Long overlooked by scholars of culture and religion, southern (white) gospel music occupies a special place within evangelicalism. The dynamic interaction of lyrics, music, and religious experience in southern gospel music comprises a cultural discourse evangelicals use, not to diminish experience in this world as is commonly argued in southern gospel studies, but to understand better Protestant theological doctrines in, and to make useable meaning out of, the vicissitudes of conservative Christian life. This approach treats southern gospel as a network of interconnected rhetorics and signifying practices that serve a multitude of public and private needs among its performers and fans—needs that are not otherwise met in evangelical culture. Particularly, southern gospel music allows those who participate in it to explore a broader and deeper range of psychospiritual feelings and experiences. The study of southern gospel reveals the importance of private conflicts and tensions in defining the contours of conservative Protestant religious living, individually and collectively. For the millions of evangelicals today who turn regularly and eagerly to southern gospel, their identity as a covenanted elect emerges from within the struggle to manage and resolve spiritual disquietude through the experience of white gospel music.

Marc Connelly's The Green Pastures play was one of the longest running dramas in Broadway history. Responses to the play by blacks and whites demonstrate its contested nature. Whites generally lauded the drama for its simplicity and its childlike depiction of black religion in the rural South. African Americans, though hopeful that its allblack cast would lead to more opportunities for blacks on stage, were divided between a general appreciation of the extraordinary display of talent by its actors and worries about the implications of a play that seemed to idealize the rural South as the natural environment of carefree overly religious blacks. Connelly's widely popular drama became a site of cultural debates about the significance of black migration to the urban North, the nature and importance of religion in black communities, and the place of blacks in the nation. Precisely when black social scientists were urging rural black Christians to abandon an otherworldly and emotional religion, white dramatists and literary artists were making more widely available what they saw as a picturesque and deeply rooted aspect of black folk culture.

In order to understand the practice of “culture wars work,” we examined the claims of a particularly vocal evangelist, Jack T. Chick. Chick is a writer and cartoonist known both positively and negatively for his “Chick tracts.” Chick tracts are small twenty-four-page black-andwhite comic books that attempt to convert the reader to Chick's particular brand of “Bible-believing” Protestant Christianity. We focused on Chick's claim about Catholicism in order to show how theological and ideological boundaries can be constructed between presumably allied religious populations. Chick presents his anti-Catholicism using three main frames: (1) the associative frame—Catholicism is not only one of many social problems but is also cause of a number of them, (2) the subversive frame—the Catholic church is a political villain, and (3) the hidden agenda frame—Catholicism has not remained true to the authoritative teachings of Christianity and has embraced a secretly progressive worldview. Investigating a culture war claims maker like Chick, who purposely disrupts what presumably would be an orthodox or conservative alliance, reveals the process of symbolic boundary making within cultural/ moral/religious conflicts.

Environmental concern is emerging in all major American religious denominations, a process known as the “greening of religion.” The dynamics of a greening process illustrate how individuals incorporate emergent social concerns into their existing moral worldviews and show the ways in which religious identities shape that process. Analyzing the dynamics of this phenomenon reveals much about how a community understands the meaning of religious conversion, demonstrates the stability of religious identities, and illustrates how leaders use new problems to reframe religious identities. The greening of American Catholicism builds upon prior efforts to extend a practical theology of social justice (conversion) but articulates new moral responsibilities for future generations while reinforcing identity (continuity). Pope John Paul II opened a new domain for Catholic social teaching by his numerous teachings about environmental stewardship. U.S. Catholic greening efforts built organically upon the Catholic social teaching initiatives of the 1980s, addressing peace and economic justice, and the emergence of what some refer to as a “distinctly Catholic” contribution to environmental ethics should be interpreted in light of these efforts. This term is not precisely defined, but it suggests a concern for cultivating environmental values within the framework of a Catholic identity and for not subverting Catholic religious identity to conventional “secular” environmental values. The rhetorical framing of environment concerns by an ethic of justice was drawn from the biblical vision of justice, but it was influenced by the American environmental justice movement that emerged during this period. The most innovative expression of the greening of American Catholicism has been a set of regional initiatives, bringing Catholic social vision to bear on local issues through lay civic engagement. The lessons from this study speak to the broad evolution of religious environmental ethics in American culture and can inform future studies of this transreligious phenomenon.