AHC: Prevent the rise of the religious right

FBKampfer

Banned
Very clear there you entirely missed my point. I'll not belabor it & move on.

No, I caught your point; evangelicals need not be rubes and simpletons, merely stubborn and mislead.

But my point was never that just teaching hillbillies about gravity and science will mojo the problem away.

Just as the core problem is not simply an extra side of Jesus, so to the solution is not simply an extra helping of learning to counteract the bunk.

The education is just the cattle prod and justification to coerce the desired change.




Though I would love to hear your proposed solution.
 
I can think of several ranging from insurrection during civil rights leading to a great dying of rubes and the ignorant (and demographically speaking there is great overlap with these simpletons opposed to equality, and both right wing politics and religiosity), to stronger enforced state education under the guise of fighting poverty and improving the well-being of the country.

A federal law mandating standard curriculum (not even anti-religiously based science or anything, just better math and English, and better education in general) in the 1900's would go miles towards crippling the religious right. There are strong trends between education and support of secularism (regardless of personal beliefs) and economic mobility, and ties between economic mobility and religious views.

Start educating the hinterlands in a slow, methodical manner (but mandatory at gunpoint if need be), and you can have the religious right pushed back to isolated populations in the Ozark and Smokey Mountain ranges, and Utah.

So your solution to what you see as a problem is to have the US Government take over the Education system from the States. Impose a federally mandated curriculum on unwilling state and local administrators and teachers. A curriculum that is defacto hostile to their most dearly held religious beliefs, and make them pay for it via their taxes.

You then imply that if they object, that it be imposed at gunpoint.


No way that could ever go wrong...
 

FBKampfer

Banned
So your solution to what you see as a problem is to have the US Government take over the Education system from the States. Impose a federally mandated curriculum on unwilling state and local administrators and teachers. A curriculum that is defacto hostile to their most dearly held religious beliefs, and make them pay for it via their taxes.

You then imply that if they object, that it be imposed at gunpoint.


No way that could ever go wrong...

Yes, I am. The understanding of the link between education and reduced religious beliefs wasn't known at the time, and as long as you're not trying to teach a hot button like evolution, they didn't seem to have any strong, inherent objections.

And those federalist ideals already lost a war 40 years before my POD. Appomattox Courthouse established that your community has no rights as a community if the rest of the US says tough shit.

Additionally nowhere does US constitution or law guarantee unrestricted practice of religion, nor has it ever been understood to mean as much. There's even been shootouts between Christian sects and law enforcement.

Its never been agis against anything, frankly.

And if it somehow does go wrong, it reverts to culling them from the population, or at the very least, stronger laws restricting use of religious groups for political purposes.


Now not to say I genuinely hope for blood shed, but there were no restrictions in the OP. Politically speaking, this is very nearly a Xanatos Gambit.
 
Ya, the evangelicals tend to not be overtly racist. Patronizing in my experience, but not the sort who claim the white race as Gods choosen. I've known individuals in both groups. As was also pointed out in this thread the term Religious Right covers a spectrum of beliefs and agendas associated with Christianity & the catchall term 'Conservative'.

Correct.

Also, Brown was in 1954 and the Religious Right didn't become a thing until around 1980. I doubt very many people stewed over Brown for 25 years and then took political action.

The sexual revolution and Roe were critical. Before the counterculture, evangelicals were associated with liberal causes - abolition (from which Seneca Falls and the suffragists ultimately emerged), conservation, civil rights. It was the counterculture that rejected Christians and caused the schism.
 
Before the counterculture, evangelicals were associated with liberal causes - abolition (from which Seneca Falls and the suffragists ultimately emerged), conservation, civil rights. It was the counterculture that rejected Christians and caused the schism.
The evangelicalism that fueled abolishion and Seneca Falls shouldn't be confused with the evangelicalism that is found in the south today. The places where the abolishionist and Senaca Falls evangelicalism was found have secularized over time and their ideas have lost the trappings of religion while the south held on to the trappings of religion.
 
The evangelicalism that fueled abolishion and Seneca Falls shouldn't be confused with the evangelicalism that is found in the south today. The places where the abolishionist and Senaca Falls evangelicalism was found have secularized over time and their ideas have lost the trappings of religion while the south held on to the trappings of religion.

Are the evangelical churches in the Southern US different from those in the North? I am only familiar with the latter.
 
The Quakers had split earlier on that debate. Tho ultimately those who wished to retain slavery ceased to call themselves "Friends" and affiliated with denominations that did condone slavery. The left the anti slavery portion remaining as Quakers or the Society of Friends.
 

Wallet

Banned
Hmmm some posters are saying that the religious right started after backlash from the federal government going against religious schools.

Anyone care to elaborate? I find this interesting but have never heard that before
 
Hmmm some posters are saying that the religious right started after backlash from the federal government going against religious schools.

It involved the segregation academies, where "private" schools were set up entirely to break the law by disregarding court rulings involving segregation, school prayer and a number of other things while being paid for with tax payer dollars.
 

Wallet

Banned
It involved the segregation academies, where "private" schools were set up entirely to break the law by disregarding court rulings involving segregation, school prayer and a number of other things while being paid for with tax payer dollars.
How were they paid with tax dollars?

I live in the south. In my town, all the white children to the private school while the black children go to the public schools. It’s a very important issue to me
 
It helps if the 1976 Democratic nomination does not go to a relative centrist, mild-mannered evangelical Christian.
 
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