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One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America Hardcover – April 14, 2015

by Kevin M. Kruse

:{:{We’re often told that the United States is, was, and always has been a Christian nation. But in }:One Nation Under God:{, historian Kevin M. Kruse reveals that the idea of “Christian America” is an invention—and a relatively recent one at that.}:

As Kruse argues, the belief that America is fundamentally and formally a Christian nation originated in the 1930s when businessmen enlisted religious activists in their fight against FDR’s New Deal. Corporations from General Motors to Hilton Hotels bankrolled conservative clergymen, encouraging them to attack the New Deal as a program of “pagan statism” that perverted the central principle of Christianity: the sanctity and salvation of the individual. Their campaign for “freedom under God” culminated in the election of their close ally Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.

But this apparent triumph had an ironic twist. In Eisenhower’s hands, a religious movement born in opposition to the government was transformed into one that fused faith and the federal government as never before. During the 1950s, Eisenhower revolutionized the role of religion in American political culture, inventing new traditions from inaugural prayers to the National Prayer Breakfast. Meanwhile, Congress added the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance and made “In God We Trust” the country’s first official motto. With private groups joining in, church membership soared to an all-time high of 69%. For the first time, Americans began to think of their country as an officially Christian nation.

During this moment, virtually all Americans—across the religious and political spectrum—believed that their country was “one nation under God.” But as Americans moved from broad generalities to the details of issues such as school prayer, cracks began to appear. Religious leaders rejected this “lowest common denomination” public religion, leaving conservative political activists to champion it alone. In Richard Nixon’s hands, a politics that conflated piety and patriotism became sole property of the right.}:

The Secret History of American Religion: Christian Fundamentalism Started As a Capitalist Ad Campaign

By Daniel Silliman [1] / Religion Dispatches [2]

May 13, 2015

Christian fundamentalism was invented in an advertising campaign, according to a new book by historian Timothy Gloege, Guaranteed Pure: The Moody Bible Institute, Business, and the Making of Modern Evangelicalism [3]. The all-American brand of “old-time religion” was developed by an early captain of consumer capitalism—who wanted to sell pure Christianity like he sold breakfast.

In his fascinating narrative of the origins of modern evangelicalism, Gloege traces its close relationship to modern marketing back to the founder of Quaker Oats, Henry Parsons Crowell.

If you asked people for a short list of the most important religious figures in the early 20th century, Henry Parsons Crowell probably wouldn’t be on it. Who was Crowell and why was he important?

Henry Parsons Crowell was a purveyor of oatmeal. He is best known by business historians as the president and founder of Quaker Oats, one of the pioneers of the branding revolution. He used a combination of packaging, trademark and massive promotional campaigns and transformed oatmeal from a commodity into a trademarked product.

Crowell took oatmeal that used to be sold out of large barrels in your general store, put it into a sealed package, slapped a picture of a Quaker on it and guaranteed it pure. Now it no longer mattered who you bought your oatmeal from, only what brand you chose.

A company’s reputation was once rooted in its owner, but the trademark created this virtual relationship with consumers that was pure fiction. The trust that is engendered by a Quaker has no relationship to the company itself. There are no Quakers involved in that. Crowell was a Presbyterian. He bought the trademark, a very small mill had the trademark and he said, “oh, this engenders trust, so I’m going to use this to sell my oatmeal.”

This was quite controversial at the time, though today that’s just how things are done. Quakers sell oatmeal and friendly animated lizards sell us car insurance.

One of the key arguments in the book is that he is using similar strategies in religion as well. As president of Moody Bible Institute, Crowell pioneered the techniques of creating trust in a pure religious product, packaging and trademarking, as it were, old-time religion.

How is the story of American capitalism also the story of modern American Christianity?

They’re cultural twins. They’re both drawing from the same set of ideas about the nature of self and society that was, frankly, new in the days after the Civil War. These are the idea of the individual being the basic unit of analysis, that individual choices are really what matters, that’s how you create yourself.

Whereas older ideas would see society as more of an organic unity, they see it as a collection of individuals.

One of the main points of my story is that the particular arrangement we see today of evangelicals’ alignment with business is not a new phenomenon. It can be traced back, specifically to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. It was not there before. And it did not start after World War II. It really started here.

I’m also arguing against the idea that American Protestantism has always been guided by the logic of the market. That’s not true. There was a shift in American Protestantism which is connected to this other shift in economic history.

What shifts in the business world is there’s an underlying assumption that I make my economic decisions out of my own self interest, that everybody is doing that, and society is better off as a result, rather than have to make business decisions in light of how it might affect society—that’s not the question. It’s all about me and my rational choices and other people’s rational choices, which makes it into a game of sorts. And this isn’t always the way that it was.

In the same way, religious experience is re-conceptualized as individualistic.

In the traditional, “churchly” model—if I can make a generalization here—when you had individual Bible reading, the person who is superintending your interpretation of the Bible and saying whether you’re believing the right thing or the wrong thing is your minister. And your minister knows what’s correct based on going to seminary. That belief is then superintended by a theological tradition that precedes that credentialing. All these things bear on what the proper interpretation of the Bible is.

But in the evangelical context, it is all about you and God.

This is the fiction evangelicalism is predicated on: there is this plain reading of the Bible and anyone who sincerely sits down and reads the Bible, regardless of their education, regardless of their background, can get it. But you end up getting problems. People end up interpreting the Bible in ways that disrupt society. They start thinking that miracles are a common occurrence, so they decide they don’t need to take medicine, don’t need to give children medicine. And children end up dying. They read the Bible and see that men are married to more than one women, so they are challenging established family norms.

And you have people who are reading the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus’s talk on money, and they say modern capitalism is evil and abhorrent to God.

There is an ideal of what will happen when evangelicals read the Bible, but it doesn’t always work out. There’s a dynamism that comes with plain reading, but in tension with that is the threat of disorder. So it’s vitality versus disorder.

What happened historically in American Protestantism is that you would go in an evangelical direction, you’d have revivals, you’d revitalize the faith. Then things would start to go a little nutty and at least respectable middle class Protestants would swing back in a churchly direction. They would turn back to tradition. They would turn back to church and say these things are important and reimpose order with church.

