A Christian Nation? Since When?

[Solitary]

New York Times


By KEVIN M. KRUSE
March 14, 2015
AMERICA may be a nation of believers, but when it comes to this country’s identity as a “Christian nation,” our beliefs are all over the map.

Just a few weeks ago, Public Policy Polling reported that 57 percent of Republicans favored officially making the United States a Christian nation. But in 2007, a survey by the First Amendment Center showed that 55 percent of Americans believed it already was one.

The confusion is understandable. For all our talk about separation of church and state, religious language has been written into our political culture in countless ways. It is inscribed in our pledge of patriotism, marked on our money, carved into the walls of our courts and our Capitol. Perhaps because it is everywhere, we assume it has been from the beginning.
But the founding fathers didn’t create the ceremonies and slogans that come to mind when we consider whether this is a Christian nation. Our grandfathers did.

Back in the 1930s, business leaders found themselves on the defensive. Their public prestige had plummeted with the Great Crash; their private businesses were under attack by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal from above and labor from below. To regain the upper hand, corporate leaders fought back on all fronts. They waged a figurative war in statehouses and, occasionally, a literal one in the streets; their campaigns extended from courts of law to the court of public opinion. But nothing worked particularly well until they began an inspired public relations offensive that cast capitalism as the handmaiden of Christianity.

The two had been described as soul mates before, but in this campaign they were wedded in pointed opposition to the “creeping socialism” of the New Deal. The federal government had never really factored into Americans’ thinking about the relationship between faith and free enterprise, mostly because it had never loomed that large over business interests. But now it cast a long and ominous shadow.

[Solomon Zorn]

I took the liberty of adding a link to the original article, which is about three times longer, and quite interesting in it's account of the history of the church/state/business fuckfest.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/opinion/sunday/a-christian-nation-since-when.html

[Unbeliever]

Apparently capitalism = Christianity, and vice versa.

[Mike Cl]

It is true that the first settlers the history books like to talk about, the Pilgrims and Puritans (forgetting the French Hugonaughts in FLa.)  did come so they could practice their brand of religion unmolested.  But their idea of 'freedom of religion' was that they be free to practice it as they see fit.  But nobody else was free to do so.  There was no freedom of religion in Mass. or Fla. or anywhere else.  Our history books used in schools should be called propaganda books.

[Hydra009]

It is true that the first settlers the history books like to talk about, the Pilgrims and Puritans (forgetting the French Hugonaughts in FLa.)  did come so they could practice their brand of religion unmolested.  But their idea of 'freedom of religion' was that they be free to practice it as they see fit.  But nobody else was free to do so.  There was no freedom of religion in Mass. or Fla. or anywhere else.  Our history books used in schools should be called propaganda books.

There were colonies that didn't establish a church at all.  And of course, the ones that were established were fairly quickly disestablished after the formation of the United States.

IMHO, it is true to say that the US has never been a Christian nation.

[Atheon]

First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment. First Amendment.

[Mike Cl]

The point I was really trying to make was that The Christians that came here were not really after religious freedom, but really established religious intolerance.  No group welcomed another religion or religious group with open arms (well, with open rifles, maybe(.

[Solomon Zorn]

I found this part interesting, in particular. I remember my dad hated the guy:

The most important clergyman for Christian libertarianism, though, was the Rev. Billy Graham. In his initial ministry, in the early 1950s, Mr. Graham supported corporate interests so zealously that a London paper called him “the Big Business evangelist.” The Garden of Eden, he informed revival attendees, was a paradise with “no union dues, no labor leaders, no snakes, no disease.” In the same spirit, he denounced all “government restrictions” in economic affairs, which he invariably attacked as “socialism.”

In 1952, Mr. Graham went to Washington and made Congress his congregation. He recruited representatives to serve as ushers at packed revival meetings and staged the first formal religious service held on the Capitol steps. That year, at his urging, Congress established an annual National Day of Prayer. “If I would run for president of the United States today on a platform of calling people back to God, back to Christ, back to the Bible,” he predicted, “I’d be elected.”

I never knew that stuff about him.

I never knew this either:

The Rev. James W. Fifield â€" known as “the 13th Apostle of Big Business” and “Saint Paul of the Prosperous” â€" emerged as an early evangelist for the cause. Preaching to pews of millionaires at the elite First Congregational Church in Los Angeles, Mr. Fifield said reading the Bible was “like eating fish â€" we take the bones out to enjoy the meat. All parts are not of equal value.” He dismissed New Testament warnings about the corrupting nature of wealth. Instead, he paired Christianity and capitalism against the New Deal’s “pagan statism.”

Through his national organization, Spiritual Mobilization, founded in 1935, Mr. Fifield promoted “freedom under God.” By the late 1940s, his group was spreading the gospel of faith and free enterprise in a mass-circulated monthly magazine and a weekly radio program that eventually aired on more than 800 stations nationwide. It even encouraged ministers to preach sermons on its themes in competitions for cash prizes.