These assertions triggered some thoughts:
"America isn't a Christian nation. It is a capitalist nation that has used Christianity as a tool for profit and it continues to do so."
The statement is highly consistent with historical, sociological, and legal trajectory of the US. It is reductive but captures a dominant reality: American Christianity and American capitalism have fused. The latter usually shapes and controls the former. In particular, the current legal trajectory of American Christianity is it imposition by the six Christian theocrats that dominate the USSC. They are well on their way to imposing Christian religious belief and rights above all other rights. That is theocracy, the opposite of secularism.
Forgotten and distorted history
As is always prudent when thinking about unregulated capitalism, an inherently immoral, authoritarian endeavor, keeping an eye on where power and wealth tends to flow helps keep less distorted reality in sight. Contrary to the popular narrative of a linear religious founding, the modern concept of America as a unified "Christian Nation" was significantly engineered in the mid-20th century as a political weapon against the New Deal. The capitalists of the time, just like the ones now, hated the New Deal.
Historians have documented the rise of the Christian Libertarian Alliance. In the 1930s and 40s, corporate leaders operating under the National Association of Manufacturers allied with conservative clergy to rebrand unregulated capitalism as a core tenet of Christianity.
Those elites didn't just reframe capitalism, they reframed freedom. Their alliance sought to dismantle the New Deal's freedom from want, which implied government welfare. That was to be replaced by freedom of contract and freedom of unregulated markets. By linking capitalism to God's will, they successfully framed government regulation not just as bad economics, but as pagan statism and other very bad things.
The result was no surprise. Integrating Under God into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, and In God We Trust as the national motto in 1956, were not returns to 1776. They were but Cold War-era branding exercises that sanctified the American capitalist economic system against godless communism.
The claim that Christianity has been used as a tool for profit is most visibly validated by the systematic transformation of religious holidays into engines of consumer spending. In the 19th century, Department stores like Macy's, and Wanamaker's transformed Christmas from a religious feast with a rowdy carnival to a domestic, gift-giving mandate.
Santa Claus was standardized by Thomas Nast and Coca-Cola marketing to drive 4th quarter retail solvency.
Similarly, in the 1870s, milliners and clothiers converted Easter from a religious observance of the resurrection of Jesus into a spectacle of new spring clothing. The Easter Parade was started as a display of new spring clothing, not a religious procession. In the 1980s, capitalism sink its claws into Halloween and transformed it from a localized prank night into a multi-billion dollar season by candy manufacturers and costume retailers. It's now the second-largest commercial holiday.
Sacred rest vs. sacred retail hours
Arguably, the repeal of nationwide Sunday Blue Laws is the smoking gun for the dominance of capitalism over Christianity. When the religious imperative to keep the Sabbath holy clashed with the commercial imperative to maximize retail hours, the laws were repealed across the country. The Christian Nation effectively voted that shopping was more sacred than holy rest.
Regarding the flow of power and wealth
Finally, what about the flow power and wealth? Also no surprise there.
In recent decades, the language of religious freedom has been weaponized to transfer power from the public sphere to private corporations. The USSC invented the corporate "soul" in its 2014 Hobby Lobby decision. The USSC’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby was a critical turning point. By granting closely held corporations rights previously reserved for human beings, including the right to a religious conscience, the court allowed commercial entities to opt out of a number of federal laws. The law that triggered that lawsuit specifically, was the Obamacare's contraception mandate.
The
Hobby Lobby decision granted corporate owners commercial interest the power to override the public interest, e.g., universal healthcare access, by claiming
a religious shield. It is not It is not merely the case that the state is becoming religious. More importantly, corporations are adopting the legal privileges of religion to evade state regulation. and social obligations.
Circling back to the opening assertions, America isn't a Christian nation. It is a capitalist nation that has used Christianity as a tool for profit and it continues to do so, one can argue that the statements are accurate from a both a sociological and a historical perspective. Yes indeed, millions of Americans practice a genuine, non-commercial faith. But that does not change the fact that the institutional function of Christianity in American society has been that of a chaplain and quiet enforcer supporting capitalism's wealth and power goals.
And us deceived and betrayed taxpayers are supporting and empowering it, whether we know it or not, or if we do, whether we like it or not.
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