What Crowell did, and what makes Crowell important to my mind, is that he created a way to continue the evangelical movement without having to resort to a churchly mode of imposing order.

How did he do that?

The first step was to create a new standard of orthodoxy. Traditionally, you had a Presbyterian orthodoxy, a Methodist orthodoxy, an Episcopal orthodoxy, and so on. There is no such thing as just “conservative Protestantism.”

So that was the first job that Crowell had to do, was to create this fictional orthodoxy, this conservative Protestantism, this set of fundamentals that anyone, any conservative of any denomination [could] ascribe to and could use to differentiate themselves from liberals.

The way that he does this is through the publication called The Fundamentals [4]. It is the publication that gives the fundamentalist movement its name—a 12-volume set of theological treatises written by various scholars that claim to put forward these fundamentals of the faith.

Most people do not read The Fundamentals. When you do, what you find is that there are huge gaps in what would be a traditional creed. There are any number of points of theology that, actually, most of Christians would see as essential—ideas about who God is, what is the nature of salvation, all of these things—are not brought up. Because they would be too controversial among conservatives. And, when you look at the subjects that are brought up, articles regularly contradict each other. There is no unified creed in any sense.

What The Fundamentals is doing, if not laying out a precise creed, is creating the impression of an orthodoxy.

It was successful mostly in bringing together conservatives in all these different denominations who were feeling embattled by liberalism, who were feeling like a minority, and who felt like they were alone. The Fundamentals ended up reaching over 300,000 subscribers, at the height. The publication, as a publication, creates this nation-wide imagined community that cuts across denominational lines.

It is more imagined than real, though. If you were to ask these people what constitutes this inter-denominational orthodoxy, they would come up with very different lists. But for Crowell, his background is in consumer products—”fundamentalism” is a label and functions like a brand.

Crowell does this at the helm of Moody Bible Institute. If we back the story up, how does Dwight L. Moody, the famous evangelist, fit into the history of American capitalism?

The importance of Moody is in making the initial links between economic identities and religious identities. Prior to Moody, those things were much more distinct. These were not models that were really used.

It’s important to remember that Moody was born and raised completely outside of orthodox Protestantism. He was raised a Unitarian. He had a grade school education. He had no theological training whatsoever. He started going to church because he had to as a requirement of his job. He didn’t enjoy it or get anything out of it.

Then a Sunday School teacher came to him at work and told him that Jesus loved him—that was it, he converted.

Moody started to understand his relationship with God using the things he knew best, which was his life in business—in sales, specifically. When Moody decided to become a full-time revivalist—without any sort of theological training, mind you—he was God’s salesman, inviting his listeners to enter into a personal relationship with God.

He started to conceptualize the authentic believer in terms of being a good Christian worker. What mattered wasn’t what you believed, it was, are you submitted to God? Moody gets his idea of the ideal worker from his industrialist friends in the Gilded Age who want their workers to be submissive, hard workers and pragmatic problem solvers: he conceptualizes the Christian worker in those terms. He infuses his ideas about faith with metaphors of work.

You write that the captains of industry, business leaders and town fathers would sit behind Moody on the stage as he preached. Why did they—literally—back his Gospel message?

Those elite men and women sitting behind Moody saw him as the solution to the problem of social disorder and labor unrest because he came from this same class. He was born into poverty, he regularly used bad grammar and mispronounced words, yet he lived in harmony with elite businessmen. He did not begrudge their success or question their ethics. He would say this was because he had this conversion experience and he had a personal relationship with Jesus.

A lot of these business leaders thought this might be the solution to social disorder: If only we could covert the working classes, they would be like Moody and stop being jealous of our success and we could all get along. Some of Moody’s business supporters were very sincere, but there were others who were a little bit less sincere and just saw it as a solution to the problem.

But of course when you have those sort of people sitting on the stage behind you, that’s not going to attract the working classes that you want to convert. Who it ended up attracting, especially as Moody became a celebrity, was the respectable middle classes.

What Moody’s message did for the middle class is to make people feel real and alive in a way the older, churchly Protestantism did not. Moody used analogies from their business experiences that made sense to them. He actually changed the definitions of key theological terms, putting them in business terminology. So, for example, he says, “I have faith in God in the same way I have faith in the stock market.” It made their faith feel real to them in a way it might not have before.

Also, what it does is to naturalize these very new economic ideas and practices.

How does Moody Bible Institute come to be led by a captain of industry, this oatmeal man who is an expert at branding?

Crowell started at Moody Bible in 1901 and was basically in charge starting in 1904, 1905—a time when the Institute was in crisis. The major problem was that Moody Bible Institute was not converting the masses and restoring social order. It was reaching a very small portion of working class people, and, at the turn of the 20th century, those working class people who were reached were not becoming respectable members of the middle class—instead they were getting involved in the Populist movement, which was using the Bible to critique capitalism and critique professionalization.

These working class people were also getting involved in the Pentecostal movement and transgressing racial boundaries. There is even an earlier incident where Ruben A. Torrey, the most prominent evangelist working with Moody, got involved in faith healing because of his “plain reading” of the Bible.

Torrey has a similar business-metaphor interpretation of the Bible to Moody, but he gives it his own particular spin. Torrey said very boldly that prayer is a God-ordained way of people getting things—the Bible becomes a catalog, a practical catalog of God’s promises.

The big problem, of course, is that answers to prayer don’t happen consistently. For Torrey, there was a tragic event where one of his daughters had diphtheria and he believed God was calling him to pray for her healing. This was in 1898 when there was a well-known anti-toxin for the treatment of diphtheria, but he refused to call a doctor and instead relied solely on prayer. He had a change of heart, but was too late and his child died. What do you do with that? This becomes the problem.

Throughout the 1890s amid growing populist discontent, groups of working class and lower middle class evangelical radicals were using beliefs and practices similar to Torrey’s to challenge the rising professional classes and in some cases the entire capitalist order.

So, this message of Moody’s and Torrey’s that was supposed to bring social order starts to bringdisorder.

By 1901, everybody was bailing on Moody and they were losing their financing. They needed new business supports and eventually brought Crowell in, who had been influenced quite a bit by a teacher who was teaching at Moody Bible at the time.

