The center of Socialist strength in the Southwest lay in the small towns and adjoining rural areas, and it shared its appeal with fundamentalist religious sects. In 1906 over 86 percent of all Baptists, Methodists, Disciples of Christ, and United Brethren in the Southwest lived outside the principle cities. To a surprising extent, conservative religion and native Socialism meshed rather than clashed, their commingling eased by a pervasive sense of urgency over the fundamental evil people experienced in their society and in their daily lives...Minister and lay people alike joined the movement and found that Socialist doctrines “link fine with the teachings of Christ.”
The religious tone that permeated this Socialist movement did not negate the growing class awareness–but it did interpret that consciousness in a particular cultural context. The crisis in people’s lives, as in their society, was no mere intellectual problem. Rather, as H. Richard Niebuhr has suggested, it fostered “a revolutionary temper” and a belief that “life is a critical affair” and forced each to confront “the necessity of facing the ultimate realities of life.” This religious force, never confined to Sunday sermons but rather the primary cultural expression of daily experience, emphasized revival and rebirth from the suffering of human existence. In this fashion “newness of life” gave renewed energy “to the idea of the Kingdom of God on earth.” This convergence of religious and secular millennialism generated a powerful social critique.
Nick Salvatore, Eugene Debs: Citizen and Socialist, 236-237