The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

by Andrew L. Seidel

With the ground prepared by Madison Avenue advertising, it was easy for religious leaders to capitalize on the national fear of communism and nuclear death. If mutually assured destruction was truly assured, Christians would be happy in the afterlife with Jesus, while the godless communists would burn twice. As one author put it, “Americans, being Christians, believed in life after death and [were] self-confident that if even the world itself were destroyed in a righteous cause, they would go to their heavenly reward. Communists, by contrast, were atheists, held out no hope of life after death, and would be correspondingly less willing to escalate a confrontation all the way to nuclear exchange.”56 Senator McCarthy warned people “that this is the era of the Armageddon—that final all-out battle between light and darkness foretold in the Bible.”57 In the best of times, clergymen love to preach about the world ending. With nuclear Armageddon a real possibility and so many advertisements telling them to go to church, preachers were winning terrified converts. Soon, the words “American” and “Christian” became synonymous, realizing one of the goals of the Religion in American Life campaign and laying the groundwork for the Christian nationalist identity. Many religious leaders complimented this deliberate strategy. Fred Schwarz, a doctor and evangelical preacher, with encouragement from Billy Graham and the other corporate preachers, united evangelism and anti-communism in the C...