What Crowell did—and what makes him so important to my mind—is that he solved the problem that had plagued individualistic, evangelical religion since it first emerged during the First Great Awakening in the eighteenth century. (When things started to go a little nutty, respectable middle class Protestants swung back to an emphasis on church and tradition.)

Crowell figured out a way to impose order on evangelicalism, but without having to resort to churchly guardrails. He used the techniques of consumer capitalism that he knew so well, packaging and trademark and massive promotional campaigns.

How has Crowell shaped the modern religious landscape?

The Moody Bible Institute pioneered a means of generating a reputation of being a purveyor of pure religion. Today these business techniques are everywhere. The biggest churches in America have no denominational affiliation, and they are filled with respectable, middle-class people. This would not have been the case in the early 19th century, where a denominational identity was a normal part of a middle class identity.

In Crowell’s business experience, purity is at the foundation of his business success. Quaker Oats became what it was because he was able to make people suspicious of the oatmeal you would shovel out of a barrel, and his sealed box with the picture of a Quaker on it was the pure alternative. In every single advertisement that he created in the first 30 years of the company’s existence, the Quaker was always holding a scroll and the single word “pure” was written across it. That was a central idea, for Crowell.

He looked at religion in the same way. There is pure religion and there is impure religion. His question was “how do you make the religion I know is pure appeal to the consuming public?”

The solution he found, to promote modern evangelicalism as “old-time religion,” has worked for a century.

Daniel Silliman is an instructor of American religion and culture at the University of Heidelberg. He is currently writing his dissertation at Heidelberg on secularity and faith in contemporary evangelical fiction. He worked as a crime reporter in metro Atlanta for several years before moving to Germany with his wife in 2008.

http://www.alternet.org/print/belief/secret-history-american-religion-christian-fundamentalism-started-capitalist-ad-campaign

Your Latest News from a Christian perspective

Whether it's a story about prayer in public schools, workplace restrictions on Christians, or battles for biblical truth within our denominations, the American Family News Network (AFN) is here to tell you what the newsmakers are saying.

AFN is a Christian news service - with more than 1,200 broadcast, print, and online affiliates in 45 states and 11 foreign countries - that exists to present the day's stories from a biblical perspective. We not only feature the latest breaking stories from across the United States and around the world, but also news of the challenges facing Christians in today's society.

At OneNewsNow.com, you will get your news from reporters you can trust to give the latest news without the liberal bias that characterizes so much of the "mainstream" media.

For a refreshing and informative change in where you get your news, log on to OneNewsNow.com.

morano on site with persecurtion tab

http://www.onenewsnow.com/persecution#.VN-UJfnF_Qw

http://www.onenewsnow.com/media/2015/02/12/media-on-climate-change-well-deny-theres-any-denial-by-denying-the-deniers#.VN-UTfnF_Qx

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http://www.alternet.org/speakeasy/brucewilson/1-billion-year-right-wing-conspiracy-you-havent-heard-0

Trijicon, a Michigan-based company that makes rifle scopes, is no stranger to church-versus-state controversies. In 2010, it was revealed that the manufacturer had beenstamping Bible verses onto its gun sights, many of which were used by U.S. and British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. (The company later agreed to stop the practice.) In August of last year, a district court granted Trijicon a preliminary injunction in its case challenging the federal government’s mandate that companies with more than 50 employees provide coverage for birth control or pay a fine. Trijicon has more than 200 employees, according to the court filing. // hobby lobby

legal arm, homophobe: The Alliance Defending Freedom wants to take America back to the 3rd century. Literally. On the website for its legal fellowship program, the organization explains that it “seeks to recover the robust Christendomic theology of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries.”

“This is catholic, universal orthodoxy and it is desperately crucial for cultural renewal,” the explanation goes on. “Christians must strive to build glorious cultural cathedrals, rather than shanty tin sheds.”

While the Arizona-based organization has not made much progress in its mission of restoring the religious sentiments of the Byzantine Era, it has built a massive “legal ministry,” relying on 21st century attorneys and an eight-figure annual budget to reshape American law and society.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act in 2012 and ruled that the federal government must recognize same-sex marriages in 2013, dozens of legal challenges have been filed around the country over questions of whether insurance plans must provide contraception, whether states must allow equal access to marriage, and whether people with religious objections to birth control and homosexuality can opt-out of complying with those laws. In case after case, one organization has been at the helm of defending the Christian conservative position.

Many first heard of ADF earlier this year, when news reports identified it as one of the primary forces behind SB 1062, the vetoed Arizona bill that would have allowed businesses and individuals an exemption from LGBT nondiscrimination laws if complying would violate their “sincerely held” religious beliefs. That particular bill generatednational outrage, but it was merely the latest effort in a decades-long effort by ADF, a tax-exempt organization committed to protecting the “God-given, constitutionally protected right to religious freedom” for Christians. Indeed, an ADF lawyer recently told a group of students that those who refuse to serve gay clients are modern-day heroes, like Rosa Parks’ civil disobedience in opposition to racial segregation....

http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2014/05/01/3429448/alliance-defending-freedom/

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AlterNet [1] / By Dan Arel [2]

5 Theocrats in Congress Who Care More About the Bible Than the Constitution

April 7, 2014 |

The Secular Coalition for America has released its congressional report card [3] for the 2013 year. Each year the Secular Coalition grades both house and senate members from a scale from A to F based on their voting records, not their personal religious beliefs, on the issues that involve the separation of church and state.

Not surprising to many that all seven A grades are awarded to democrats, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (CT), Sen. Mazie Hirono (HI), Sen. Dick Durbin (IL), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA), Sen. Al Franken (MN), Sen. Frank Lautenberg (NJ), and Sen. Robert Menendez (NJ), Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC), Rep. Rush Holt (NJ), and Rep. Louise Slaughter (NY).

While no Republicans received an A, for the first time three did receive a B grade: Murkowski (AK), Kirk (IL) and Collins (ME).

Yet 58 percent of the members of Congress received an F grade. That is 315 members who voted for or supported bills that granted special rights to religious organizations, discriminated against LGBT issues, women’s rights issues, contraception and sexual education and issues like prayer in federal environments.

