Guest Scholar to Discuss the Business of Evangelical Culture War
Dr. Darren Grem, a native of South Carolina and a graduate of Furman, will present a talk entitled “A Corporate Revival: Zig Ziglar and the Business of Evangelical Culture War” at Converse on Monday, March 23 at 7 pm. His talk is free and open to the community. The event will be held in Lever Auditorium on the second floor of Kuhn Hall. The event is co-sponsored by the Department of History and Politics and the Office of the Chaplain.
His forthcoming book details how evangelicals strategically used business leaders, organizations, methods, and money to advance their religious and political ambitions.
Dr. Grem is a professor of history and Southern studies at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of the forthcoming book Corporate Revivals: Big Business and the Making of the Evangelical Right which details how evangelicals strategically used business leaders, organizations, methods, and money to advance their religious and political ambitions in twentieth-century America. In it, he examines the businessmen who backed mid-century evangelical startups like Christianity Today magazine, the business practices and religious activism of fast-food chain Chick-fil-A, and the role of religious marketing at Heritage USA, a now-defunct South Carolina Christian theme park once run by televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.
After earning his bachelor’s degree at Furman University, Dr. Grem earned an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. He has held postdoctoral fellowships at Yale University and Emory University. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in twentieth-century U.S. history, southern history and southern studies, American religious history, and modern politics and culture In the Department of History and at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at University of Mississippi.
For more information, contact Jason Loscuito, chaplain, at 596-9078, or Melissa Walker, Johnson Professor of History, at 596-9104.