The Great Depression marked a watershed moment in American religious history. Their livelihoods gone and their families hungry, Americans searched for meaning in the midst of crisis. The religious institutions on which many Americans relied suffered a crisis of their own, their resources dwindling as members’ material and spiritual needs grew. Religious organizations struggled alongside secular ones, leading both religious leaders and laypeople to reassess the role of the church in society.

Focusing on black and white residents of Memphis and the Delta from 1927 to 1941, this project traces the Depression-era theological reorientation among laypeople and clergy, the corresponding changes in the relationship between belief and political or social action, and the broader reorganization of American religious institutions. The region’s demographic landscape shifted as the plantation economy collapsed in the 1930s, speeding migration between the city and countryside and to other regions of the United States. The shift in power from mainline denominations toward independent and Pentecostal churches marked a corresponding change in the region’s religious landscape. This dissertation follows the shifts in religious institutions and the changes in the religious lives of Americans in light of the economic, environmental, and social crises of the Depression decade.