Witnessing Suburbia: Conservatives and Christian Youth Culture

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University of California Press, Feb 10, 2009 - History - 280 pages
Witnessing Suburbia is a lively cultural analysis of the conservative shift in national politics that transformed the United States during the Reagan-Bush era. Eileen Luhr focuses on two fundamental aspects of this shift: the suburbanization of evangelicalism and the rise of Christian popular culture, especially popular music. Taking us from the Jesus Freaks of the late 1960s to Christian heavy metal music to Christian rock festivals and beyond, she shows how evangelicals succeeded in "witnessing" to America's suburbs in a consumer idiom. Luhr argues that the emergence of a politicized evangelical youth culture in fact ranks as one of the major achievements of "third wave" conservatism in the late twentieth century.
 

Contents

Home Improvement Christian Cultural Criticism and the Defense of Traditional Authority
30
Rebel with a Cross The Creation of a Christian Youth Culture
68
Metal Missionaries to the Nation Christian Heavy Metal Music 19841994
111
An MTV Approach to Evangelism The Cultural Politics of Suburban Revivalism
154
Epilogue
191
Acknowledgments
201
Notes
205
Bibliography
249
Index
265
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About the author (2009)

Eileen Luhr is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at California State University, Long Beach.

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