According to the Secular Coalitions website, the grades are based on certain key bills:

In the House, some of the key votes were H.R. 592 which would have allowed for FEMA funding for churches, Amdt.169 to H.R.1960 which would have allowed for a humanist chaplain in the military, and H.R. 914, the so-called “Military Religious Freedom Protection Act.” Among the Senate bills scored were S.Amdt. 2013 to S. 815 which would have expanded the religious exemption of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2013, and S.1279 the so-called “Freedom to Pray Act.”

Below is a look at the five worst offenders from the House and the Senate. Three of which tied for the lowest score of five percent approval granted by the Secular Coalition.

These five members of Congress have shown they vote with their Bibles first, regardless of what their constituents want or what is constitutional. They are openly willing to discriminate against men and women if their personal beliefs get in the way.

1. Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA)

LaMalfa scored a low 5 percent from the Secular Coalition. He voted continuously against church and state separation, opposing non theistic chaplains in the military, sponsored a bill against the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and sponsoring a bill to restore first amendment speech rights to Churches.

He has stated he believes the Bible preaches that individuals, and not government, should take care of the poor: "We should be doing this as individuals, helping the poor.” He has endorsed the privatization of social welfare.

Like most Tea Party Republicans, LaMalfa has taken a strong stance against a women’s right to choose and same-sex marriage. He at one point said that women needed to be informed that abortion causes cancer (it doesn't): "Research has shown that there is a higher level of incidence, there is that risk and so I would want women to be fully informed of all the aspects of it before they would make a decision like that.”

He later apologized for such remarks and said his research was flawed on that matter.

In his fight for marriage inequality he has said, “Marriage has been debased. Why vote? It doesn’t stop here. Churches will be forced to do things they are against.”

Churches are not required to perform same-sex marriages—or any marriage—if they do not want to. LaMalfa loves rhetoric such as this to rile up the Tea Party troops into thinking the left is going to attack religious freedom.

2. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI)

Walberg is a former minister in Michigan and to no surprise is a very right-leaning conservative who is a Tea Party member. He has taken issue with suites to stop prayer before meetings on congress and came under fire in his local community for his invocation to Jesus Christ, ending his prayers with “In Jesus name, I pray,” carefully leaving the “I” in there as to avoid upsetting other politicians in the room.

Walberg earned himself a low 5 percent by voting against or sponsoring every bill that the Secular Coalition flagged for removing the separation of church and state. Opposing non theistic chaplains, opposing the overturning of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, sponsoring a bill to support prayer at school board meetings, a direct violation of the First Amendment, sponsoring a marriage protection act in an attempt to redefine marriage as between only one man and one woman, and he opposed a bill that would teach young people the truth about sexual disease and prevention.

He has fought to remove contraception coverage from the Affordable Care Act and famously quoted Communist leader Joseph Stalin when trying to say bills like the ACA would cause America's collapse by undermining its “spiritual life.”

3. Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC)

Jones' own webpage on the House.gov website says it all:

“America was built upon Judeo-Christian values, and these values should be protected. During my years in Congress I have been a steadfast supporter of traditional marriage, the unborn, and the free exercise of religion. I am an active senior member of both the Values Action Team (VAT) and the Pro-Life Caucus.”

Jones is the type of Republican who believes America is founded on Christian values. This, despite the clear evidence the founding fathers wanted the complete opposite.

He has tried to repeal and amend the ACA, claiming it infringes on Americans' religious freedom. “Forcing an individual to provide employees with health coverage that violates their religious convictions is clearly unlawful under the First Amendment,” said Jones. “It is my hope that the Supreme Court will recognize that Obamacare violates not only current law passed by Congress but also one of our nation’s founding principles — the right to religious freedom.”

He has also stated he firmly believes life begins at conception and has sponsored a bill that would deem abortion murder and would see women arrested for exercising their freedom of choice.

Like the two politicians on this list above him, he scored a low 5 percent, sharing in voting against every bill the Secular Coalition deemed an enemy to a secular society.

4. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)

It is no surprise that Rubio received an F from the Secular Coalition. He has stated on many occasions that he governs thinking Bible first.

He voted to expand the right for religious institutions to discriminate based on religious beliefs that was hidden under the guise that it was meant to protect workers and religious employers. The bill's main purpose was to protect religious institutions from further discrimination lawsuits.

Rubio also sponsored “Freedom to Pray” act that would allow federal funding to go to programs that participate in religious activities.

As a senator, Rubio has opposed women’s rights and same-sex rights. While Rubio did come out against a federal bill that would redefine marriage, he does believe states have the right to define marriage on their own and outright ban same-sex marriages.

He is a pro-life candidate who supports the notion that life begins at conception saying, “In fact, the people that are really closed minded in American politics are the people that love to preach about the certainty of science in regard to our climate, but ignore the absolute fact that science has proven that life begins at conception.”

This shows Rubio’s flawed understanding of science, as science makes no such claim that life begins at conception. He denies the science of anthropogenic global warming, yet turns to science when he claims it proves his stance on abortion is correct.

5. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)

Taking after his father Ron Paul, Rand Paul has been trying to reenergize a libertarian movement in the Republican Party. Yet like his father, Paul is a staunch creationist, pro-life advocate, and climate change denier.

As a libertarian Paul advocates for personal responsibility, except when it comes to women. Women apparently cannot be trusted to make their own decision as individuals, the government should step in and help them, and by help them, he means take away their rights.

On his website Paul states:

“I am 100% pro-life. I believe life begins at conception and that abortion takes the life of an innocent human being. It is the duty of our government to protect this life as a right guaranteed under the Constitution. For this reason, I introduced S. 583, the Life at Conception Act on March 14, 2013. This bill would extend the Constitutional protection of life to the unborn from the time of conception.”

Again, another Tea Party-backed candidate taking the stance that life begins at conception, regardless of evidence to the contrary. Introducing a bill that would strip away a women’s right to bodily autonomy.

Paul counts himself as a fighter for liberty, but will use religion as a way out when the liberty he is fighting for goes against his personal views.

While arguing for a smaller government that stays out of peoples lives he says, “Libertarian and liberty doesn’t mean libertine.” This is Paul’s defense of the government being involved in abortion rights, marriage equality, and contraception. Paul is for the government staying out of your life, as long as you lead a life he approves of.

