The Christian Impact on American Politics was at least partly created by, and largely serves, Conservative/GOP politics. How was this connection established?(video link):
One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (w/ Kevin Kruse)
"Princeton Professor and author of One Nation Under God: How Corporate
America Invented Christian America, explains how Christian America is
rooted in the corporate reaction against the New Deal. How corporations
hired ministers to help destroy the New Deal. What is Christian
libertarianism? How “The Family” was founded and was rooted in the
corporations war against labor. Why Dwight Eisenhower accepted and even
expanded the New Deal while embracing the language of the religious
right. The National Prayer Breakfast and “God’s law” coming before
America’s laws. How Ronald Reagan completed the counter revolution and
why the movement is alive and well in the modern Republican Party…."
"Without faith in the government to help lift the poor out of poverty
or prevent the middle class from slipping away, desperate and frightened
people seek help in the supernatural of religion or in the supernatural
odds of the lottery (odds of winning on a single ticket are 1 in 175
million). It’s hard not to be sympathetic. Americans have always had difficulty reconciling the lofty pursuit of
spiritual enlightenment with the worldly hunger for material
prosperity, especially if the former rejects the latter. We want to win,
even if winning means we lose something even more valuable not tangible
because our fame-mongering, social-media-driven culture tells us we
haven’t won unless everyone else acknowledges it. (If someone does a
good deed in the forest and no one’s around, is it still a good deed?
Not anymore.) But how does one keep score in the spirituality game?
According to the purveyors of prosperity gospel, your friends and
neighbors will know how righteous you are by the size of your bank
account and the make of your car. In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, he says, “And if any man will sue thee
at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also”
(Matthew 5:40). The coat was considered to be a shirt while the cloak
was a crucial garment to protect against the elements. Combined with
Jesus’ admonishment to turn the other cheek when struck, we see a
teaching that is establishing the basis for Christianity: Tend to what
is permanent (the soul) over what is temporary (material goods). To
expect an earthly reward other than purity of mind would go against
these teachings. Yet those pimping the prosperity gospel are preaching
the opposite."
Kareem Abdul Jabbar ---- A man as honest and insightful in life as he was athletically-gifted in his spectacular career.
