicated by contest and ethnicity. Sketching from memoirs, papers, oral history, voting documents, and surveys, Bad Country says the stories of ordinary women and men who struggled with the conditions they confronted, conformed to the customs they realized, and sometimes emerged as powerful nationwide leaders. We see the enduring imprint of slavery, general population executions, Jim Crow segregation, and resentment against the federal government. We also watch courageous attempts to care for the sick, combat lynching, give the poor, welcome new immigrants, and uphold liberty of conscience. A monumental and magisterial history, Rough Country is really as much about the rest of America as it is approximately Texas.
