How Early And Powerful Could A US Christan Fundementalist Movement Start/Get

Pretty much in the title, but how early in the 20th century could we see a high wave of fundementalist Christianity take hold in the US? Early Earth Creation, rejection of science, those elements, but on a much vaster support system in the states than they enjoyed OTL? Starting with a POD of 1st January, 1900, could we get things like a federal government stance towards religious views with the three bracnhes of government all working towards a particular type of Christianity?

I know some elements of this have happened in the past, but I was thinking more a strong, concentrated effort by all concerned. Any thoughts/possibilities?
 
I think religious AH is really something that requires attention to wide historical forces, and it might be difficult to get this scenario with the POD you mention.

But anyway...

The US mainland is subject to a bloody, large-scale, though ultimately unsuccessful attack by some political entity known to be atheistic, or at least, theologically heterodox. For our purposes, let's just assume a Communist Mexico with strong irredentist tendencies. In the territory that they actually manage to occupy, widespread repression and violence against religious "reactionaries" is the order of the day.

You can probably figure out the rest from there.
 
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Or maybe Mormon polygamy gets a stronger foothold in the west, and by the era of OTL Prohibition, the mainstream religious reaction against it is in full swing, with special emphasis on the notion that Mormonism is what you end up when you tamper with Scripture. Liberals and left-wingers defend the constitutional rights of the Saints(as they did with Jehovahs Witness consientious objectors OTL), which puts these groups on the fundy radar as well.

It would probably also help if there was a lot of violence around the polygamy issue, with Mormons and "Christians" mowing each other down all over the mountain states.
 
Well maybe if satanist manage to really leave a mark where people become convinced that the Bible is real. Like if a well known Satanist blew up the empire state building claiming evil told him to that might be a POD for this to happen.
 
Some kind of economic downturn, somehow worse than the Great Depression and allowed to fester for longer with an averted World War II, would likely drain the US of leftwing intellectuals and then moderates, and give a wave of populist Governors, Senators, Congressmen and even a President, put into office by a widespread turn to hardcore faith in the face of material poverty, grounds to enforce a religious doctrine on the State. A charismatic "Preacher" has plenty of potential targets to direct peoples frustrations towards, Blacks and Asians stealing jobs, Jews and atheist bourgeoisie stealing savings and businesses, women drinking and smoking and sleeping around rather than raising children and keeping homes, it's a rhetoric prime to be set on the angry masses by the use f radio.

i.e. Fascism but with a more overtly religious bent.
 
Some kind of economic downturn, somehow worse than the Great Depression and allowed to fester for longer with an averted World War II, would likely drain the US of leftwing intellectuals and then moderates, and give a wave of populist Governors, Senators, Congressmen and even a President, put into office by a widespread turn to hardcore faith in the face of material poverty, grounds to enforce a religious doctrine on the State. A charismatic "Preacher" has plenty of potential targets to direct peoples frustrations towards, Blacks and Asians stealing jobs, Jews and atheist bourgeoisie stealing savings and businesses, women drinking and smoking and sleeping around rather than raising children and keeping homes, it's a rhetoric prime to be set on the angry masses by the use f radio.

i.e. Fascism but with a more overtly religious bent.

Father Coughlin would be an example of a fascist radio preacher, as per your references, but of course he would be unacceptable to the vast majority of American fundamentalists in the 1920s.

Which raises another problem with establishing an American fundocracy in the early 20th Century, ie. the relatively fractured and polarized religious climate. Catholics would be wary of supporting a regime commited to fundamentalism as understood at that time, and protestant support for any sort of Catholic political movement would be out of the question.

It wasn't until the 1970s, I believe, when "right-wing ecumenism" became strong enough for the Republicans to fashion an electoral coalition between protestant fundies and conservative Catholics. Prior to that, any political movement commited to advancing the theological views of one group would have been implacably hostile to the other.
 
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Pretty much in the title, but how early in the 20th century could we see a high wave of fundementalist Christianity take hold in the US? Early Earth Creation, rejection of science, those elements, but on a much vaster support system in the states than they enjoyed OTL? Starting with a POD of 1st January, 1900, could we get things like a federal government stance towards religious views with the three bracnhes of government all working towards a particular type of Christianity?

I know some elements of this have happened in the past, but I was thinking more a strong, concentrated effort by all concerned. Any thoughts/possibilities?

