Join First Light Books for an evening with historian Joseph Locke, whose new book tells the full, surprising story of religion in Texas, from the cosmological cave art of Indigenous peoples thousands of years ago to the megachurches and Christian nationalism that shape the state's politics today. One State Under God is not the history you think you know. It's wilder, stranger, and far more diverse than the story Texas usually tells about itself. Whether you're a lifelong Texan, a transplant still figuring this place out, or someone who simply wants to understand how we got here, this is a conversation worth your evening.

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A reception with the author will take place from 6:00 to 6:30 PM, followed by the conversation at 6:30 PM and a signing to close the evening. Tickets include a copy of the book and a reserved seat. Unreserved seats are available on a first come, first served basis. Free RSVPs are also encouraged.​​

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About the book

From sprawling megachurches to religious billboards and towering steel crosses, religion quite literally looms over Texas. Christian nationalism determines the state's politics and, every school day, more than five million Texas children pledge allegiance to "one state under God." But it wasn't always this way.

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In this wide-ranging chronicle, Joseph Locke uncovers the breadth of Texas's religious history, from Indigenous painters of cosmological cave art and Spanish invaders who constructed missions to irreligious Anglo colonists, freethinking frontiersmen, Tejano folk saints, evangelical culture warriors, and Muslim immigrants. Locke traces the state's religious transformations across the centuries, bringing them to life through compelling figures like enslaved preacher Anderson Edwards, fighting fundamentalist J. Frank Norris, and celebrated humanitarian Sister Norma Pimentel, and through gripping moments such as the murder of atheist newspaperman William Cowper Brann and the siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco.

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Comprehensive, fast-paced, and highly readable, One State Under God reveals how the Lone Star State's spiritual path was blazed.

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Robert Wuthnow called it "an impressive work that deserves the careful attention of anyone interested in the history of Texas."

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About the author

Joseph Locke is an Assistant Professor of American History at the University of North Texas, specializing in the history of Texas, the American South, and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He graduated from the University of Texas and received his M.A. and Ph.D. in history from Rice University.

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His first book, Making the Bible Belt: Texas Prohibitionists and the Politicization of Southern Religion, was published by Oxford University Press in 2017. He is also the co-creator of The American Yawp (americanyawp.com), a massively collaborative open U.S. history textbook published in print by Stanford University Press in 2019. He teaches courses in the history of Texas, the U.S. South, the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, American religion, and the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

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