cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/3377375
I read an essay by a christian a while ago that pointed out that the separation of church and state wasn’t about protecting the state from religion - it was about protecting religion from the state.
The gist of the argument was that religion should be concentrating on the eternal, and politics, by necessity, concentrates on the immediate. The author was concerned that welding religion and politics together would make religion itself political, meaning it would have to conform to the secular moment rather than looking to saving souls or whatever.
The mind meld of evangelical christianity and right wing politics happened in the mid to late 70s when the US was trying to racially integrate christian universities, which had been severely limiting or excluding black students. Since then, republicans and christians have been in bed together. The southern baptist convention, in fact, originally endorsed the Roe decision because it helped the cause of women. It was only after they decided to go all in on social conservatism that it became a sin.
Christians today are growing concerned about a falloff in attendance and membership. This article concentrates on how conservatism has become a call for people to publicly identify as evangelical while not actually being religious, because it’s an our team thing.
Evangelicals made an ironically Faustian bargain and are starting to realize it.
They were already lost by the late 60s, early 70s. The proliferation of evangelical schools was in direct response to integration. They didn’t want their precious little children to have to go to school with black kids so they pulled them out of public schools and put them in segregation academies. Now they want to pull all the
federalmoney from the public schools they abandoned out of racism and divert it into their segregation academy system.They also shut down a lot of public pools because they didn’t want to swim with black people.
Once I heard about this I looked at the founding dates of all the private schools in my area. Everything was founded in the mid 70’s.