Texas frequently has been described as “the buckle of the Bible Belt.” It’s home to the most megachurches in the nation and state lawmakers frequently lean into “traditional Christian values” to pass certain laws. State Republican leaders have defended a law requiring public school children to say the Texas pledge “one state under God” by claiming this is Texas heritage.
But historian Joseph Locke argues that the state’s early history tells a more complicated story, one in which Texas was not founded as a Christian commonwealth, but with a sharp suspicion of any union between church and government. In his new book, “One State Under God,” Locke says that only later did Protestant religious politics become deeply embedded in Texas law and culture.
Locke describes early Anglo Texas as a “spiritual vacuum.” Mexico barred the establishment of Protestant churches but could not adequately provide Catholic institutions either. Settlers came chiefly for land, not revival, and the Texas Revolution, he argues, was framed in part around resistance to religious restrictions and in favor of liberty of conscience. Locke calls the early protestant Anglo settlers of Texas “reverse pilgrims” because they came to the region for land but surrendered their religion to do so.
When the Republic of Texas wrote its constitution, it included strong protections for religious tolerance and even barred ministers from serving in the legislature or appointed office — reflecting a belief that church-state union threatened civil liberty.
That separation, Locke says, weakened after Texas entered the Union as a slaveholding state. White churches increasingly justified slavery as divinely sanctioned, while enslaved Black Texans developed their own religious traditions centered on liberation and deliverance. In Locke’s telling, this was an early example of religion being used not simply as personal faith, but as a political and social framework for power.
Even so, Locke stresses that Texas did not begin as a uniformly devout Protestant place. He notes that for much of the 19th century, Texas ranked low in church membership. That changed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when urbanization, new wealth, and the Prohibition movement helped religious leaders build political influence. Locke calls Prohibition Texas’ first major culture-war battle, one that elevated Protestant leaders and helped launch a broader campaign to shape public morality through government.
That same movement pushed Texas to the forefront of anti-evolution politics. Locke notes that in 1923 the Texas House overwhelmingly passed a bill to forbid teaching evolution as fact, though it never became law. He traces that fight to a wider effort by Protestant fundamentalists to use schools, textbooks and public policy to enforce religious orthodoxy.
Locke argues that the pattern continues today. In the transcript, he points to the 2007 addition of “one state under God” to the Texas Pledge as part of a longer campaign to use public policy to promote a Protestant-inflected civic identity. He also says that Texas’ religious history has always been more diverse and contested than that slogan suggests.
