Have been digging into a few texts on how religion was used as a tool of soft power during the Cold War. fascinating stuff.

My mum was "saved" at a Billy Graham crusade and later moved to AoG. I was more a second generation 'born again'. Once I began thinking for myself I realised that my politics were more left-leaning, more communitarian, tho not liberal. I've always considered this to be more consistent with what I thought to be the teachings of Christ and the first century church. One of the things that most put me off the church was the hypocrisy and grift. I always wondered how the church good go from teaching poverty, chastity and obedience to the prosperity gospel.

Anyway, here is a brief summary of what I've learned so far...

Generally history can be seen as a process of secularisation. During the period 1300 to 1800 for example, you can see this as a gradual process. The role of the church diminished both as moral custodian and as a source of useful knowledge as science stepped into the limelight. By the 19th century and the rise of naturalist/materialist philosophy as per Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud we'd reached the steep end of the curve.

The Cold War effectively reversed this process. Instead of secularisation we had sacralisation, as the West positioned itself ideologically to fight the 'scourge of communism'. If communism was atheistic, the West had to become theistic.

And so America turned to God. But this was no grassroots 'revivalist' movement as in the case of the 1904-1905 Welsh revival or the 1906 Azusa Street revival (although I wonder about those too.) This was orchestrated from the top down under the administrations of Truman and Eisenhower, and with the help of media, NGOs and think tanks. The words "under God" were added to the pledge of allegiance, and "in God We Trust" to the currency. To be American meant to be christian, as surely as it meant to be anti-communist.

It's no wonder then that conservatives and Christians of all stripes seem to hate the idea of socialism, even tho it was basically what the carpenter taught.

Well, this post may get on the wrong side of some people, but I wanted to share, as it's been helpful to me in the ongoing process of deconstructing.

Books I'm currently working through are Sword of the Spirit; Shield of Faith by Andrew Preston, Religion and American Foreign Policy by William Imboden, and The Spiritual-Industrial Complex by Jonathon Herzog. Would recommend to anyone with broader interest in history and politics.

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