Prior to James W. Fifield’s ( Wikipedia ) ministry in 1940 (and his debt from building the first megachurch), feeding the hungry was such a critical part of Christian ideology that our industrialists didn’t even think about looking to religion to back their preferred economic model (in which they were very rich, as per the Hoover administration and the great depression. Good times!) In fact the industrialists were super resentful of FDR’s New Deal measures, which Roosevelt enacted to prevent a communist revolution. (Life for the proletariat really sucked, and did not make capitalism look good at all.)
Fifield reinterpreted scripture to do away with all the beatitudes and rhetoric about feeding the hungry, uplifting the poor and welcoming the immigrant and the stranger as a way to draw millionaire parishioners (and millionaire tithes) so he could pay for his new church. This was the primordial ooze from which modern Christian nationalism emerged not only linking American exceptionalism and anti-communism to Christianity, but also making Christianity an ideology of guns, low taxes and rugged individualism, the John Wayne era of Christianity.
Behind the Bastards discusses this in How The Rich Ate Christianity two-parter. Then Jerry Falwell was driven by the one-two punch of segregation ending and interracial marriage becoming decriminalized, and he developed the Moral Majority, a religious based (white Christian nationalist) voting bloc that was driven by a single point, specifically abortion. In fact, the Pro-Life anti-abortion sector really just didn’t want slutty young American women to have reproductive rights so they would suffer (hence our complete failure to consider children’s welfare until after we noticed animals had more rights than kids. Even then, development’s been a slow crawl.)
With the Moral Majority voting bloc in place that would vote for any anti-abortion Republican, Falwall was able to get Reagan into power with a landslide. Soon lobbyists were unlocked; labor was suppressed; anti-trust suits were dropped; wall-street greed became good and the express train to white-power one-party US autocracy was established and we’ve been on that train ever since.
(So when you encounter Reagan-Bush Republicans who don’t like Trump much, remember that they actively vote for policies that create the conditions in the US that are fecund for charismatic strongmen to take over their party, and another one will, and these guys will probably MAGA up behind the new guy. Until then, everyone they offer will be about as interesting as Mitt Romney or Ted Cruz.)
All this is to say the current state of Christianity, associated with guns and flamboyant wealth and hypermasculinity and hating LGBT+ and tradwives (and quivers-full) was actively cultivated since the early 20th century. It also shows that scripture can and will be shaped into what plutocrats and ministers what it to be, which de-legitimizes the scripture-and-church system that is allegedly God-approved to spread His word. If there was a true word-of-God, it would be more resistant to alteration by ownership-class interests. The Great Commission would be much more effective in getting strangers on board, and the movement wouldn’t experience so many apostates or failing regimes.
The history of Christianity makes for its indictment.
Prior to James W. Fifield’s ( Wikipedia ) ministry in 1940 (and his debt from building the first megachurch), feeding the hungry was such a critical part of Christian ideology that our industrialists didn’t even think about looking to religion to back their preferred economic model (in which they were very rich, as per the Hoover administration and the great depression. Good times!) In fact the industrialists were super resentful of FDR’s New Deal measures, which Roosevelt enacted to prevent a communist revolution. (Life for the proletariat really sucked, and did not make capitalism look good at all.)
Fifield reinterpreted scripture to do away with all the beatitudes and rhetoric about feeding the hungry, uplifting the poor and welcoming the immigrant and the stranger as a way to draw millionaire parishioners (and millionaire tithes) so he could pay for his new church. This was the primordial ooze from which modern Christian nationalism emerged not only linking American exceptionalism and anti-communism to Christianity, but also making Christianity an ideology of guns, low taxes and rugged individualism, the John Wayne era of Christianity.
Behind the Bastards discusses this in How The Rich Ate Christianity two-parter. Then Jerry Falwell was driven by the one-two punch of segregation ending and interracial marriage becoming decriminalized, and he developed the Moral Majority, a religious based (white Christian nationalist) voting bloc that was driven by a single point, specifically abortion. In fact, the Pro-Life anti-abortion sector really just didn’t want slutty young American women to have reproductive rights so they would suffer (hence our complete failure to consider children’s welfare until after we noticed animals had more rights than kids. Even then, development’s been a slow crawl.)
With the Moral Majority voting bloc in place that would vote for any anti-abortion Republican, Falwall was able to get Reagan into power with a landslide. Soon lobbyists were unlocked; labor was suppressed; anti-trust suits were dropped; wall-street greed became good and the express train to white-power one-party US autocracy was established and we’ve been on that train ever since.
(So when you encounter Reagan-Bush Republicans who don’t like Trump much, remember that they actively vote for policies that create the conditions in the US that are fecund for charismatic strongmen to take over their party, and another one will, and these guys will probably MAGA up behind the new guy. Until then, everyone they offer will be about as interesting as Mitt Romney or Ted Cruz.)
All this is to say the current state of Christianity, associated with guns and flamboyant wealth and hypermasculinity and hating LGBT+ and tradwives (and quivers-full) was actively cultivated since the early 20th century. It also shows that scripture can and will be shaped into what plutocrats and ministers what it to be, which de-legitimizes the scripture-and-church system that is allegedly God-approved to spread His word. If there was a true word-of-God, it would be more resistant to alteration by ownership-class interests. The Great Commission would be much more effective in getting strangers on board, and the movement wouldn’t experience so many apostates or failing regimes.
The history of Christianity makes for its indictment.