Paul has stated that libertarianism does not provide a moral compass, so in order for libertarians to lead moral lives and make moral decisions, it needs Christianity. A rather odd stance for someone to take when Christianity openly supports helping others and bringing an end to poverty. Paul has been quoted as stating he would abolish the minimum wage and let a free-market set pay scales and has took a firm stance against any government assistance in welfare and healthcare programs.

While this is only a look at the five worst offenders, given that there are 315 failing grades on this report card, you can imagine the damage being done to the U.S. by its many theocratic members.

The U.S. was built on the foundation of church and state and was proclaimed in the Treaty of Tripoli in 1797 by John Adams that, “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

This is a fact most Republicans seem to have missed while proclaiming that America is founded on Judeo-Christian values. Their inability to grasp American history and attempts to rewrite history to fit into their ideological vision of a theocratic America is what led the Secular Coalition to look at their record and stances and decide that an astounding 315 members would receive a failing grade.

You can view the report card to get more details about each politician’s grades here [3].

See more stories tagged with:

Secular Coalition for America [4],

separation of church and state [5],

Doug LaMalfa [6],

Tim Walberg [7],

walter jones [8],

marco rubio [9],

rand paul [10]

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Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/5-most-theocratic-members-congress-0

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The Radical Christian Right and the War on Government

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_radical_christian_right_and_the_war_on_government_20131006/

Posted on Oct 6, 2013

By Chris Hedges

Editor’s note: Chris Hedges will speak in the Los Angeles area Oct. 13 on the myth of progress and the collapse of complex societies. Robert Scheer will lead a discussion, with a Q-and-A period to follow. Click herefor more information.

There is a desire felt by tens of millions of Americans, lumped into a diffuse and fractious movement known as the Christian right, to destroy the intellectual and scientific rigor of the Enlightenment, radically diminish the role of government to create a theocratic state based on “biblical law,” and force a recalcitrant world to bend to the will of an imperial and “Christian” America. Its public face is on display in the House of Representatives. This ideology, which is the driving force behind the shutdown of the government, calls for the eradication of social “deviants,” beginning with gay men and lesbians, whose sexual orientation, those in the movement say, is a curse and an illness, contaminating the American family and the country. Once these “deviants” are removed, other “deviants,” including Muslims, liberals, feminists, intellectuals, left-wing activists, undocumented workers, poor African-Americans and those dismissed as “nominal Christians”—meaning Christians who do not embrace this peculiar interpretation of the Bible—will also be ruthlessly repressed. The “deviant” government bureaucrats, the “deviant” media, the “deviant” schools and the “deviant” churches, all agents of Satan, will be crushed or radically reformed. The rights of these “deviants” will be annulled. “Christian values” and “family values” will, in the new state, be propagated by all institutions. Education and social welfare will be handed over to the church. Facts and self-criticism will be replaced with relentless indoctrination.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz—whose father is Rafael Cruz, a rabid right-wing Christian preacher and the director of the Purifying Fire International ministry—and legions of the senator’s wealthy supporters, some of whom orchestrated the shutdown, are rooted in a radical Christian ideology known asDominionism or Christian Reconstructionism. This ideology calls on anointed “Christian” leaders to take over the state and make the goals and laws of the nation “biblical.” It seeks to reduce government to organizing little more than defense, internal security and the protection of property rights. It fuses with the Christian religion the iconography and language of American imperialism and nationalism, along with the cruelest aspects of corporate capitalism. The intellectual and moral hollowness of the ideology, its flagrant distortion and misuse of the Bible, the contradictions that abound within it—its leaders champion small government and a large military, as if the military is not part of government—and its laughable pseudoscience are impervious to reason and fact. And that is why the movement is dangerous.

The cult of masculinity, as in all fascist movements, pervades the ideology of the Christian right. The movement uses religion to sanctify military and heroic “virtues,” glorify blind obedience and order over reason and conscience, and pander to the euphoria of collective emotions. Feminism and homosexuality, believers are told, have rendered the American male physically and spiritually impotent. Jesus, for the Christian right, is a man of action, casting out demons, battling the Antichrist, attacking hypocrites and ultimately slaying nonbelievers. This cult of masculinity, with its glorification of violence, is appealing to the powerless. It stokes the anger of many Americans, mostly white and economically disadvantaged, and encourages them to lash back at those who, they are told, seek to destroy them. The paranoia about the outside world is fostered by bizarre conspiracy theories, many of which are prominent in the rhetoric of those leading the government shutdown. Believers, especially now, are called to a perpetual state of war with the “secular humanist” state. The march, they believe, is irreversible. Global war, even nuclear war, is the joyful harbinger of the Second Coming. And leading the avenging armies is an angry, violent Messiah who dooms billions of apostates to death.

Dominionists believe they are engaged in an epic battle against the forces of Satan. They live in a binary world of black and white. They feel they are victims, surrounded by sinister groups bent on their destruction.They have anointed themselves as agents of God who alone know God’s will. They sanctify their rage. This rage lies at the center of the ideology. It leaves them sputtering inanities about Barack Obama, his corporate-sponsored health care reform bill, his alleged mandated suicide counseling or “death panels” for seniors under the bill, his supposed secret alliance with radical Muslims, and “creeping socialism.” They see the government bureaucracy as being controlled by “secular humanists” who want to destroy the family and make war against the purity of their belief system. They seek total cultural and political domination.

All ideological, theological and political debates with the radical Christian right are useless. It cares nothing for rational thought and discussion. Its adherents are using the space within the open society to destroy the open society itself. Our naive attempts to placate a movement bent on our destruction, to prove to it that we too have “values,” only strengthen its supposed legitimacy and increase our own weakness.

Dominionists have to operate, for now, in what they see as the contaminated environment of the secular, liberal state. They work with the rest of us only because they must. Given enough power—and they are working hard to get it—any such cooperation will vanish. They are no different from the vanguard described by Lenin or the Islamic terrorists who shaved off their beards, adopted Western dress and watched pay-for-view pornography in their hotel rooms the night before hijacking a plane for a suicide attack. The elect alone, like the Grand Inquisitor, are sanctioned to know the truth. And in the pursuit of their truth they have no moral constraints.

