How (And Why) The Right Stole Christianity

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That whole long post... was just a set up for a bad punchline?

That religion is analogous to Sony computer software- that stops you from ripping CDs but opens you up to malware?

Jeeze!

Not sure I agree with THAT metaphor!

Yes traditionally most Evangelicals are anti-dominionists meaning "believe in not imposing their religion on 'dominion' (the temporal wordly non spiritual world that includes politics). And they now are taking leave of that belief, or so it seems, to be highly political. I agree with that observation. Ironic.

There are many reasons of that current trend. One problem is the GOP doesnt have much to offer voters ...but to tell working class people "we are out to tax you more, tax the rich less, and not do a damn thing for you- except to tell you to hope for some trickle down". So in leu of real issues they focus on culture war issues like religion.

Here in Washington D.C. we are starting to get political ads from way out in West Virginia. The local W.VA candidate being advertised tells his West Virgina target audience about protecting girls from males in girls locker rooms, and he bashes his opponent for tolerating transgender events when the opponent was a college president. But I NEVER see him talk about...jobs,the economy, building West Virginia infrastructure, or about attracting industry, or even about the environment.

And, if you watched the video in the OP of this thread, it talks about how the religious right was covering for real issues that had nothing to do with religion (like how Oral Roberts University wanted to ban interracial dating).

And there other issues. Like how ever since FDR there was a widening split between Northern Democrats and Southern Democrats. But it took decades before the conservative Dixiecrats finally broke with the liberal northern democrats to join the conservative (but slightly different brand of conservatism)northern Republicans. That was the Republican Revolution of the Nineties.

Today's highly distorted cult-of-Trump version of the GOP that appeals to Christian Nationalism has more to do with Southern Democrats than with the old 'party of business' more secular northern GOP. The Koch Brothers, for example, are much too libertarian for the current Trump GOP. The Koch's officially support choice for example.

Punchline? I prefer to call it a simile. Jesus liked to say "the kingdom of heaven is like..." Well if he can use similes so can I.

Yes we know. That's why this thread is called How the Right stole Christianity instead of how Christianity stole the Right. The Right is and has always been more interested in politics than in religion. It's just that now it's found a way to make that politics appealing to church congregations who formally wouldn't give a hoot.

I didn’t watch the video, and I don’t really want to. I had a quick skim of the transcript, and it looks like the guy spends the first two and a half minutes trying to be funny before he actually gets round to presenting us with any facts or arguments.

However, from what you’re saying, it sounds to me like the guy’s main argument is almost completely opposed to reality.

Going on what I’ve previously read about the subject, it would be more accurate to say that the US establishment actually promoted Evangelical Christianity to right-wingers in the 50s and 60s precisely because Evangelical Christianity provided far less resistance than other right-wing movements did to the Establishment’s plans for racial integration and foreign intervention.

The US in the early 20th century had several right-wing movements that were not associated with Evangelical Christianity (or even any form of Christianity in some cases), like those of Charles Coughlin, Huey Long and William Dudley Pelley.

And yet, in the 50s and 60s, the US Establishment promoted the Evangelical Christian Billy Graham as a figure for the right to rally round – and Graham was a man who promoted racial integration, and worked closely with Martin Luther King.

Fast forward to the present day and your typical Evangelical Christian is a man like speaker Mike Johnson, a man who acts as if having non-Whites in his extended family is some sort of personal achievement, and a man who moronically cheers on the ethnonationalism of a group he doesn’t belong to.

How many people who complain about the right stealing Christianity actually believe in the religion?

As a right-wing atheist myself, I'd be quite happy for the Left to keep Christianity for themselves.

I personally don't like seeing Christianity being associated with the Right, since
1. There are several people out there who are sick of the antics of the Left, but who get put off joining 'the Right' when they see Rightists disputing the Theory of Evolution or babbling on about a load of Middle Eastern fairy tales.
2. People who do join the 'Christian right' get fooled into thinking they're fighting back against the Left by wearing a cross round their neck and yammering on about how 'Christ is King'.

Can you provide any evidence for your claim here?

This makes no sense to me at all. After World War II ended, the U.S.A.'s "foreign interventions" revolved around anti-Communism, which pretty near all right wingers, religious or otherwise, were on board with. Isolationism did not begin to re-emerge among right wingers, at least here in the U.S.A., until after the fall of the Soviet Union. Then, Pat Buchanan's "paleo-conservative" movement was launched.

Also, back in the 1950's, a lot of religious leaders embraced anti-Communism due to the persecution of religious people, especially evangelical Christians, in Communist countries. Here in the U.S.A., that's when "under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" began being printed on our money. "US establishment" conservatives embraced Christianity for the simple and obvious purpose of rallying support from already-sympathetic Christian leaders.

As for racial integration, Christian religious leaders were divided on that issue. In any case, once the public schools (in the American sense of that term) were de-segregated, a lot of middle-class white parents began sending their kids to segregated private schools, most of which were religious. And indeed one of the main issues that finally launched the Christian religious right wing as a distinct major organized political force, in the late 1970's, was their opposition to the loss of tax exemption for segregated religious schools.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 20 May 2024, 1:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Billy Graham was by no means a staunch ally of Martin Luther King, nor of the cause of racial integration. Graham did invite King to speak at one of his crusades. However, according to CNN, February 22, 2018:


Basically, as far as I can tell, Graham did whatever he thought would attract the most people to his crusades at any given time and place. When seeking to attract Black audiences in northern cities, he invited King. But, when preaching to southern whites, he accepted segregation.