Storey, John W. 1938-

PERSONAL:

Born November 17, 1938, in Oberlin, LA; son of John W. (an oil company foreman) and Eunice (a homemaker) Storey; married Gail Leavell (a teacher), September 7, 1961; children: Lisa Gail, Cynthia Kay. Education: Lamar University, B.A., 1961; Baylor University, M.A., 1963; University of Kentucky, Ph.D., 1968. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Baptist.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Port Neches, TX. Office—Department of History, Lamar University, Lamar University Station, Beaumont, TX 77710.

CAREER:

Baylor University, Waco, TX, instructor in history, 1962-64; University of Kentucky, Lexington, lecturer in history, 1967-68; Lamar University, Beaumont, TX, assistant professor, 1968-72, associate professor, 1972-79, professor of history, beginning 1979.

MEMBER:

Southern Historical Association, Southern Baptist Historical Commission, Texas Historical Association, Texas Gulf Historical Society, Texas Baptist Historical Society, East Texas Historical Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Regents Merit Teaching Award, Lamar University Board of Regents, 1972.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Charles Bussey and others) America's Heritage in the Twentieth Century, Forum Press (St. Louis, MO), 1978.

Texas Baptist Leadership and Social Christianity, 1900-1980 (monograph), Texas A & M University Press (College Station, TX), 1986.

(With Ronald C. Ellison) Southern Baptists of Southeast Texas: A Centennial History, 1888-1988, Golden Triangle Baptist Association (Beaumont, TX), 1988.

(With Glenn H. Utter) The Religious Right: A Reference Handbook, ABC-CLIO (Santa Barbara, CA), 1995, 3rd edition, Grey House Publishing (Millerton, NY), 2007.

Twentieth-Century Texas: A Social and Cultural History, University of North Texas Press (Denton, TX), 2008.

Contributor to periodicals, including Southwestern Quarterly, Southern Humanities Review, and Mississippi Quarterly.

SIDELIGHTS:

Lamar University historian John W. Storey specializes in the history of modern American religion and its involvement in politics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Texas Baptist Leadership and Social Christianity, 1900-1980 and Southern Baptists of Southeast Texas: A Centennial History, 1888-1988 both examine the role that the Baptist church played in the history of Texas throughout most of the twentieth century. In The Religious Right: A Reference Handbook, Storey and coauthor Glenn H. Uttar create a text that provides history students with an overview of ideas, movements, and themes that have helped create the modern, politically oriented, conviction-driven religiously conservative movement in American society. The authors, Dann Wigner stated in Library Journal, "masterfully articulate the motivations of this complex political entity with copious references for further study." Providing biographies of key figures in the movement, primary sources, chronologies that list "events with an explanation of their relevance to the religious right," including "prohibition, the Scopes trial, Engel v. Vitale (school prayer), Roe v. Wade, and the Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart scandals," and information drawn from surveys, stated a Booklist reviewer, The Religious Right covers the movement in its entirety, from its emergence at the end of the nineteenth century to today. The work, stated Ann G. Brouse in School Library Journal, is "a substantive resource for understanding the complex issues behind today's headlines."

Storey once told CA: "Although I am broadly interested in American thought since Darwin, in recent years I have concentrated upon the South and its religious configuration. The intertwining of the region's history, religion, and race is fascinating. Despite its support of racism, for instance, southern Protestantism was also a positive force in the lives of whites and blacks alike and—albeit slowly—did respond in a positive way to Dixie's social ills."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 1996, review of The Religious Right: A Reference Handbook, p. 1316; October 15, 2001, Mary Ellen Quinn, review of The Religious Right, p. 434.

Journal of Southern History, May, 2007, Rosalie Beck, "A Texas Baptist Power Struggle: The Hayden Controversy," p. 482.

Library Journal, September 1, 2001, Steve Young, review of The Religious Right, p. 188; June 1, 2002, Naomi Hafter, review of The Religious Right, p. 134; June 1, 2007, Dann Wigner, review of The Religious Right, p. 158.

Midwest Book Review, April, 2002, Able Greenspan, review of The Religious Right, 2nd edition.

Reference & Research Book News, August, 2007, review of The Religious Right, 3rd edition.

School Library Journal, August, 2002, Ann G. Brouse, "Religion and Politics," p. 143.