I spent two years inside the Christian right in writing my book “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.” I attended services at megachurches across the country, went to numerous lectures and talks, sat in on creationist seminars, attended classes on religious proselytizing and conversion, spent weekends at “right-to-life” retreats and interviewed dozens of followers and leaders of the movement. Though I was sympathetic to the financial dislocation, the struggles with addictions, the pain of domestic and sexual violence, and the deep despair that drew people to the movement, I was also acutely aware of the dangerous ideology these people embraced. Fascist movements begin as champions of civic improvement, communal ideals, moral purity, strength, national greatness and family values. These movements attract, as has the radical Christian right, those who are disillusioned by the collapse of liberal democracy. And our liberal democracy has collapsed.

We have abandoned our poor and working class. We have created a government monster that sucks the marrow out of our bones to enrich and empower the oligarchic and corporate elite. The protection of criminals, whether in war or on Wall Street, is part of our mirage of law and order. We have betrayed the vast and growing underclass. Most believers within the Christian right are struggling to survive in a hostile world. We have failed them. Their very real despair is being manipulated and used by Christian fascists such as the Texas senator. Give to the working poor a living wage, benefits and job security and the reach of this movement will diminish. Refuse to ameliorate the suffering of the poor and working class and you ensure the ascendancy of a Christian fascism.

The Christian right needs only a spark to set it ablaze. Another catastrophic act of domestic terrorism, hyperinflation, a series of devastating droughts, floods, hurricanes or massive wildfires or another financial meltdown will be the trigger. Then what is left of our anemic open society will disintegrate. The rise of Christian fascism is aided by our complacency. The longer we fail to openly denounce and defy bankrupt liberalism, the longer we permit corporate power to plunder the nation and destroy the ecosystem, the longer we stand slack-jawed before the open gates of the city waiting meekly for the barbarians, the more we ensure their arrival.

A previous version of this column contained a quotation attributed to Sen. Ted Cruz that might have originated as a parody. Thanks to our readers for their sharp eyes.

AlterNet [1] / By Amanda Marcotte [2]

How Christian Delusions Are Driving the GOP Insane

October 9, 2013 |

Why aren’t Republicans more afraid? The entire premise of both the government shutdown and the threats to force the government into debt default is that Democrats care more about the consequences of these actions than the Republicans do. Republicans may go on TV and shed crocodile tears about national monuments being shut down, but the act isn’t really fooling the voters [3]: The only way to understand these fights is to understand that the GOP is threatening to destroy the government and the world economy in order to get rid of Obamacare (as well as a panoply of other right wing demands). Just as terrorists use the fact that you care more about the lives of the hostages than they do to get leverage, Republican threats rely on believing they don’t care about the consequences, while Democrats do.

So why aren’t they more afraid? Businessweek, hardly a liberal news organization, said the price of default would be [4] “a financial apocalypse” that would cause a worldwide economic depression. This is the sort of thing that affects everyone. Having a right wing ideology doesn’t magically protect your investments from crashing alongside the rest of the stock market.

The willingness of Republicans to take the debt ceiling and the federal budget hostage in order to try to extract concessions from Democrats is probably the most lasting gift that the Tea Party has granted the country. More reasonable Republican politiciansfear being primaried by Tea Party candidates [5]. A handful of wide-eyed fanatics in Congress have hijacked the party [6]. The Tea Party base and the hard right politicians driving this entire thing seem oblivious to the consequences. It’s no wonder, since so many of them---particularly those in leadership---are fundamentalist Christians whose religions have distorted their worldview until they cannot actually see what they’re doing and what kind of damage it would cause.

The press often talks about the Tea Party like they’re secularist movement that is interested mainly in promoting “fiscal conservatism”, a vague notion that never actually seems to make good on the promise to save taxpayer money. The reality is much different: The Tea Party is actually driven primarily by fundamentalist Christians whose penchant for magical thinking and belief that they’re being guided by divine forces makes it tough for them to see the real world as it is.

It’s not just that the rogue’s gallery of congress people [6] who are pushing the hardest for hostage-taking as a negotiation tactic also happens to be a bench full of Bible thumpers. Pew Research shows that people who align with the Tea Party [7] are more likely to not only agree with the views of religious conservatives, but are likely to cite religious belief as their prime motivation for their political views. White evangelicals are the religious group most likely to approve of the Tea Party. Looking over the data, it becomes evident that the “Tea Party” is just a new name for the same old white fundamentalists who would rather burn this country to the ground than share it with everyone else, and this latest power play from the Republicans is, in essence, a move from that demographic to assert their “right” to control the country, even if their politicians aren’t in power.

It’s no surprise, under the circumstances, that a movement controlled by fundamentalist Christians would be oblivious to the very real dangers that their actions present. Fundamentalist religion is extremely good at convincing its followers to be more afraid of imaginary threats than real ones, and to engage in downright magical thinking about the possibility that their own choices could work out very badly. When you believe that forcing the government into default in an attempt to derail Obamacare is the Lord’s work, it’s very difficult for you to see that it could have very real, negative effects.

It’s hard for the Christian fundamentalists who run the Republican Party now to worry about the serious economic danger they’re putting the world in, because they are swept up in worrying that President Obama is an agent of the devil and that the world is on the verge of mayhem and apocalypse if they don’t “stop” him somehow, presumably be derailing the Affordable Care Act. Christian conservatives such as Ellis Washington [8] are running around telling each other that the ACA will lead to “the systematic genocide of the weak, minorities, enfeebled, the elderly and political enemies of the God-state.” Twenty percent of Republicans believe Obama is the Antichrist [9].Washington Times columnist Jeffrey Kuhner [10] argued that Obama is using his signature health care legislation to promote “the destruction of the family, Christian culture”, and demanded that Christians “need to engage in peaceful civil disobedience against President Obama’s signature health care law”.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops joined in, demanding that the Republicans shut down the government [11] rather than let Obamacare go into effect. The excuse was their objection to the requirement that insurance make contraception available without a copayment, saying ending this requirement matters more than “serving their own employees or the neediest Americans.”

