Prohibition Is Here to Stay

Dr. Jason Lantzer, author of Prohibition Is Here to Stay: The Reverend Edward S. Shumaker and the Dry Crusade in America, will provide an engaging overview of temperance in Indiana.

Prohibition is one of the most significant, and controversial, topics in American history. The crusade by "drys" to destroy "demon rum" had legal, cultural, religious, and political implications for the nation, both at the time and down to the present.

Nowhere were these forces felt more fully than in Indiana, and no one was more responsible for the state going dry than the Reverend Edward S. Shumaker.

For nearly twenty-five years, the Methodist minister led Indiana's influential chapter of the Anti-Saloon League. Shumaker was one of the most powerful men in Indiana in the fight against "strong drink" and his influence extended well beyond the boundaries of the state during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Dr. Lantzer uses Shumaker's life and work to shed new light on the rise and fall of Prohibition and to better understand and appreciate the interplay of religion and politics in American culture.

Lantzer is the assistant director of the university honors program at Butler University in Indianapolis. He received his undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees from Indiana University, Bloomington. His subsequent books are Mainline Christianity: The Past and Future of America's Majority Faith (2012), Prohibition for Museums and Historic Sites (2014), Dis-History: Uses of the Past at Walt Disney's Worlds (2017), and Rebel Bulldog (2017).

We thank Dr. Lantzer for providing this lecture at no cost to the library. The program will be photographed or videotaped, by library staff or pre-approved individuals, for the purpose of rebroadcast.