The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

by Andrew L. Seidel

Undeterred, the corporations and industrialists turned to religious individuals, groups, and messages that were more sophisticated and less transparent. They began financing preachers who proclaimed messages such as: “Every Christian should oppose the totalitarian trends of the New Deal.”7 One of the more prominent corporate evangelists, James Fifield, sought to enlist seventy thousand ministers “in the revolt against Roosevelt” by arguing that the New Deal undermined Christianity.8 The clergy who joined Spiritual Mobilization, as it was called, argued with a religious fervor. Their message could not be countered with logic because it was based on faith. They claimed that freedoms are given by their god, that “Christianity and capitalism [are] inextricably intertwined,” that the “New Dealers were the ones violating the Ten Commandments,” and, most familiarly, that this is a nation “under God.”