On Christian Mission to Top (Evangelicals moving up, incl. to Ivy League)

From the New York Times continuing series on class in America:

On a Christian Mission to the Top
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: May 22, 2005


....The growing power and influence of evangelical Christians is manifest everywhere these days, from the best-seller lists to the White House, but in fact their share of the general population has not changed much in half a century. Most pollsters agree that people who identify themselves as white evangelical Christians make up about a quarter of the population, just as they have for decades.

What has changed is the class status of evangelicals. In 1929, the theologian H. Richard Niebuhr described born-again Christianity as the "religion of the disinherited." But over the last 40 years, evangelicals have pulled steadily closer in income and education to mainline Protestants in the historically affluent establishment denominations. In the process they have overturned the old social pecking order in which "Episcopalian," for example, was a code word for upper class, and "fundamentalist" or "evangelical" shorthand for lower.

Evangelical Christians are now increasingly likely to be college graduates and in the top income brackets. Evangelical C.E.O.'s pray together on monthly conference calls, evangelical investment bankers study the Bible over lunch on Wall Street and deep-pocketed evangelical donors gather at golf courses for conferences restricted to those who give more than $200,000 annually to Christian causes.

Their growing wealth and education help explain the new influence of evangelicals in American culture and politics. Their buying power fuels the booming market for Christian books, music and films. Their rising income has paid for construction of vast mega-churches in suburbs across the country. Their charitable contributions finance dozens of mission agencies, religious broadcasters and international service groups....

***

Now a few affluent evangelicals are directing their attention and money at some of the tallest citadels of the secular elite: Ivy League universities. Three years ago a group of evangelical Ivy League alumni formed the Christian Union, an organization intended to "reclaim the Ivy League for Christ," according to its fund-raising materials, and to "shape the hearts and minds of many thousands who graduate from these schools and who become the elites in other American cultural institutions."...


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/national/class/EVANGELICALS-FINAL.html?pagewanted=all

I'm convinced that the Anti-Christ will come out of the evangelical Christian sect!!!

:sarcasm:

finally sold their souls to the devil!! THAT is how they got this wealthy and powerful...it sure wasn't through tolerance, love, generosity to the impoverished, forgiveness or humility.

:kick::kick::kick:

most go to ORU or Pat Robertson's Regents Univ

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. KJV

It seems it may not be simply an unholy union. What if the Religious Right controls many or most of the big businesses? How do you have them turn on one another if they are the same entity?

business types and the padded-suited snake handling fundies

so if they do go all fundamentalist on us, they are only returning to their roots.