The Christian right media has been hammering home the message that Christians should oppose the Affordable Care Act. Pat Necerato of the Christian News Network accused [12] the supporters of the law of committing idolatry and accused people who want health care of being covetous. The Christian Post approvingly reported various Christian leaders [13], including Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, saying things like the health care law is “a profound attack on our liberties” and lamented “Today is the day I will tell my grandchildren about when they ask me what happened to freedom in America.”

Some in the Christian right straight up believe Obamacare portends the end times. Rick Phillips, writing for Christianity.com [14], hinted that Obamacare might be predicted in Revelations, though he held back from saying that was certain. Others are less cautious. On the right wing fundamentalist email underground, a conspiracy theory has arisen claiming that Obamacare will require all citizens to have a microchip implanted [15]. While it’s completely untrue, many Christians believe that this means the “mark of the beast” predicted in Revelations that portends the return of Christ and the end of the world.

In other words, the Christian right has worked itself into a frenzy of believing that if this health care law is implemented fully, then we are, in fact, facing down either the end of American Christianity itself or quite possibly the end times themselves. In comparison, it’s hard to be too scared by the worldwide financial collapse that they’re promising to unleash if the Democrats don’t just give up their power and let Republicans do what they want. Sure, crashing stock markets, soaring unemployment, and worldwide economic depression sounds bad, but for the Christian right, the alternative is fire and brimstone and God unleashing all sorts of hell on the world.

This is a problem that extends beyond just the immediate manufactured crisis. The Christian right has become the primary vehicle in American politics for minimizing the problems of the real world while inventing imaginary problems as distractions. Witness, for instance, the way that fundamentalist Christianity has been harnessed [16] to promote the notion that climate change isn’t a real problem. Average global temperatures are creeping up, but the majority of Christian conservatives are too worried about the supposed existential threats of abortion and gay rights to care.

Under the circumstances, it’s no surprise that it’s easy for Christian conservatives to worry more about imaginary threats from Obamacare than it is for them to worry about the very real threat to worldwide economic stability if the go along with their harebrained scheme of forcing the government into default. To make it worse, many have convinced themselves that it’s their opponents who are deluded. Take right wing Christian Senator Tom Coburn [17], who celebrated the possibility of default back in January by saying it would be a “wonderful experiment”. Being able to blow past all the advice of experts just to make stuff up you want to believe isn’t a quality that is unique to fundamentalists, but as these budget negotiations are making clear, they do have a uniquely strong ability to lie to themselves about what is and isn’t a real danger to themselves and to the world.

See more stories tagged with:

christian [18],

religion [19]

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Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/belief/how-christian-delusions-are-driving-gop-insane

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alter

1. Fund your religion classes with school vouchers, tuition tax credits or capital grants.If your religion has or can open accredited private schools, public funding prospects are growing rapidly. Thirteen states created or expanded [13] voucher programs in 2013, accelerating a trend from recent years. Vouchers allow parents to divert their children and tax dollars away from public schools and into private institutions, which then have wide religious latitude. Such a school can include classes in which children memorize sacred texts, for example, but also can infuse a religious perspective into classes as diverse as literature, history, and computer science. The opportunities aren’t limited to grade schools. In New Jersey, an Orthodox Jewish yeshiva is slated for $10.6 million in higher education grants to improve its male-only training in “Talmudic scholarship.” Mind you, the ACLU is quibbling [14].

To maximize your own public funding you may have to get creative. In Arizona any resident can divert a part of his state income tax to your school to fund a specific student. That means you need those students or their parents to get out and do the solicitation for you!

2. Get free facilities for after-school clubs in public facilities.Child Evangelism Fellowship recruits grade-school children in the U.S. and abroad to born-again Christianity. In 2001, they took a case all the way to the Supreme Court and won the right to use public school facilities for their afternoon clubs. They persuaded the justices that they were teaching moral values, rather like the Boy Scouts and other groups that have long had access to public facilities. But parents who have sat in on the clubs assure us [15] that these “values” include very specific dogmas and doctrines—things like heaven, hell and even biblical justification of genocide [16]. Last year CEF operated over 4,000 Good News Clubs [17] in public school facilities.

3. Nudge your doctrines into public school textbooks and discussions.Texas sets textbook standards for the whole country, and if a tenacious group of Texans gets their way, you may be able to move your message directly into public school curriculum. Members of the state’s textbook review panel have recommended [18] adding creationism to biology texts while reducing coverage of the dominant competing theory. You may think that their account of the creation story is mistaken; yours may be different. But in the long run, their long hard work to blur the boundary between science and myth helps the whole religious sector.

To make matter better, allies in the Texas Republican party proposed [19] a platform in 2012 that prohibited schools from teaching critical thinking skills. Others have pushed [20] to require that each high school offer “Bible as literature” electives, confident that devout teachers will know how to use the course material.

4. Support military missionaries on government salaries.Twenty to 30 years ago, evangelical Christians identified the U.S. military as a prime mission field and soldiers as potential missionaries to the world. Hundreds of evangelical and Pentecostal “endorsing” agencies began credentialing chaplains. Today, according to [21] investigative reporter Jeff Sharlet, more than two thirds of U.S. military chaplains come from one of these two traditions. They have successfully redirected female cadets into the more time-honored roles of wife and mother, shaped entertainment and education in military academies, and cultivated a cadre of officers who support their mission. TheMilitary Religious Freedom Foundation [22] has resisted some of their bold attempts to build an army of Christian soldiers, but [23] continue to serve and shape America’s fighting men and women, all on the public dime. The door for more remains open.

5. Use federal disaster relief to rebuild after “acts of God.”Thanks to lobbying by religious leaders like the Catholic bishops and the Becket Fund[24], four U.S. senators are promoting legislation that would qualify churches, mosques, temples and synagogues for federal emergency (FEMA) funds if they get damage in natural disasters. The House of Representatives approved [25] a similar measure early in the year. If you own or manage church property, it’s worth keeping your eye on this legislation. Your odds of having real estate damaged by a hurricane or earthquake may be low currently, but extreme weather events, like sea levels, appear to be on the rise. Should the bill pass, you might get to make a claim on a public insurance pool that lets religious entities skip out on the premiums.

