The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle over the End Times Shaped a Nation

by Daniel G. Hummel

Upwardly mobile white migrants to the Southwest brought their religion with them, and through the mediums of print and radio blended southern sensibilities with the culture and teachings of northern fundamentalism. The blending of sectional identities was illustrated in the free roam of the same radio waves. Talbot (a Presbyterian from Australia), Fuller (a Baptist native of Los Angeles), and McGee (a Presbyterian from Texas) each had followings across the country. The cultural and media recontextualization of dispensationalism in the Sun Belt extended the reach of dispensational influence and produced a cultural resonance that was less mired in fundamentalist factionalism. Where Lewis Sperry Chafer had been rebuffed by southern denominations with his Yankee-sourced dispensationalism, Talbot, Fuller, and McGee were embraced by millions of southern transplants with similar theological teachings. By the mid-twentieth century, the Southwest had replicated in practice many of the racially segregated social patterns of the South. Dispensationalism appealed to white Christians in this setting not because its teachings demanded racial segregation, nor because its teachings advanced racial desegregation, but because it had very little to say on the matter of race at all.