The Burden of the Bible Belt: Senator Morris Sheppard and the Politics of a Christian Nation

In the early-twentieth century, Texas Senator Morris Sheppard championed a “Christian nation.” A Methodist and progressive Democrat, Sheppard pursued targeted legislation intended to demonstrate the nation’s Christian commitments. He fought to keep “In God We Trust” on national currency, sought a constitutional amendment acknowledging God, and, most notably, fought against liquor and saloons. Invoking “the confidence and approbation of Almighty God,” he sang “Onward Christian Soldiers” with prohibitionists on the steps of the United States Capitol. In 1917, he authored what would become the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution: national prohibition.

This paper is not a strict accounting of political history. Instead, in line with the conference’s theme of “Lives, Places, Stories,” it explores the phenomenon of Christian nationalism by situating Morris Sheppard in a context. It roots him in an embattled religious culture just beginning to learn the language of Christian nationalism. Sheppard matured within a growing regional movement: a Bible Belt culture that innovated and articulated new and distinct notions of history, government, and religion. Sheppard operated under the burdens of the Bible Belt. He adhered to notions of a Christian Nation. He came to equate public authority with religious vitality. He learned to see legislation as a barometer of the nation’s Christian character. He learned to judge political decisions as measures of righteousness. His early career lays bare the animating impulses underlying conceptions of a Christian Nation. According to the logic of Sheppard’s beliefs, he had to act. In the course of the early-twentieth century, he did. He emerged as the nation’s most powerful Christian nationalist. But his life, his place, and his story reveal larger insights into the pull, the appeal, and the power of Christian nationalism.