Alison Collis Greene's new monograph, No Depression in Heaven: The Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Transformation of Religion in the Delta, adds to the growing body of research on American Protestantism's often fraught relationship with the state. A central issue within this field, and one which Greene places at the centre of her illuminating study, is the question of why, over the last hundred years, so many conservative Protestant denominations have developed hostile stances towards the federal government. Many clergymen have, of course, been ostensibly motivated by the simple premise of protecting religious liberty and church–state separation. However, Greene's case study of Memphis and the Delta during the Great Depression shows that the origins of these antagonisms are more complex than this narrative would suggest. By examining how churches in the region reacted to the New Deal – perhaps the archetypal instance of “big government” – No Depression in Heaven sheds much-needed new light on the roots of conservative Protestantism's twentieth-century grievances. Greene convincingly argues that it was the threat the New Deal potentially posed to the southern religious elite's moral legitimacy and racial and socioeconomic hegemony – not religious liberty per se – that originally motivated conservative clergymen's resistance to the state.

By the end of the 1930s, many Protestant leaders openly condemned the New Deal, but just ten years earlier the picture had been very different. In Memphis and the Delta harsh weather conditions and a volatile cotton market had compounded the effects of the Depression, and the region was in desperate need of assistance. But with churches and other charitable organizations struggling to cope with the scale of the problem, religious leaders made calls for governmental assistance. The arrival of the first New Deal agency, the National Recovery Administration (NRA), in 1933 was therefore welcomed by clergymen of every political stripe. As well as providing much-needed monetary relief, the NRA was seen as proof of the rising influence of religion in the public sphere. “It is gratifying in the highest degree that our government is actually attempting to try out some of the things for which our Christian church has been contending for a quarter of a century,” argued Methodist journalist D. B. Raulins in October 1933 (116).

Further into the 1930s, attitudes towards the New Deal started to change as the agencies gradually expanded their reach. Conservative clergymen began to worry that the New Deal's influence was eclipsing that of the church. In other words, religious leaders saw the potential of the New Deal to undermine their “singular power in the region” (168). This had implications that stretched far beyond the ability of the church to control the spiritual and moral customs of the region; indeed, as Greene shows, one of the most acute concerns among white conservative clergymen was whether Jim Crow could survive New Deal intervention. For various political reasons, the New Deal had a limited effect on the racial order in the South. But the white religious elite had nonetheless learnt not to take their power and status in the region for granted. They concluded that the best way of maintaining the status quo was to restrain the power of the state. Thus, conservative clergymen concluded, “The federal government was no longer a partner but a competitor” (195).

Greene skilfully weaves the voices of African American and Christian minority denominations into her narrative. This was surely made possible thanks to her decision to restrict the scope of her study to Memphis and the Delta region. But the most pathbreaking contribution of No Depression in Heaven nonetheless concerns those at the top of the Delta's racial and religious hierarchies. The destination many conservative Protestants arrived at as a result of their strained relationship with the New Deal state would set the tone for the rest of the century and beyond. Antigovernment sentiment would motivate conservative Protestant elites to more closely engage with politics. Meanwhile, this common enemy laid the foundations for powerful alliances which are today taken for granted, such as the close relationships conservative Protestants have with fundamentalism and corporate interests. No Depression in Heaven is an important insight into the historical origins and motivations behind American Protestantism's contemporary relationship with the state.