I grew up on a family farm along the Ohio River Valley in southern Indiana. I read with rapt fascination Gabriel Rosenberg’s remarkable scholarship on the history that led up to the years I enjoyed (“Fetishizing family farms,’’ Ideas, April 10).

Fetishization? I can report that, in my case anyway, the history Rosenberg illuminates led, by the middle of the 20th century, to stable family farms, and community. Indeed, it is a shame that today’s world presents practically vanishing opportunity for others to enjoy the manifest benefits of growing up as I did.

Of course, recruiting religion to the rural social reordering helped create a Bible Belt, where the preacher asking for your money changes about every 15 minutes across much of the radio dial.

The Republicans, particularly the rock-ribbed Christian conservatives, depend on the vestiges of that rural dissolution to cling to power.

Will the so-called peasants’ present revolt save us from, or condemn us to, the Globe’s faux 2017 front page?

David Allen

Concord