Contending for the Faith: Southern Baptists in New Mexico.

By Daniel R. Carnett. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002. Pp. x, 230. $29.95, ISBN 0-8263-2837-7.) Although New Mexico is not a state typically associated with Southern Baptists, Daniel R. Carnett suggests that it deserves the attention of scholars interested in southern religion. The twentieth-century expansion of the Southern Baptist Church into the Southwest, he contends, presents "unparalleled opportunities" to study the intersection of a "culturally, racially, and geographically homogenous" faith with a region "noted for its pluralism and diversity" (p. vii). However, despite this intriguing premise, Carnett's study instead functions primarily as an institutional history. Following a brief overview of the denomination and its early mission work in New Mexico, Carnett chronicles the remarkable growth that the state's Southern Baptists enjoyed between 1938 and 1960. While acknowledging that southerners' post-World War II migration into the state accounted for a portion of the faith's swelling membership, Carnett also credits "accelerated evangelistic endeavors" (p. 34) and the leadership of state convention president Harry P. Stagg. Yet, beyond providing statistical data on Southern Baptists' rapid expansion (and Catholicism's attendant decline) in New Mexico, Carnett makes little attempt to interpret the social, cultural, and political effects of this monumental shift, or to analyze what happened when "evangelism collided head on with the state's religious and cultural environment" (p. 68). Similarly, two promising chapters on Southern Baptists' social concerns and political involvements provide only surface-level accounts of "official" responses to changing race and gender relations, as do the book's concluding chapters on the fortunes of the New Mexico Baptist Convention and its leaders from the mid-1970s through the present. Carnett's examination of a state such as New Mexico, with its significant populations of American Indians and Latinos, could have greatly enriched the growing literature on southern evangelical religion and racial issues. Unfortunately, Contending for the Faith fails to use the New Mexico example to directly challenge or expand on existing scholarship, and thus it mostly misses an opportunity to broaden the geographic boundaries of southern religious history. [ANN K. ZIKER, Rice University]