Carolina QuotesConservative clergymen now used their ministerial authority to argue, quite explicitly, that New Dealers were the ones violating the Ten Commandments. ... They insisted that the welfare state was not a means to implement Christ's teaching about caring for the poor and the needy, but rather a perversion of Christian doctrine. In a forceful rejection of the public service themes of the Social Gospel, they argued that the central tenet of Christianity remained the salvation of the individual. If any political and economic system fit with the religious teachings of Christ, it would have to be rooted in a similarly individualistic ethos. Nothing better exemplified such values, they insisted, than the capitalist system of free enterprise.
Kevin Michael Kruse Connected to the Carolinas
Source
p. 7
- work
- One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (2015)
- year
- 2015
- locator
- p. 7
Cite this record
“Conservative clergymen now used their ministerial authority …” Kevin Michael Kruse. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-6BABDE0A42. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/6babde0a42
More from Kevin Michael Kruse
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The intricate dynamics of personal and group interaction -- and their interplay with structural forces -- are most visible only at the local level. I chose to conduct a case study precisely because it allows for a rich description and analysis of the processes that are all too often left in the realm of broad generalizations - racism, discrimination, backlash, "white flight"...Atlanta struck me as a logical site for such an analysis.
James W. Fifield Jr. ... convinced the industrialists that clergymen could be the means of regaining the upper hand in their war with Roosevelt in the coming years. As men of God, they could give voice to the same conservative complaints as business leaders, but without any suspicion that they were motivated solely by self-interest.