NEWS

Darren Grem

Robert C. Anderson Memorial Award 2011

Darren Grem, postdoctoral research associate, Yale University, investigated the complex dialogue between conservative Christianity and business in the Sunbelt after World War II. Rather than accepting the old trope that conservative Christianity arose out of a grassroots backlash against the political and cultural radicalism of the 1960s and ‘70s, Grem demonstrates how close ties between evangelicals and corporations served their mutual interests during the Cold War and since.

Grem’s original dissertation, titled “The Blessings of Business: Corporate America and Conservative Evangelicalism in the Sunbelt Age 1945-2000,” examines how evangelicals have marketed and promoted their beliefs through private businesses, missionary work, films, schools, children’s books and other vehicles to promote the growing economic, cultural, and political influence of the evangelical movement.