Jesus and Gin: Evangelicalism, the Roaring Twenties, and Today's Culture Wars

Although the Scopes Trial of 1925 often looms large as the defining moment in early 20th-century debates between religion and culture, historian Hankins's entertaining history of American religion in the ‘20s reminds us otherwise. Covering a number of events and personalities of the era, from Prohibition and Modernism to Billy Sunday, J. Frank Norris, Aimee Semple McPherson, and Father Divine, Hankins demonstrates that the debate over the nature of religion (is it a private expression of faith or a value supporting the common good?) had its foundation in the ‘20s. The sex and legal scandals involving Norris and McPherson, for example, became media fodder, helping to keep religion center stage in American culture. Hankins's lively retelling of a key chapter in American religious history is a must for anyone who wants to better understand the warp and woof of contemporary American religion. (Aug.)