One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America
the carefully engineered blend we are revisiting.(I was born in 1951)
And yet here we are AGAIN!
Concerned that populist politics might endanger their wealth, America’s monied interests did what they do best: They bought a solution. It came in the form of James W. Fifield Jr., a Congregationalist pastor who made his fortune in Southern California by preaching to the fabulously wealthy and accepting their patronage. Fifield, Kruse notes, was especially gifted at assuring wealthy Christians that their riches were evidence of virtue rather than vice. A philosophical descendant of Max Weber, Fifield married Christian thought with a new era of economic development, and spread the gospel through his organization, Spiritual Mobilization. Its mission was simple: to stamp out Christian support for a generous welfare state—which paired naturally with New Deal concern for the poor, elderly, and vulnerable—and to advance a new theory of Christian libertarianism.
Illustration by Tim Bower
Spiritual Mobilization sought to influence ministers across the country, and with its bottomless monetary resources, it was doomed to success. Kruse’s account is startling in part because of just how vulgar the whole affair was: Christianity was rented out, quite consciously, to buttress a shambling narrative about the continued dominance of the monied class in a performance that even Marx would have found blunt.
As the middle of the twentieth century approached, Spiritual Mobilization circulated literature touting the righteousness of the libertarian-Christian gospel, and, in 1951, decided to host a series of events celebrating the newly minted notion of “freedom under God.” A turn of phrase coined by Fifield himself, the rhetoric was a hit, and private companies voraciously reproduced it; the Utah Power & Light Company, among others, printed ads and funded festivities to advance the notion that Christian deference to industry is a vital part of the American Way. This stew of supply-side economics, small government, hard-core U.S. patriotism, and Christian rhetoric was entirely novel, and smashingly effective. When we look back now on the McCarthy era and find Christian verses interwoven with tirades against communism, this is the carefully engineered blend we are revisiting.
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the rest:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121564/gods-and-profits-how-capitalism-and-christianity-aligned-america
= new reply since forum marked as read
But with the spokes people they have - Sarah Palin, Ted Nugent, Joel Osteen, the Duck Dynasty idiots, the celebrity will always over power their ability to think rationally. Until that happens though, it's going to be same shit, different day unfortunately. 
to win democratic elections without the help of large numbers of suckers. Hmm...where to find large numbers of suckers...
Suckers roped, now how to make all that oligarch money--not ideas--the most important factor in democratic elections...hmm...
Side note: About a month ago, I came across his work, and was so impressed that I considered doing an OP about it... OP's are something I rarely do, since I usually don't have the time to tend to them. Thank you kpete for reminding me to look this guy up again! 
YouTube description:
Uploaded on Feb 26, 2012
Kevin Kruse, associate professor of history at Princeton University, delivers the back story ("One Nation Under God: Corporate Interests, Christianity, and the Rise of Religious Nationalism in America"
on the rise of the religious right and the social movement's intersections with corporate America and matters of human rights, as part of Emory's J. Harvey Young Lecture in American History (Feb. 17, 2012). The talk also served as the keynote address for the first-ever Atlanta Graduate Student Conference in U.S. History.
