Lodged firmly in the American psyche and a bedrock part of American and personal family histories, is the Great Depression. Beginning with the stock market crash in October of 1929 - the market losing 50% of its value in weeks - and lasting more than a decade, it was the worst calamity to hit the United States since the Civil War. At its worst one out of every four workers was unemployed. Farms went under with their former inhabitants leaving their homes seeking shelter, food, and work; poverty and want were everywhere. The emotional toll on millions was severe. Americans and America was traumatized and transformed.

For us the question is, in what ways did religion – one of the greatest and most ubiquitous forces in American history – react to the Great Depression? Understanding this will help us comprehend religion’s role in the American project, equipping us to be perpetuate and perfect it into the 21st century.   

As part of our multi-episode series about religion in the Great Depression, Dr. Jonathan Ebel will share the story of New Deal government camps for migrant workers in California and what he calls “the religion of reform.”

Dr. Jonathan Ebel is a professor of religion at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago and has B.S. from Harvard. Professor Ebel's research program involves religion and war, religion and violence, and lay theologies of economic hardship all within the American context. He is the author of several books including From Dust They Came: Government Camps and the Religion of Reform in New Deal California, G.I. Messiahs: Soldiering, War, and American Civil Religion, Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Soldier in the Great War, and is the co-editor of From Jeremiad to Jihad: Religion, Violence, and America. He is currently at work on a religious history of American warfare in five weapons.