The big driver for mass political involvement was the IRS yanking tax exemptions for segregated religious schools in 1976. That threw the religious right into high gear. They knew that openly endorsing segregation was a political liability so they went with abortion as the unifying issue instead. - ThreadSky

dr-frogbat.bsky.social • 12 days ago

The big driver for mass political involvement was the IRS yanking tax exemptions for segregated religious schools in 1976. That threw the religious right into high gear. They knew that openly endorsing segregation was a political liability so they went with abortion as the unifying issue instead.

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chiennoir505.bsky.social•12 days ago

I never thought of that. It makes perfect sense.

desertrat1933.bsky.social•12 days ago

📌

waldocat.bsky.social•12 days ago

As Fred Clark wrote about this years ago:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/02/18/the-biblical-view-thats-younger-than-the-happy-meal/

jrj73.bsky.social•12 days ago

Thanks. I’ll check that out.

heidicatlady.bsky.social•12 days ago

Bingo!

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133

desertrat1933.bsky.social•12 days ago

📌

mithraven.bsky.social•12 days ago

I don't disagree with the article, but I think there's another layer below this. Segregation is part of it, but if you look at the post-Civil War era, the theocratic impulse is there, even in the Docs of Secession of most Confed. States. Theocracy & white supremacy have always gone hand in hand.

heidicatlady.bsky.social•12 days ago

I don’t disagree that segregationists used religion to their advantage. The post I made about Bob Jones University explains when and why evangelicals became republicans and gained a political movement—following a prolonged departure from politics after the Scopes Trial. Ironically, they abandoned

heidicatlady.bsky.social•12 days ago

The most evangelical president in US history because they followed marching orders to abandon the Democratic Party. Ironically, Nixon was the one who started questioning the tax exempt status of segregationist schools.

heidicatlady.bsky.social•12 days ago

Personally, I believe no churches should be tax exempt.

jrj73.bsky.social•12 days ago

I agree, especially those who preach politics from the pulpit.

mithraven.bsky.social•11 days ago

Totally agree!

mithraven.bsky.social•11 days ago

Yes, but a lot of them (if not necessarily the figureheads) were segregationist because of an inherently Calvinist, white supremacist form of Christianity that predates the US itself. Protestantism in Europe is taught as all about freedom & enlightenment but it & its luminaries were deeply racist.

mithraven.bsky.social•11 days ago

Something else we Americans are not taught is that the much-vaunted Puritans were very much the same loathsome and intolerant religious zealots as evangelicals today, and rather than a brave departure in search of freedom, they were shivied out of Europe and no one was sorry to see them go.

mithraven.bsky.social•11 days ago

The vast majority of the intolerance and bigotry we associate with the 1600s came not from the Catholic Church, but from prudish and xenophobic Protestants, the very same ones who flocked to the new world in droves. Racism and religiosity are absolutely & inextricably baked into the bones of the US.

mithraven.bsky.social•12 days ago

In 1920s, alongside his own racist essays, Henry Ford bankrolled the publication of the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' a white supremacist Christian conspiracy from the 1800s that called POC the children of Satan. Christian identity grew out of that movement and is alive and well in the US.

shieldmaiden7.bsky.social•12 days ago

Ford was a crazy antisemite. Jesus, he was awful.

mithraven.bsky.social•12 days ago

I'm not sure it's possible to separate the two impulses at any point in American history. I think if we are ever going to get past the white Xtian nationalism that underpins this country, we have to address both the racism AND the fervor for theocracy.

johnhatchard.bsky.social•11 days ago

Christian Dominionism.

mithraven.bsky.social•11 days ago

I’ve been raising the hue and cry about this for two damn decades, and at every turn was told I was paranoid, slippery sloping, or engaging in tin foil hat nonsense.

Being right had never been so bitter.

mithraven.bsky.social•12 days ago

A lot of these interests initially coalesced around opposing communism. With the decline of the USSR, they turned (as one brilliant scholar put it) ‘from the barbarian at the gates to the fairy in the garden,’ IOW, to policing anything to do with sex & gender within the US, including abortion. 1/

mithraven.bsky.social•12 days ago

But even that was the ‘marketing,’ something over which they could get average Americans in a froth. The end goal was always theocracy. Seriously, read some of what folks like Rushdooney & Gary North were saying about theocracy, dominion and 7M back in the 70s. It’s way deeper than just abortion. /2

jrj73.bsky.social•12 days ago

That’s it, exactly. 100%

I often remark that if America became an evangelical theocracy, we’d have interdenominational wars the way they have tribal warfare in the Middle East.

mithraven.bsky.social•12 days ago

It only got wide exposure in the 2010s, but the ‘Seven Mountains Mandate’ originated in 1975 with Loren Cunningham. It’s been the playbook in a very long Christo-fascist game ever since.

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