6. Leverage historic preservation grants to rehab your real estate.If you’ll be making an investment in religious real estate as a base for operations or to attract members, you might want to do a little digging in the archives. Federal grants may be available for restoration and repairs if your church is deemed historically significant. Like many other aspects of public funding for religion, this boundary has shifted [26] in recent decades. Spending tax dollars on church buildings was ruled illegal in the 1970s but acceptable by 2003.

If you want to sell your historic church later for redevelopment, don’t worry, Jefferson’s wall of separation applies. In Washington State, for example, the Supreme Court [27] ruled that a church could to sell to the highest bidder, even though their iconic building had been designated a landmark and the deal included a likely wrecking ball. Some knives don’t cut both ways.

7. The public underwrites religious infrastructure.Some religious groups may be able to build a portfolio of real estate investments without having to contribute to public amenities, utilities, transportation, or policing. Many community services and assets get paid for by real estate owners through property taxes. But for a long time, houses of worship have been exempt, making them effectively subsidized by surrounding properties. In March 2013, pro-religion Arizona lawmakers proposed [28] to expand that exemption to all properties held by religious entities, as long as they are not producing a profit. Such a change might allow a savvy investor to sit on undeveloped or underdeveloped land without incurring the annual costs faced by other speculators. Tax exempt real estate can offer a way to invest those tithes as membership grows.

8. International aid dollars.World Vision, a multi-national with an evangelical mission [29] and employee statement of faith has built a vast loyal following largely by appending evangelistic priorities to US aid dollars. World Vision offers desperate people the basics: food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and education—with a carefully titrated dose of Biblical Christianity. Their genius lies in the fact that most of their services are funded by Americans at large.

Administrators and lawyers succeeded in persuading governmental granting agencies that World Vision is a non-proselytizing aid organization, while simultaneously persuading the courts [30] they can’t fulfill their mission with heretics among warehouse staff. In 2007, three employees sued because they were fired over their interpretation of Christianity, which was at odds with the required employee statement of faith. World Vision fought all the way to the Supreme court and won. If Harvard Business School should need a case study on how an enterprise can solicit government contracts while circumventing the Civil Rights Act and other cumbersome employment laws, this is it.

9. Administering public health facilities.With Obamacare and technology costs driving hospital mergers [31], religious healthcare corporations like Catholic Health Initiatives ($15B+ in assets) are finding that they can secure [32] monopoly positions in many communities or even entire regions [33]. This puts them in the power position when it comes to pricing services and negotiating labor contracts, which means mergers pay dividends. The Lund Report, which monitors Oregon’s healthcare system, reports [34] annual profits of $2 billion and counting for the Providence chain.

Like other sectors such as aid and education, healthcare offers an array of opportunities for religious enterprises to expand and improve their brand appeal with little of their own money at risk. Consider this: [35]

"Religious hospitals get 36% of all their revenue from Medicare [and] 12%…from Medicaid. Of the remaining 44% of funding, 31% comes from county appropriations, 30% comes from investments, and only 5% comes from charitable contributions (not necessarily religious). The percentage of church funding for church-run hospitals comes to a grand total of 0.0015 percent.

Administering health services allows a religious entity to restrict the service mix base on their beliefs [36] about what God wants. For example, in Catholic-run facilities, directives from the bishops prohibit contraception and end-of-life options [37]. Faith-related icons and outreach materials can be made available in waiting rooms. Depending on how your organization is structured, you may be able to preferentially hire members of your group and so keep the money in the family so to speak, all the while reaping the good will that comes with community service.

10. Provide safety net services to potential converts.Prisoners, addicts, single moms, pregnant teens, the elderly, foster kids...the possibilities are endless. [38] President George Bush established an Office of Faith Based Initiatives, which worked to strengthen religious organizations in their ability to provide social services. In the first year, 2005, $2.2 billion in grants were awarded to religious organizations. (Barack Obama later revamped and expanded the office, appointing a cadre of religious leaders as advisors and putting his personal spiritual guide, Joshua DuBois, at the helm.)

The savvy expansion-minded religious entrepreneur will notice that people who are the target of safety net services often are the very same people who make prime candidates for conversion. In both cases they fit the bill because the fabric of their lives has frayed and they are in need of help. From a business standpoint such a focus may seem less than ideal, but remember this: poor, desperate people are the ones who put those celebrity evangelists in their mansions.

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6) Obama is the Antichrist and plans to rule America by sharia law.Even though you’d think Obama would be getting on with this plan already instead of wasting time talking about bombing Syria, the belief that any day now a combination of sharia law and the apocalypse will be brought on by Obama still rules in Christian right circles. Public Policy Polling found that an alarming 13 percent of Americans are sure Obama [13] is the Antichrist and another 13 percent entertained the possibility. Christian right-wingers are always on the lookout for “evidence” that Obama’s secret sharia plan is about to take off, leading to headlines likes this one from Breitbart.com [14]: “Obama administration paves the way for sharia law.”

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[13] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/apr/02/americans-obama-anti-christ-conspiracy-theories

[14] http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/08/03/Obama-administration-paves-the-way-for-sharia-law

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map http://religions.pewforum.org/maps

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No Global Warming in 16 Years, Claims Christian Historian David Barton (Video)

Debunked Christian historian David Barton’s latest crusade has been fighting Common Core standards from entering the public schools in America.

7. Former Navy Chaplain: Obama is secretly creating an atheist military to attack Christians.

Former Navy Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt is full of fire and brimstone, and some would say insane paranoia, these days. Having been court-martialed for wearing his navy uniform to a protest a few years back, he is convinced of a huge conspiracy to rid the armed forces of Christians. To do this, he says Obama is amassing an atheist army to attack God-fearing Christians.

Klingenschmitt told Dove TV, “The Obama administration is stockpiling armored personnel carriers, and the Department of Homeland Security [has] billions of rounds of ammunition; who are they going to use that against? If there’s no Christians serving in the government, eventually that is all going to be turned against us.”

Other eminently sensible recent remarks from Chap. Kling according to Rightwingwatch.org: “Wendy Davis is ruled by a demon of murder and should be prosecuted,” and, “What gays do behind closed doors is not love, it’s lawlessness.”

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