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Review: One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin M Kruse
Collection of thoughts on the book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin M Kruse. I tweeted using the hashtag #1NationUnder.
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Web page for the book by the publisher.
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Full detailsFrom an award-winning historian, the story of how in the middle of the 20th century, corporate titans and evangelical activists rewrote history and created the pervasive myth that America was, is, and always will be a fundamentally Christian nation. We're often told that the United States is, was, and always has been a Christian nation.
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Use worldcat.org to find a library near you which carries the book.
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One nation under God : how corporate America invented Christian AmericaGet this from a library! One nation under God : how corporate America invented Christian America. [Kevin Michael 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.
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You can follow the author on Twitter.
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Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) | TwitterThe latest Tweets from Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse). Historian, author most recently of One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (Basic Books, April 2015) http://t.co/WGoxH8m9kU. Princeton, NJ
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Our Augusta, Georgia chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State discussed this book as part of the Establishment Clause Book Club. We were divided on the question ofwhether the author proved the hypothesis of the book’s subtitle. Did corporate America “invent” Christian America? And even if USA oligarchs conspired to promote “Christian America,” wasn’t America already leaning that way to the extent it adopted this idea?
My position was that we should not get too hung up on the subtitle’s claim, since the main object of a book title is to sell the book. My opinion is that USA oligarchs did seek to promote Christian Libertarianism, and what Kruse demonstrates is that many people in the United States adopted the Christian part without the Libertarianism part. Thus, the USA inserted “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance, but it hasn’t (yet) rolled back all aspects of the New Deal, like Social Security.
The most serious impact the marriage of oligarch and religion on our polity is a dumbing down of the population and the substitution of wishful religious proclamations for pursuit of policies demanding national sacrifice based on considerations of fairness and quality science. So when a school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut claims the lives of 26 children and employees in an elementary school, some people decided it was because God didn’t protect them after we “kicked God out of public schools.” We don’t want to deal with greenhouse gas emissions because it would require to us to turn the temperature on our air conditioner units from 72° to 78°. Quelle horreur!
As you review the passages I’ve excerpted from this book,consider how religious proclamations among various religious communities promote specific policies. If religion matters to you, are those policies supportive of the poor and marginalized, or are they in service to the wealthy and powerful? -
#1NationUnder Surah 5, ayat 62-3 condemns clergy who concern themselves with pleasing the powerful & acquiring wealth pic.twitter.com/MSDFHrUfCg -
#USA post-WW2 religious revival: nearly 50% increase in religion institution affiliation #1NationUnder #history pic.twitter.com/G81mQATcbN -
#1NationUnder Industrialists' PR efforts against labor & New Deal ineffective through 1930s&40s #propaganda #USA pic.twitter.com/QHv5gceXdE -
#1NationUnder #FDR used language of late 19th c #socialgospel to promote #NewDeal policies #USA #history #religion pic.twitter.com/fHCppmmihb -
#1NationUnder 1940 James Fifield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W._Fifield_Jr …. attckd #socialgospel, calld 4 religion-business partnership pic.twitter.com/0jDtCFGdB7 -
#1NationUnder James Fifield was theologically liberal & politically conservative. He also maintained wealth & virtue were compatible p10
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#1NationUnder Oil man & theological conservative J Howard Pew supported Fifield despite doctrinal differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Howard_Pew …
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#1NationUnder p17 Alfred Haake helped frame #welfarestate as threat to #clergy as a profession http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/corporate-america-invented-religious-right-conservative-roosevelt-princeton-117030_Page2.html#.VbzklvlVhBc … #Religion #History
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#1NationUnder Evangelist Billy Graham embraced business, shunned organized labor Read: http://tl.gd/n_1sn6cqf
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#1NationUnder Founder of Prayer Breakfast Movement was Anti-Labor Activist Read: http://tl.gd/n_1sn6crj
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#1NationUnder #Seattle Prayer Breakfast Gathered its Leading Industrialists Read: http://tl.gd/n_1sn6cs3
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#1NationUnder p72 After Eisenhower, religion would no longer be used to tear down the central state but instead to prop it up. (1/2)
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#1NationUnder Piety and patriotism became one and the same, love of God and love of country conflated to the core. (2/2)
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#1NationUnder Hotel magnate Conrad Hilton commissioned painting emphasizing #USA relationship to religion #Eisenhower pic.twitter.com/ChW0O14ki8 -
#1NationUnder Eisenhower saw religious revival as #1 domestic priority, not rollback of #NewDeal #USA #history pic.twitter.com/hP5q6XiiA5 -
#1NationUnder Does @KevinMKruse think #oligarchy has lost control of its fanatical religious supporters, like Cersei? http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Sparrows
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#1NationUnder Eisenhower entrenched #NewDeal & suffused state w religion, to chagrin of #USA #oligarchy supporters pic.twitter.com/taK9RYovHM -
#1NationUnder @MadMen_AMC not show this "advertising industry discovered religion as a means of professional salvation" post-Depression p130
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#1NationUnder p132 1949 Advertising Council launchd "Religion in American Life" campaign 1) religion basis of American life 2) attend church
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#1NationUnder p138 "Churches r beginning 2 advertise their product & t result is that they r selling it." #MadMen @MadMen_AMC #religion #USA
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#1NationUnder p224 Would Becker Amendment pass today? #USA #history #schoolprayer #EstablishmentClause #clergy vs #laypeople
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#1NationUnder Merle Haggard performed Silent Majority anthem at Billy Graham's 1970 Honor America Day https://youtu.be/ZHAFmFsb9XM
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#1NationUnder legendary director Cecil B DeMille followed a familiar path to religious nationalism in the postwar era pic.twitter.com/oOc4rCdn3z -
#1NationUnder Fred Schwarz, early 1960s, promoted #Christianity as bulwark against international communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Schwarz … #USA
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#1NationUnder Many laymen disagreed with denominational leaders' approval of #SCOTUS rulings on #schoolprayer #USA pic.twitter.com/sPekePz94k -
#1NationUnder Fred Schwarz thought roots of communism was atheism #Christianity #USA #History pic.twitter.com/xrO1wxdDgd -
#1NationUnder #USA denominations' leaders decided mandated #schoolprayer weakens religion's moral authority #history pic.twitter.com/1bhYPLPPRG -
#1NationUnder Dr. Edwin H Tuller, head of American Baptist Convention, opposed #schoolprayer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRUYmqEp5FY … pic.twitter.com/ZLYNtMB3xM -
#1NationUnder Rev Eugene Carson Blake of United Presbyterian Church opposed #schoolprayer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Carson_Blake … pic.twitter.com/vNv1N77TBk -
#1NationUnder Rev William Morrison: state-ordained prayer "a theological caricature at best or a theological monstrosity at worst." p219
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#1NationUnder Bishop John Wesley Lord of Methodist Church #schoolprayer --> "Biblical illiterates" & profaned worship pic.twitter.com/tEoWUPQpIL -
#1NationUnder Illinois Sen Dirksen foresaw religious mobilization along political rather than denominational lines pic.twitter.com/0uet1ICgMP -
#1NationUnder Reinhold Niebuhr criticizd Nixon courtship of clergy http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=454 … #Religion #State #theocracy pic.twitter.com/HPEPowBClE -
#1NationUnder President Reagan avg 3 trips to church/yr but faithfully attended public religiosity such as the National Prayer Breakfast
