Reddit mentions of One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

Pretty good book on all of this called One Nation Under God. It does a good job of tracking the rise of the use of God in politics. While its central argument can be debated, and it somewhat underplays the role of the Cold War, it does a great job at illustrating when God began to be inserted into American politics.

Kevin Kruse's book One Nation Under God shows how corporations used Christian churches and movements to fight against the New Deal, which ended up morphing into the Christian nationalist movement that has taken over the Republican party today. It's a scary mix of theocracy, fascism, and unrestrained capitalism.

Also, there's the new Christian movement called the Prosperity Gospel, where they essentially say that the more you donate to the megapastors, the richer God will make you in the long run (backed up with scriptural citations, of course!). So the idea is that people who aren't rich aren't blessed; if you're poor, it's your fault! It's a shocking yet ingenious way to merge Capitalism and Christianity.

I'm an ex-Christian, and absolutely hated the Prosperity Gospel, because I was convinced that the love of money was the root of all evil. Funny how I never made the connection that capitalism is basically the root of a great deal of problems on our planet today.

Check out the book "One Nation Under God".

It's about the Republican and Religious leadership slowly converting the right wing into a religious zealotry of a party. Fantastic read if you enjoy history!

> As far as people who don't work, how would they take advantage? Well there can be community programs to fill the gap. Churches/schools/non-profits can offer to bolster their plan size, and therefore bargaining power, by taking in people who don't work.

Have you asked any church leaders about this? My understanding is that they have already said they can't possibly provide the services that the government does.

The very fact that you think this is a good idea is the result of a corporate marketing scheme that started just after the New Deal.

Read One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

There is an excellent book all about this: One Nation Under God

The only reason Trump is president is because he made deals with christians, whether he is a christian or not. For all we know he is an atheist.

But, no, the church runs our country, in different guises and will for quite a while. Or the other way around, corporations use the church to run this country.

At this point in the US its kind of a feedback loop, the republican party made their bed with christians (particularly the powerful ones at the top) and they now lend their political influence to rightwing causes.

That being said, there are larger trends that show religious people, especially the very religious tend to be very conservative and this is a trend that has held for centuries. What is new is the hollowing out in America at least of the political middle of the laity.

One could and people have written whole papers and books on this very subject.

I will just say a lot of this solidified around and because of the Reagan presidency, he built the "moral majority" coalition and it still affects us.

More basically, those who are taught that an old book contains the greatest truths handed down by a divine being who is the ultimate source of authority tend to be more susceptible to accepting things that are and resistant to change, as well as having a susceptibility to authoritarian acceptance and worship (they already literally worship a god in this structure, so why not politically?).

These are also people who believe in absolutes, in an unchanging, perfect god and an unchanging set of perfect morals. Much easier that way.

 

> In its broadest sense…fundamentalism is a form of ideological intransigence, which is not limited to religion, but includes political or social positions…

source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1369219/

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism

 

Here are some books of relevance:

One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

https://www.amazon.com/One-Nation-Under-God-Corporate/dp/0465049494

 

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America

https://www.amazon.com/American-Fascists-Christian-Right-America/dp/0743284437/

(Note the author of this one Chris Hedges, has a background in theology, but a very leftist/liberal one. He isn't an atheist, but is very hostile to much of christianity in america)

 

What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America

https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/0805073396/

 

And here are some links to online free content that may be of interest:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalism

 

An overview of christian political affiliations, it also has citations and sources for those who doubt that increased religiosity correlates positively with right wing/conservative voting and views.

http://www.pnas.org/content/109/10/3616.full

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/10079-religious-and-free-market-fundamentalism-have-more-in-common-than-the-tea-party

If anyone is interested in the history of this, please read/look into "One Nation Under God". I'm reading it now and it lays out how this came to be and how our country turned into "god's country"

It all goes back to a guy named Billy Ghram, the red scare, and a story about how his work manipulated the poor and uneducated to believe that the gop was the party of Christ and that anything else is stalinist-communist.

It's not a short story, nor one easily understood by five year olds. Pick up this book for details
https://www.amazon.com/One-Nation-Under-God-Corporate/dp/0465049494

Probably the single most important idea he is responsible for is that taxes are conceptually theft. This man did a lot of damage to the idea of American values.