Freedom under God

The NPR program Fresh Air interviewed Kevin Kruse about his new book One Nation Under God, How Corporate America Invented Christian America. A title like that definitely caught my attention. Kruse started writing about how the phrase "In God We Trust" was added to American money in the 1950s. The more he researched the more he realized important threads to the story went back a couple more decades. The quotes below are from the "highlights" on the interview's webpage.

The story begins in the 1930s with the New Deal. This empowered unions and regulated businesses in ways that hadn't been done before. That annoyed business leaders so they launched a PR campaign to sell the values of (unrestricted) capitalism. It flopped. Jim Farley, head of the Democratic Party at the time, described the companies behind the campaign this way:

They ought to call it The American Cellophane League, because No. 1: It's a DuPont product, and No. 2: You can see right through it.

DuPont was a leader in the campaign.

How else to get their point across? Outsource it to ministers, the most trusted men in America. The corporate bosses helped preachers equate Christianity and capitalism and to equate the New Deal with evil. The first equation:

Essentially they argue that Christianity and capitalism are both systems in which individuals rise and fall according to their own merits. So in Christianity, if you're good you go to heaven, if you're bad you go to hell. In capitalism if you're good you make a profit and you succeed, if you're bad you fail.

The New Deal, they argue, violates this natural order.

Ah yes, the fallacy that the more money one has the more moral one is. Conservatives are still spouting this one.

The second equation comes from the Ten Commandments:

[The New Deal] makes a false idol of the federal government and encourages Americans to worship it rather than the Almighty. It encourages Americans to covet what the wealthy have; it encourages them to steal from the wealthy in the forms of taxation; and, most importantly, it bears false witness against the wealthy by telling lies about them. So they argue that the New Deal is not a manifestation of God's will, but rather, a form of pagan stateism and is inherently sinful.

I don't know how the New Deal encourages the worship of the federal gov't, but I've heard that line many times since used against any law that has a whiff of liberalism. As for telling lies about the wealthy, I suspect what was actually said was a truth the wealthy didn't want to be known.

A key player in this religious campaign is Rev. James Fifield of First Congregational Church in Los Angeles. His congregation had a high number of millionaires, so he told them what they wanted to hear.

He says that reading the Bible should be like eating fish: We take out the bones to enjoy the meat; all parts are not of equal value. Accordingly, he disregarded Christ's many injunctions about the dangers of wealth, and instead preached a philosophy that wedded capitalism to Christianity.

Quite the contrast to the churches that demand one must obey the full Bible (to make sure the parts that justify discrimination of gay people are included). This sounds like the modern "prosperity Gospel" that says a believer will become rich, though the only one to manage the trick is the pastor. See here about what the Bible says about the dangers of wealth – one of the key messages of the Bible because the love of wealth is so destructive to community.

Fifield, with a generous corporate backing, recruited lots of pastors – 17,000 – to the campaign. There are, of course, slogans: "Freedom Under God" (not slavery to the state) and "the American way of life." There are soon radio programs and magazines and big public celebrations (one organized by Cecil B. DeMille).

This equation of Christianity with capitalism was successful, though not in dismantling the New Deal. It also lasted a lot longer than the corporate backers needed it to, becoming a big part of American Christianity that still persists. It was this branch of Christian thought that created the National Prayer Breakfast, which Eisenhower attended and no president since then has dared not attend. It also prompted the phrase "under God" be added to the Pledge and "In God We Trust" to be put on our money. The movement got a boost from the Cold War that was portrayed as Christian America against the godless Commies. That was part of the fusion of piety and patriotism.

The movement also launched the career of Rev. Billy Graham. Some of what he said was a delight to corporations: A good Christian would not join a union to avoid taking advantage of the boss (no matter the reason for unions was to prevent the boss from taking advantage of the workers).

There was one more effort by this movement – to approve an amendment to the Constitution legalizing Christian prayer in public schools. The effort was widely popular. But many pastors condemned it, saying it promoted a watered-down, lowest common denominator style of religion. This one failed.

Alas, this movement that badly misinterprets the Bible is still going strong, and still the source of a great deal of mischief in America and its politics.