American Christianity
American Christianity
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16659542
33 comments
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Prior to James W. Fifield's ( Wikipedia ) ministry in 1940 (and his debt from building the first megachurch), feeding the hungry was such a critical part of Christian ideology that our industrialists didn't even think about looking to religion to back their preferred economic model (in which they were very rich, as per the Hoover administration and the great depression. Good times!) In fact the industrialists were super resentful of FDR's New Deal measures, which Roosevelt enacted to prevent a communist revolution. (Life for the proletariat really sucked, and did not make capitalism look good at all.)
Fifield reinterpreted scripture to do away with all the beatitudes and rhetoric about feeding the hungry, uplifting the poor and welcoming the immigrant and the stranger as a way to draw millionaire parishioners (and millionaire tithes) so he could pay for his new church. This was the primordial ooze from which modern Christian nationalism emerged not only linking American exceptionalism and anti-communism to Christianity, but also making Christianity an ideology of guns, low taxes and rugged individualism, the John Wayne era of Christianity.
Behind the Bastards discusses this in How The Rich Ate Christianity two-parter. Then Jerry Falwell was driven by the one-two punch of segregation ending and interracial marriage becoming decriminalized, and he developed the Moral Majority, a religious based (white Christian nationalist) voting bloc that was driven by a single point, specifically abortion. In fact, the Pro-Life anti-abortion sector really just didn't want slutty young American women to have reproductive rights so they would suffer (hence our complete failure to consider children's welfare until after we noticed animals had more rights than kids. Even then, development's been a slow crawl.)
With the Moral Majority voting bloc in place that would vote for any anti-abortion Republican, Falwall was able to get Reagan into power with a landslide. Soon lobbyists were unlocked; labor was suppressed; anti-trust suits were dropped; wall-street greed became good and the express train to white-power one-party US autocracy was established and we've been on that train ever since.
(So when you encounter Reagan-Bush Republicans who don't like Trump much, remember that they actively vote for policies that create the conditions in the US that are fecund for charismatic strongmen to take over their party, and another one will, and these guys will probably MAGA up behind the new guy. Until then, everyone they offer will be about as interesting as Mitt Romney or Ted Cruz.)
All this is to say the current state of Christianity, associated with guns and flamboyant wealth and hypermasculinity and hating LGBT+ and tradwives (and quivers-full) was actively cultivated since the early 20th century. It also shows that scripture can and will be shaped into what plutocrats and ministers what it to be, which de-legitimizes the scripture-and-church system that is allegedly God-approved to spread His word. If there was a true word-of-God, it would be more resistant to alteration by ownership-class interests. The Great Commission would be much more effective in getting strangers on board, and the movement wouldn't experience so many apostates or failing regimes.
The history of Christianity makes for its indictment.
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you wanna make more christians? Then feed all those poor kids and tell them it's literally by the grace of jesus that they're being fed. The prayer they want in schools will naturally follow. It isn't just men who's hearts can be reached via their stomachs...
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This was one of the main ways Brits and other European countries used to convert their colonial populations.
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Yeah, I'm not religious anymore, but in college I led a homeless outreach team for Christian students where we'd go downtown every week to provide food and friendship to the unhoused. The single most regularly attending person was sikh. The fact that she joined even though it was a different religion (we'd pray before and after the night) spoke volumes to me, and it made me respect the religion a lot. In fact, the thought that someone like her would technically not go to heaven simply due to believing in a different religion was one of the reasons why I stopped practicing.
I've always been taught that "good" Christians convert others by being so kind and generous that others ask "what drives them to be like that?" And that's the proper way to proselytize. None of this preaching, damnation and hellfire stuff. Be a good and inspirational enough person that others will naturally be drawn to what drives you. It's a shame that the loudest voices get the most attention.
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It's easier to make new Christians than to convert them. /s
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There is no hate like Christian love.
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Do many other countries give free food in school? As a Canadian my high school had a paid cafeteria and elementary school had nothing
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Not exactly. There's something called SNAP that benefits a majority of poor children in the states who's families fall below a certain income threshold. Conservatives have voted repeatedly in a way that undermines SNAP recipients. Additionally though, school lunch debt is a big problem in America that people are up in arms about because government subsidized meal programs in schools used to be pretty widespread and have been dwindling because of similar legislation brought by Conservative law makers.
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In Sweden school lunches are free, and of good quallity, google image seach for "skollunch" and you will see examples of what is served.
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In India, many states have a mid-day meals programme in govt schools from the 1980's. The central govt also focused on it around the mid 90's.
My state, Kerala seems to be decent in that aspect and I think it was even extended to govt-aided schools.
Though, there are some stories where the govt fund is delayed and the school teachers(mostly by the head teacher) have to pickup the slack until the fund gets disbursed.
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I'm ready for us to stop pretending that there's some "real" Christianity that is a good thing.
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While I do think it's fairly obvious that many (if not most) Christians have lost the plot, I don't think that it's Christianity's fault per se. The philosophy expounded in the Gospels is pretty sound, the problem is that few people actually follow it. Almost everyone everyone out there compromises themselves in some way in order to survive, and to that extent, their faith is worthless.
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33 comments
Proverbs 28:27
versus
Matthew 6:6
But they can't be expected to actually pay attention to their own scripture.