James will you update this piece? What Was the Matter with Ohio?: Unions and Evangelicals in the Rust Belt by James Straub http://www.monthlyreview.org/0106straub.htm
Brian, Monthly Review Press has published many books on religion and the left. None of them atheist agitprop like the Prometheus publishers offerings. I've been reading the new one by Alexander Saxton, which after a few chapters reviewing the standard sociology of religion genre gets going.
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrpress.htm
Religion and the Human Prospect by Alexander Saxton
"Religion and the Human Prospect is a work of amazing originality and profound scholarship that is an urgent tract for our time. Saxton brings us face to face with the massive worldwide religious revival of the past quarter century and the flight of major social scientists from Enlightenment values and scientific conquests. In response, he offers huge, and disconcerting, analyses of the universality of religion in human societies, of its historical role in sustaining the species, of its capacity to circumvent the most devastating intellectual criticisms, and of its current potential for accelerating environmental destruction and bringing on war. Saxton has, in previous incarnations, given us the classic proletarian novel, The Great Midland and path-breaking studies of working-class racism. His new, rigorously argued book might be his most important contribution yet. None of us can afford to ignore it." —Robert Brenner, director, Center for Social Theory and Comparative History, UCLA, author of The Economics of Global Turbulence
Churches in Struggle: Liberation Theologies and Social Change in North America Liberation Theologies and Social Change in North America by William K. Tabb (Editor), Monthly Review Press.