American Apocalypse by Matthew Avery Sutton review – the rise Christian evangelicals | Books | The Guardian

Hmm,,,a book review that I am having trouble pulling out what to highlight.  Not that it is a bad review or a poorly written one, but there be a lot of stuffs in this here review.

For starters, it touches on a topic I have posted about before How Corporate America Invented Christian America by POLITICO Magazine,

It was a watershed moment—the beginning of a movement that would advance over the 1940s and early 1950s a new blend of conservative religion, economics and politics that one observer aptly anointed “Christian libertarianism.” Fifield and like-minded ministers saw Christianity and capitalism as inextricably intertwined, and argued that spreading the gospel of one required spreading the gospel of the other. The two systems had been linked before, of course, but always in terms of their shared social characteristics. Fifield’s innovation was his insistence that Christianity and capitalism were political soul mates, first and foremost.

Where POLITICO criticizes the capitalistic aspect, Guyatt highlights Matthew Avery Sutton’s focus on the "prophecy belief at the heart of the modern evangelical movement."  What should be noted in the crossover of the main players.

Matthew Avery Sutton’s new book locates prophecy belief at the heart of the modern evangelical movement. At the start of the 20th century, conservative Protestants reacted to the populist politics and theological liberalism of their age with righteous defiance. The stereotype of religious conservatism throws up images of rural churches in the southern Bible belt, but Christian fundamentalism was born in the big cities of Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, funded by wealthy businessmen such as Lyman Stewart, a California oil tycoon who bankrolled The Fundamentals (1910-15), the book series that gave the movement its name. Initially, fundamentalists struggled to endorse candidates for Congress, let alone the presidency. Most loathed Franklin Roosevelt, who won an unprecedented four presidential elections despite their disdain. Politicians became aware of the power of evangelical voters in the 1950s and 1960s, and Jimmy Carter himself was a born-again Christian (though not a fundamentalist). But it was only with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 that the religious right gained entry into the White House.
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The central paradox of Sutton’s book, which he acknowledges but never quite resolves, is why anyone expecting Armageddon would waste time on politics. For more than a century, prophecy adherents have largely agreed on the end times sequence: war in the Middle East, world government and the rise of the antichrist will mark a seven-year period known as the tribulation. Jews will suffer particular torture, but will ultimately find refuge in Christ. Evangelicals can afford to be sanguine about this because they think God will teleport them to heaven just before things turn bad. Prophecy is an obvious recruiting tool for Christian fundamentalists, who can implore sinners to become “rapture ready” by emphasising the horrors of the tribulation.

But if the fate of the world is sealed, why bother trying to take over the US government? American Apocalypse suggests a range of answers. “No matter what happens,” wrote the celebrated evangelical William Blackstone in the 1920s, “we are under marching orders” to advance God’s cause. Billy Graham hinted that a religious revival in the US might delay the apocalypse, allowing more time to win souls for Jesus. According to Sutton, some evangelicals in the mid-20th century even imagined they could shield the US from God’s harshest judgments, a kind of religious version of American exceptionalism.

American Apocalypse by Matthew Avery Sutton review – the rise Christian evangelicals | Books | The Guardian

How Corporate America Invented Christian America - POLITICO Magazine

In many ways, the marriage of corporate and Christian interests that has recently dominated the news—from the Hobby Lobby case to controversies over state-level versions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act—is not that new at all.

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In December 1940, as America was emerging from the Great Depression, more than 5,000 industrialists from across the nation made their yearly pilgrimage to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, convening for the annual meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers. The program promised an impressive slate of speakers: titans at General Motors, General Electric, Standard Oil, Mutual Life, and Sears, Roebuck; popular lecturers such as etiquette expert Emily Post and renowned philosopher-historian Will Durant; even FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Tucked away near the end of the program was a name few knew initially, but one everyone would be talking about by the convention’s end: Reverend James W. Fifield Jr.

Handsome, tall, and somewhat gangly, the 41-year-old Congregationalist minister bore more than a passing resemblance to Jimmy Stewart. Addressing the crowd of business leaders, Fifield delivered a passionate defense of the American system of free enterprise and a withering assault on its perceived enemies in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. Decrying the New Deal’s “encroachment upon our American freedoms,” the minister listed a litany of sins committed by the Democratic government, ranging from its devaluation of currency to its disrespect for the Supreme Court. Singling out the regulatory state for condemnation, he denounced “the multitude of federal agencies attached to the executive branch” and warned ominously of “the menace of autocracy approaching through bureaucracy.”

It all sounds familiar enough today, but Fifield’s audience of executives was stunned. Over the preceding decade, as America first descended into and then crawled its way out of the Great Depression, the these titans of industry had been told, time and time again, that they were to blame for the nation’s downfall. Fifield, in contrast, insisted that they were the source of its salvation.

They just needed to do one thing: Get religion.

[,,,]
It was a watershed moment—the beginning of a movement that would advance over the 1940s and early 1950s a new blend of conservative religion, economics and politics that one observer aptly anointed “Christian libertarianism.” Fifield and like-minded ministers saw Christianity and capitalism as inextricably intertwined, and argued that spreading the gospel of one required spreading the gospel of the other. The two systems had been linked before, of course, but always in terms of their shared social characteristics. Fifield’s innovation was his insistence that Christianity and capitalism were political soul mates, first and foremost.

[,,,]
Throughout the 1950s, a new trend of what the Senate chaplain called “under-God consciousness” transformed American political life. In 1953, the first-ever National Prayer Breakfast was convened on the theme of “Government Under God.” In 1954, the previously secular Pledge of Allegiance was amended to include the phrase “under God” for the first time, too. A similar slogan, “In God We Trust,” spread just as quickly. Congress added it to stamps in 1954 and then to paper money in 1955; in 1956, the phrase became the nation’s first official motto.
As this religious revival swept through American politics, many in the United States began to believe their government was formally and fundamentally religious. In many ways, they’ve believed it ever since.

How Corporate America Invented Christian America - POLITICO Magazine

See also:  A Christian Nation? Since When?