This chapter discusses Texas's growing presence in national affairs. It explains the economic, demographic, and political contexts in which religion emerged from World War II and contributed to the further shaping of race relations, faith convictions, and power. Churches benefited from the population growth driven by the postwar baby boom as well as from prosperous economic conditions. In many ways, the late 1940s and 1950s were a time of calm serenity in which religious leaders could focus on church growth and family formation. That was certainly an image that made sense to later observers who viewed the period from the perspective of the more turbulent civil rights era that followed. And yet these were years of remarkable developments in religion, politics, and business—years of inequality, discrimination, and conflict. These as well as new discussions about the separation of church and state set the stage for the civil rights movement and shaped the response to it.