In Red Dynamite, Carl R. Weinberg studies the ways that American Christians have combined stalwart allegiances to creationism and anti-communism with numerous versions of the culture wars from roughly the Scopes “Monkey” Trial of the 1920s to the 1980s. He relies on the public and private concerns of about two dozen preachers and Christian leaders but is careful to demonstrate that these men were not solitary voices crying into the void but rather incredibly influential leaders who shared, or at least championed, concerns shared by a significant swath of the American populace. The cultural concerns of these creationist activists changed over time, but Weinberg convincingly combines these threads into what he calls a “Red Dynamite Tradition” (153). Although the strands of this tradition sometimes fray at the edges, that is not Weinberg's fault; rather, it is a consequence of multiple parties seeking common cause to promote their own agendas and rally a defense against the numerous threats they were constantly fighting. In fact, Weinberg's study holds together more firmly through the concept of “evil fruits” than Red Dynamite, whereby creationists consistently argued that the dangers of evolution and communism could be readily perceived by simply looking at the “fruit,” or moral products, of the ideas (14). Accepting the truths of (their preferred reading of) Scripture and democracy resulted in peace, cooperation, and flourishing, they insisted, whereas the fruits of evolution and communism were war, death, and the dissolution of all moral values. The details often changed, but Weinberg convincingly demonstrates the consistent application of the trope.

The details do matter, though, and Weinberg does an excellent job of highlighting how specific moments connected to a larger movement, even if the connections the historical actors made can boggle the mind at times. Consequently, there is an odd, almost confusing, sense of clarity in Red Dynamite. Weinberg has meticulously researched and analyzed the writings, speeches, and meandering diatribes of anti-evolutionists. He does an excellent job of explaining the complicated historical, economic, and cultural contexts of his subjects, while still letting them speak for themselves on their own terms. This latter exercise is what is most impressive and interesting about Red Dynamite, yet also the most challenging. When the predominantly Protestant, white men Weinberg studies warn against the combined forces of bolshevism and Darwinism, their screeds are familiar to anyone who has studied American religion or social activism. Yet the way these two forces combine to threaten the sexual health of American teenagers, the abilities of mothers to love and care for their children, or the spiritual vitality of the nation, are far less certain, and one can often get lost in the (dis)connections. Weinberg's brilliance is in letting the reader get lost and confused for a time, yet always exposing the ways that these thin connections between the teaching of evolution, a continuous Red Scare, and the myriad boogeymen that have haunted American Protestants throughout the twentieth century do make sense for those constantly afraid for their families and nation. Or, at the very least, they felt like they made sense at the time.

This interplay between truth, thought, and feeling seems central to Weinberg's work, and is evident even in the book's title. The term Red Dynamite comes from George McCready Price, a loyal Seventh Day Adventist and amateur geologist from the early twentieth century who had dreams of influencing both the academy and larger American culture. A committed defender of what we now call Young Earth Creationism, Price increasingly warned of the dangers of Darwinian science to America's morals and throughout the 1920s increasingly insisted that communism was connected to, and perhaps synonymous with, evolutionary thought. Interestingly, Weinberg notes that, for all his eccentricities, Price was not completely wrong. Both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles were fans of Charles Darwin and personally expressed their gratitude for his work's bolstering of their own ideas. In fact, Price pulled the term Red Dynamite from an interview with the socialist activist and Christian pastor Bouck White. In an interview from 1914, White sought to defend Christianity from the criticisms of his fellow socialists, who insisted that the faith had little to say about the current class struggle. White noted the works of many of his professors at Union Theological Seminary, who presented Jesus as a “social rebel.” This characterization, White insisted, when combined with the work of the Socialist Party and the new insights of Charles Darwin, would serve as “social dynamite” to wake the country from its capitalist nightmare (75). For Price, such an assertion was not only a horrific distortion of the faith he loved but also a deeply dangerous amalgamation that would undermine the traditional morals of the nation. This dangerous Red Dynamite—Price was keen to associate communism with evolution more closely than White and thus changed the wording to suit his needs—then became the rallying cry of conservative Christians throughout the rest of the century.

Weinberg is especially good at illuminating the deep cultural and often economic settings behind the Red Dynamite Tradition. The book would have been enhanced by a further exploration of the gender constructions and clear anti-black racism of the individuals and institutions he investigates, but it also seems evident that this exclusion has more to do with the fact that Weinberg is studying predominantly white men who spoke to white men. Their racism and chauvinism were shared and assumed, leaving less room for analysis. Yet this also means that Red Dynamite leaves room for valuable further study. The fact that it exposes “a continuous pattern of Christian conservative political activism from the 1920s to the 1970s” is an important step in itself and something to which scholars of American religion and conservative politics should pay special attention.