Discussion for article #239768
Welcome to the end-game of the Maximal (White) Prosperity Gospel. Donald Trump is the new High Priest. Be wary ye Apostates.
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This article is a very good analysis of the history of the evangelical foray into politics beginning in the mid-70âs. Iâd be interested in Schlozmanâs comments on the rejection of Jimmy Carter by evangelicals, given that he was the most overtly evangelical president weâve ever had, and whose ascendancy coincided with the rise of the âMoral Majority.â
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Great article!
Time to give the âEvil Gipperâ his due.
He couldnât win without the extreme, crazy right, so he embraced them. Thirty five years later, after the evils wrought by extreme zealots, trickle down, unnecessary military buildup, rise of the NRA, dismanteling of welfare, expansion of segragation and bigotry, âhis and Nancyâs War on Drugsâ, hypocrisy of his mismanagement of the government he peached to dismantel, we are left with the ravages to our nation and culture.
America took the wrong turn in the election of 1980. If only we elected the true christian.
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Probably thatâs covered in his book. Iâd imagine it would have to do with Carterâs stand on integration of public schools, and his rather âliberalâ stances on separation of church and state.
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Americans have become less Christian and more secular.
The net result of the forey of Christians who wear their religion on their sleeve into politics has been that I no longer view my church as a source of training in integrity and honesty. Now it is just another Republican faction; the people who gave George W. Bush 8 years to dismantle my country; and the people who will vote for any dishonest creep who will say the words âagainst abortionâ.
I donât think I am alone. My home church now looks depopulated and aged, and itâs having trouble paying itâs bills.
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Chris Hitchens summed it up perfectly: Religion Poisons Everything.
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Religionists, pay up, reparations are due. Nobody did more to destroy the Union than President Wrapped in a Flag and Carrying a Bible Ronnie. A shyster from the start. He should be posthumously impeached.
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Go$pel of Pro$periterians written by Chri$harians to reflect their FamilyValue$$$$.
Je$u$ $aves at Bank of AmericaâŚwhere the $$$$$$miraculously self-deports to offshore bank accountsâŚ
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Very similar to the conservative evangelical christians taking over the southern baptist convention from more moderate christians, e.g. conservatives donât believe that women should not preside over men or be ordained whereas most moderate baptist think women are pretty much equal to men. Carter is a moderate christian, thatâs why the evangelicals rejected him and his presidency.
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There was a really good series on PBS called âGod in Americaâ that did an excellent job with this if anyone is interested.
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A match made at the gates of hell. Christians and the GOP. You will receive your due reward.
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Iâm afraid youâre being very naive here. The evangelicals are dug in deeper and deeper:
School vouchers - a method whereby the parent receives funds and can choose a school. Evangelicals choose evangelical schools that have sprung up to take that money. And teach Intelligent Design and all the rest.
Faith-based Initiatives - Federal money for institutions vaguely described as helping people, something the government can do a lot better. Proselytizing for Pay.
Partnership for a drug-free America - provides schools with a couple of thousand dollars a year for assembly programs. GWB closed down the assembly program industry in Texas for one year and weeded out the non-religious groups.
Military - Using the religious positions in the different arms to convert soldiers. See the Air Force Colorado Springs scandal of a few years ago.
IRS - I worked with a guy who has never paid taxes. When a letter comes, he takes it to his pastor and it goes away. Evangelicals are aligned with the small government movement and they are working within these institutions with the object of tilting them to the favor of their âback of the busâ buddies.
The first people to arrive in this country were radical Christians. What makes anyone think they ever let up?
They will take your tax dollar and use it to convert your children. Thatâs their goal. They want the money, and they want your family, and they are corrupt beyond belief.
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Iâm puzzled that the summary elides over George âWâ who was an evangelical in the White House. Surely that was a moment of âvictoryâ as he was selected by the Supreme Court.
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The Christian Right emerged from school desegregationâand forged a movement around taxes and religious freedom.
Hmmmm. Goes back deeper than that. In the wreckage of the Nixon administration imploding, Paul Weyrich persuaded Joseph Coors (of the beer family fortune) and Edwin Feulner to put money into a new little enterprise, the Heritage Foundation, in 1973. It was meant to counter liberal views on taxation and regulation, which they considered to be âanti-businessâ and communist/socialist in nature. While the organization was at first only minimally influential, it has grown into one of the worldâs largest public policy research institutes and has been hugely influential in advancing conservative policies. The following year, again with support from Coors, Weyrich and Bill Bright (founder of Campus Crusade for Christ) founded the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress (CSFC), a rabid anti-union group that trained and mobilized conservative activists, recruited conservative candidates, and raised funds for conservative causes.
