About the religious question, one thing that must be realized is that religious belief needs to be separated from institutions of religion.
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IOTL there were a fair number of "Christian socialists" thoughout the Midwest.
In Oklahoma and Kansas evangelical Christianity was and is dominant. Before it was destroyed by the First World War the socialist movement was huge in Oklahoma and Kansas. The two movements were originally enemies but gradually began to merge. Micheal Harrington quotes an Oklahoma Baptist preacher who says something like, "the liberation I got when I accepted Jesus as my Saviour is similar to the feeling of liberation I got when I first read "Capital" by Marx."
On the surface the churches and the socialist movements were in opposition, but there seemed to be some crossover. Norman Thomas started as a Presbyterian minister. AG Mustie, sometime Trotskyist, became a Presbyterian minister.There was Mary Daly and Dorothy Day in the Catholic Workers movement and others.
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