Two Decades of Christian Nationalist Education Paved Way for Today's War on Labor

Biblical Capitalism - Part Three

While some religious leaders have come together to voice support for public employees in Wisconsin, others view the attack on the public sector and unions as a holy war. Fundamentalist textbooks and other media have been used for indoctrination into a worldview in which unregulated free markets are divinely mandated. In this sacralized model of capitalism, those who interfere with the invisible hand of the market are choosing "the state as provider rather than God." The Koch brothers may have helped finance the current war on workers, but the narratives repeated by the Tea Partiers and their candidates echo those taught from Christian nationalist textbooks for more than two decades. (Quotes from textbooks continued from Part Two.)



The press has covered the Tea Party movement as if it were a completely different entity from the Religious Right, with a distinct and separate agenda. The textbooks quoted in this series of articles promote a totalist worldview in which the narratives of biblical economics, Christian nationalist revisions of American history, and Creationism are interwoven.

In this worldview, the culture wars are as much about economic issues as social issues - the two are inseparably melded. For instance, these textbooks describes the U.S. as having a divine mandate which is the basis of American exceptionalism and requires Americans to spread "Christian liberty" and biblically-based capitalism to other nations. They describe the early 20th century as plagued by the introduction of liberalism, the social gospel, liberation theology, and the teaching of evolution, followed by FDR's New Deal and the catapulting of America into both apostasy and socialism. The situation supposedly worsened in recent decades due to the removal of mandatory prayer from schools and the legalization of abortion.

In the texts featured in this series of articles, prosperity is based on correct belief, and, as stated in America's Providential History, America must now be "reformed" to regain its position in leading "God's plan for the nations." The text closes with "A Checklist for Reforming America."

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/2/20/181252/049/Front_Page/Two_Decades_of_Christian_Nationalist_Education_Paved_Way_for_Today_s_War_on_Labor