This was the link www.youtube.com/watch?v=REaKV_yJzhQ&pp=ygUNcG…
The short answer? Ever since the beginning. Thomas Jefferson had to explain to the Calvinists in Connecticut how the establishment clause worked because it only took them a few years after the constitution was written to start trying to impress denomination specific rules into law.
There’s been people warning about this since forever. Hell there’s literally a novel written by the late Robert Heinlein called “if this goes on-” wherein the USA has been destroyed and replaced by the kind of society modern conservative religious authoritarians have wet dreams about. He wrote in a post-word at the end of the novel how he was noticing religious extremism taking over the Republican party, and this was in the early 50’s.
“As for the second notion, that we could lose our freedom by succumbing to a wave of religious hysteria, I am not sorry to say that I consider it possible. I hope that it is not probable. But there is a latent deep strain of religious fanaticism in this, our culture; it is rooted in our history and it has broken out many times in the past. It is with us now; there has been a sharp rise in strongly evangelical sects in this country in recent years, some of which hold beliefs theocratic in the extreme, anti-intellectual, anti-scientific, and anti-libertarian (Note: his intended meaning is the political compass version of libertarian, not the modern right wing group.)
It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate it’s creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics. This is equally true whether the faith is communism or holy-rollerism; indeed it is the bounden duty of the faithful to do so. The custodians of the true faith cannot logically admit tolerance of heresy to be a virtue.
Nevertheless this business if legislating religious beliefs into law has never been more than sporadically successful in this country- Sunday closing laws here and there, birth control legislation in spots, the prohibition experiment, temporary enclaves of theocracy like Voliva’s Zion, Smith’s Nauvoo, a few others. The country is split up into such a variety of faiths and sects that a degree of uneasy tolerance now exists from expediant compromise; the minorities constitute a majority of opposition against each other.
Could it be otherwise here? Could any one sect obtain a majority at the polls and take over the country? Perhaps not- but the combination of a dynamic evangelist, television, enough money, and modern techniques in advertising and propaganda might make Billy Sunday’s efforts look like a corner store compared to Sears-Roebuck. Throw in a depression for good measure, promise a material heaven here on earth, Add a dash of anti-Semitism, anti-catholicism, anti-negroism, and a good large dose of anti-“furriners” in general and anti-intellectuals here at home and the result might be something quite frightening- particularly when one recalls that our voting system is such that a minority distributed as pluralities in enough states can constitute a working majority in Washington.” -Robert A. Heinlein (1953)
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I think some key words for you to research would the ‘southern strategy’. I feel like people are giving you trite and naive answers. The material foray into politics began under Reagan and started as the ‘southern strategy’, which was a strategic effort in the religious south to move people to the right, but also to reshape what Christianity was and is defined as in the US. This strategy did as much to reshape religion in the US as it did politics, and Reagan, arguably, represented the culmination of that strategy to establish the modern political hedgemenoy we live under. Effectively, our politics haven’t really changed in the US since then (not materially in paradigm or structure). This is also when neoliberalism became the defacto politic of western governments.
It’s really too much to unpack in a response, and I’m on my phone so I can’t hand you great sources, but starting by googling southern strategy, and looking back to the late 50’s.
Emperor@feddit.uk 1 year ago
Further reading:
Emperor@feddit.uk 1 year ago
And a historical aside - the American right these days seems very much driven by religion and guns but, as the above shows, it wasn’t always so with the former and it also wasn’t with the latter:
karabiener@lemmy.world 1 year ago
can you paste the newyork times article here, it’s paywalled.
grognardish@kbin.social 1 year ago
Yeah, this is the answer right here. There was always a latent effect on politics - i.e. since American is so heavily Protestant, Kennedy getting elected as a Catholic was kind of a big deal, but that was more of a passive preference and not so blatantly driven by party strategy. And that effects all countries, whether you want to believe it or not - America's not alone here by any means.
But, I remember when Reagan and the 'Moral Majority' (which was neither moral, nor the majority) kicked off and turbocharged the whole thing, and that's when fundamentalists started pushing congregations on their voting patterns in an organized way. It was like someone flipped a switch and the message was coordinated across the country.