“Freedom Under God”
April 18, 2015 11:15 AM   Subscribe

For much of the 1930s, organizations such as the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) had been searching in vain for ways to rehabilitate a public image that had been destroyed in the Great Depression and defamed by the New Deal. In 1934, a new generation of conservative industrialists took over NAM with a promise to “serve the purposes of business salvation.” How Corporate America invented Christian America.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon (21 comments total) 36 users marked this as a favorite
 
"Hey,moneychangers! Sorry for that whole 'kicking you out of the temple' thing."
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:32 AM on April 18, 2015 [8 favorites]


I've been looking forward to reading this book, but I've been waiting for my baseline blood pressure to come down a bit before starting.
posted by benito.strauss at 11:38 AM on April 18, 2015 [1 favorite]


From Kevin Kruse's "Fresh Air" interview (transcript): "So when [corporate leaders] realized that making this direct case for free enterprise wasn't effective, they decided to find another way to do it. They decided to outsource the job. And they noted in their private correspondence, ministers were the most trusted men in America at the time, and so who better to make the case to the American people than ministers?"
posted by MonkeyToes at 11:59 AM on April 18, 2015 [4 favorites]


"Hey,moneychangers! Sorry for that whole 'kicking you out of the temple' thing."

No kidding.
If Jesus were doing his thing today, he'd be roundly, and constantly trashed as an evil liberal commie socialist by every conservative outlet available, as well from pulpits across the country.

"Waddaya mean he gave away loaves and fishes to the crowd???"
posted by Thorzdad at 11:59 AM on April 18, 2015 [6 favorites]


This is around the time when the one nation under God" was inserted into the pledge of allegiance, and when "In God We Trust" was put on coins, iirc. But they didn't have to invent the idea of a Christian America out of whole cloth; there had been various periods of revivalism, like "The Great Awakening" in the 18th Century.
posted by thelonius at 12:00 PM on April 18, 2015 [2 favorites]


Frustrated that the excerpt is only covering the 30s-50s.
posted by destro at 12:02 PM on April 18, 2015


A while back, I got to watching drive-in theater intermission ads. I noticed how one of the interstitial cards that commonly appeared would say "Worship This Sunday at the Church of Your Choice," or similar. It was a totally anodyne space-filler, provided simply because businesses wanted to encourage civic virtue in the form of church-going. This article reminded me of that. No doubt these are the roots of that innocent-looking card.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:03 PM on April 18, 2015 [4 favorites]


This sounds like an interesting analysis, but I hate how people tend to overstate cases to the point of inaccuracy. The fact is, there has always been a strong element of religiosity in European America, going back to the Puritans and Quakers, for example. Business leaders may have powerfully militated existing historical discourses to serve their own interests, but they didn't exactly "invent" Christian America. That makes it sound like a complete sham, a modern hoax, or at best a mere epiphenomenon, and that would be a big misunderstanding of American history and of Americans.
posted by clockzero at 12:09 PM on April 18, 2015 [11 favorites]


A while back, I got to watching drive-in theater intermission ads. I noticed how one of the interstitial cards that commonly appeared would say "Worship This Sunday at the Church of Your Choice," or similar.

A business in my area suspends Sunday advertising on its electronic sign; instead, on Sundays, it reads "See you in church!"
posted by MonkeyToes at 12:18 PM on April 18, 2015


"See you in church" is not suspending advertising, it's just a slightly more subtle ad for the owner and his company.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 12:37 PM on April 18, 2015 [20 favorites]


A business in my area suspends Sunday advertising on its electronic sign; instead, on Sundays, it reads "See you in church!"

We have quite a few small businesses around here that advertise themselves as "A Christ-centered business" or something similar.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:56 PM on April 18, 2015 [1 favorite]


From my vantage point here in heathen, godless Norway all this seems very strange...
posted by Harald74 at 1:30 PM on April 18, 2015 [7 favorites]


From my vantage point here in heathen, godless Norway all this seems very strange...

America is a settler society. This is an important fact whose implications can be seen in our history and institutions once you know what to look for. Immigration to American colonies was also largely constituted during the initial colonization by people with strongly religious ideas about how society should be organized. That principle of social solidarity and organization has remained a powerful one, even though its strength waxes and wanes historically for a number of pretty complicated reasons.
posted by clockzero at 2:06 PM on April 18, 2015


I could be imagining some of them, but along side standard business names like "Son-Rise" Something or other, if you look closely there are quite a few where a lower case "t" in the middle of a word has its crossbar raised and lengthened to look like a cross. I've seen one where the word had enough uprights ("little"?) to make a Calvary scene. Inventive, but kind of over the top, too.
posted by sneebler at 2:10 PM on April 18, 2015


The rise of corporate parsonhood.
posted by jamjam at 2:30 PM on April 18, 2015 [13 favorites]


Business leaders may have powerfully militated existing historical discourses to serve their own interests, but they didn't exactly "invent" Christian America.

I think when the author uses the term "Christian America," he's referring specifically to the system of blatant commingling of religion, business, and government to enforce the will of the wealthy religious over everyone else. I don't think he's referring simply to the Christian population of the United States.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:27 PM on April 18, 2015 [13 favorites]


Coincidentally I'm currently reading Kruse's White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism. It's very, very good, and is making a lot of late 20th century politics make a lot more sense.
posted by asterix at 3:55 PM on April 18, 2015 [4 favorites]


The current version of "Christian America" is just the same kind of Christianity that saw no problem with Slavery in the early days of the Republic. Rebranded bigotry.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:57 PM on April 18, 2015


coperate culture is American culture, it influences everything we do.
posted by The Whelk at 4:35 PM on April 18, 2015 [3 favorites]


"Waddaya mean he gave away loaves and fishes to the crowd???"

Somebody oughta sit this Jesus kid down and explain Moral Hazard
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:17 PM on April 18, 2015 [3 favorites]


I think when the author uses the term "Christian America," he's referring specifically to the system of blatant commingling of religion, business, and government to enforce the will of the wealthy religious over everyone else. I don't think he's referring simply to the Christian population of the United States.

I don't think so, either, but it is still the case that that dynamic is not a sui generis state of affairs peculiar to the 20th century, even though there are historical patterns of that century which entail especially craven examples of the wealthy and powerful commingling those ostensibly discrete discourses and institutions for their own benefit and control.
posted by clockzero at 8:48 AM on April 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


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