Under Weyrich, the CSFC proved highly innovative. It was among the first grassroots organizations to raise funds extensively through direct mail campaigns. It also was one of the first organizations to tap into evangelical Christian churches as places to recruit and cultivate activists and support for social conservative causes. In 1977, Weyrich co-founded Christian Voice with Robert Grant. Two years later, with Jerry Falwell, he founded the Moral Majority.
I wrote a piece about Creating the anti-Gay/far-right Movement from Beer and a deacon back in 2004 (yikes, over a decade ago) over at the Great Orange Satanâ˘:
Creating the anti-Gay/far-right Movement
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In 1976 Richard Viguerie and Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress (CSFC) were Orrin Hatchâs fundraisers and he received funding and support from key right-wing groups, soliciting their affiliation, as well as being backed and supported by Joseph Coors which allowed and proved the organizational skills of CSFC. Viguerieâs direct mail methods allowed them to bypass the media, and go directly into the homes of targeted conservative groups. Viguerie had watched conservative groups like the John Birch Society, with its open expressions of racism and anti-Semitism, fail after tapping out their limited base and reaching over-ambitiously for power. The most logical candidates for targeting, he understood, were evangelical churches, which had the potential to surpass organized labor (and fracturing part off and absorbing it) and could conceivably become the most powerful interest group in American politics. While they had limited flirtations and sporadic success in taping religious evangelicals that changed in 1977 when they hit liquid sunshine in the form of mother, celebrity singer, former Miss America, and spokeswoman for the Florida Citrus GrowersâŚAnita Bryant.
In a 1977 fund-raising letter targeting the evangelicals and filled with passages underlined in red, she wrote: âDear friend: I donât hate the homosexuals! But as a mother, I must protect my children from their evil influence. When the homosexuals burn the holy Bible in public, how can I stand by silently?â Like those of a host of her antigay successors, Bryantâs fund-raising appeals would fail to identify which gays had burned a Bible or where, but it tapped into the most primal buttons people have, sex and protecting children.
The antigay group, Save Our Children, Inc. was started and the tactics would establish the tone and strategy of the gay rights battles for the Religious-RightTM whihc would carry on long after Bryantâs well-publicized divorce destroyed her âmoralâ credibility, and dropped out of politics. In response to passage of a 1977 Dade County, Florida, ordinance protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination, Save Our Children, fronted by Bryant launched an initiative drive to overturn it. After her ballot initiative passed by an almost 2 to 1 margin in the conservative bible-belt of the south, Weyrich and crew âsaw the lightâ at how to tap the base they were looking for.
Now they needed to marry the money with the message that they found the model for which worked at driving scared voters to the ballot box and also prompted them to write the checks and pass the plate. Now Weyrich needed a way to rally the âChristian Soldiersâ to battle with a threat that homosexuals were at the gates and ready to molest their children.
They also needed a way to start plugging in Christian evangelical groups into their model of a fear-based voting bloc, fighting the new boogeyman, which they also saw as a way to replace the communists which didnât resonate any longer as an insidious threat to the home and children. This new threat, which Save Our Children proved worked, was now the social issue equivalent of Sputnik.
So, in 1979 Weyrich formed the Religious Roundtable under Ed McAteer as the far-right counterpart to the National Council of Churches. They later arranged a meeting with Jerry Falwell, and Howard Phillips, to set Falwell up as media spokesman for the organization they had devisedâŚ
âŚThe Moral Majority.
Weyrich also provided the organizationâs first executive director, Robert Billings.
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Simple, he had a (D) behind his name and he did not have a wadded up sheet in the back of his pickup.
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St RayGun got away with the exact same things that nearly got Nixon impeached. Our ever loving media decided the people could not survive another shock to the system so let him walk and waffle his way out of anything. Saying he was a Teflon president was very true because people refused to do their jobs. The MSM has been following that mantra ever since, they refuse to question and allow those they anoint to skate. If on the other hand the MSM does not like you, or I should say you donât kiss their ass, then they make things up in an effort to bring you down. Such as the NYT fight with both Bill and Hillary Clinton, lies, lies and damn lies made up about a minor bump that 99.9999999999% of us would never feel.
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And the new ghost written book out by oreilly is âKilling Reaganâ. I shit you not, another paean to St Ronnie of ray gun. A man among men, and one of the few that sat out the big one.
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Religion was deliberately denied a seat at our governmental table. Our founders wanted it kept as far from our government as they could throw it.
What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient allies.
â James Madison
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