South toward Heaven: America's Southern Rim and the Transnational Missions of Christian Entrepreneurs

This paper offers a broad outline of the twentieth century transnational missions of American Christian entrepreneurs, arguing that a distinct shift occurred in both the locales and markets they inhabited and influenced.  For the most part, the center of American Christian entrepreneurialism before World War II was the northeastern and mid-western regions of the United States.  In those locales, Christian businessmen – often of a high church, mainstream denominational bent – dominated markets, subsidized revivals, and sponsored missionary endeavors at home and, especially, in Latin America.  After World War II, however, the center of American Christian entrepreneurialism shifted to the southeast and southwest, the “southern rim” corridor or “Sunbelt.”  Benefiting from federal largesse and regional development efforts, a new generation of Christian entrepreneurs in the Sunbelt’s growing oil, retail, technology, agribusiness, and tourist markets refocused and intensified the national and transnational missions of the previous era.  Fervent supporters of New Right cultural politics (whether evangelical, Catholic, or Mormon), these entrepreneurs also spurred the revival of a pro-business religious ethos, an “economic morality” that legitimized America’s continued expansions into Latin America and elsewhere as “God blessed.” 

Via selections taken from the religious histories of Coca-Cola, American Tobacco Company, Sunoco Oil, LeTourneau Technologies, Marriott International, Tropicana Products, and Chick-fil-A, this paper questions prevailing impressions about the “secular” nature of America’s transnational excursions.  In turn, it challenges historians to reconsider how American Christians have depended on trans-regional restructurings and transnational encounters when developing economic, cultural, and political policies that have changed the course of modern American history.