You mean a TL where fundamentalism is so strong that a major political party nominates a fundamentalist for president three times? :p https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jennings_Bryan
 
You mean a TL where fundamentalism is so strong that a major political party nominates a fundamentalist for president three times? :p https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jennings_Bryan

Bryan was an Old-Earth creationist, not quite like your Ken Ham types nowadays. He was not a fundamentalist by the standards of his day, unless you want to consider basically everyone of his day a fundamentalist (I wager more people back then would be considered fundamentalists compared to now). Even in his day, there were people like George McCready Price, who advocated the same thing modern creationists, like Flood geology and other YEC pseudoscience, who were opposed to Bryan's views--Price considered Bryan's views to be corrupted by Satan to mislead Christians. Interestingly, Price was a Seventh-Day Adventist, which by no means was a mainstream evangelical sect in the day. I think that's what kept him from gaining a wider audience (amongst Christians), and basically let Henry Morris become the "Father of Creationism" instead. So yeah, division amongst right-wing and fundamentalist churches is a huge issue. Such a thing before the 1970s will involve hardcore anti-Catholicism from the get-go. I believe that if Sidney Johnston Catts had been born a decade or two later and still gained power in Florida or wherever, he would've been a very likely figure to lead a clerical fascist movement on the national level in the United States. Protestant fundamentalists cared far more about Catholic influences than they did about evolution, abortion, homosexuality, or whatever. Those were either sins or an error to never introduce into the church (bad enough). Catholicism was a heresy which condemned millions to hell and threatened to corrupt America.

We have to ask--were there ever enough Protestant fundamentalists who had enough power that they could take over the United States? You'd need a real Third Great Awakening for that one, on the scale of the first two, and you better make sure that in that movement you can get all the Protestants on the same page regarding secular society. You are in no circumstances getting a Catholic fundamentalist government in power in the US, not before Catholic and Protestant fundamentalists effectively united (even if they still don't like each other, there's tons of recent material of condemnation of the other from both sides). And after they do, well, I doubt you ever will. They had Reagan and both Bushes, I doubt they could do worse. You can cite Intelligent Design (and the Kitzmiller case), but remember that creationist organisations like Answers in Genesis do not like or support Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design is a compromise with "the world", to fundamentalists, since it allows for other religions.

Well maybe if satanist manage to really leave a mark where people become convinced that the Bible is real. Like if a well known Satanist blew up the empire state building claiming evil told him to that might be a POD for this to happen.

I highly doubt it. Most people besides fundamentalist Christians would think that that's just another insane nutjob. Satanism has been used as an excuse for crimes quite often. Actual Satanists like the LaVeyans (not actually Satanists, but they call themselves Satanists and the media calls them that, so...), as well as theistic Satanist groups, would almost certainly disown this individual(s). A self-identified Satanist doing this isn't going to convince everyone to start believing in creationism (1/3 of Americans already do, apparently), accept the Bible as literal and inerrant, etc.
 
Bryan was an Old-Earth creationist, not quite like your Ken Ham types nowadays. He was not a fundamentalist by the standards of his day, unless you want to consider basically everyone of his day a fundamentalist.

Bryan was considered a fundamentalist in the 1920's, was widely referred to as such, and addressed self-described fundamentalist organizations:

"In order to organize for combat and initiate strategies for defeating evolution, fundamentalists formed the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association (WCFA) in 1919. Its agenda included a definite plan to purge schools, seminaries, and pulpits of liberals and heretics. The “heresy” of evolution was at the top of the list. In 1924, William Jennings Bryan made an appearance at the WCFA convention in Minneapolis. Gasper states that “this event raised the enthusiasm of the Fundamentalists to a new high. They now had a nationally known and popular figure to lead them in their crusade.”22 It was this Christian statesman who, two years before the meeting, brought fundamentalism to national attention through his relentless attacks on evolution.2" http://www.dbts.edu/journals/1999/priest.pdf

To say that "basically everyone of his day" was a fundamentalist in Bryan's sense is absurd (even if you limit "everyone" to Protestants). How could there have been a Modernist-Fundamentalist split that affected so many Protestant denominations if everyone was a Fundamentalist and there were no Modernists?! It is true of course that neither the Modernist nor the Fundamentalist camp was monolithic. Bryan for example did not believe that the "days" referred to in Genesis were necessarily 24-hour days:

Q--Would you say that the earth was only 4,000 years old?
A--Oh, no; I think it is much older than that.
Q--How much?
A--I couldn't say.
Q--Do you say whether the Bible itself says it is older than that?
A--I don't think it is older or not.
Q--Do you think the earth was made in six days?
A--Not six days of twenty-four hours.
Q--Doesn't it say so?
A--No, sir....

Q--Then, when the Bible said, for instance, "and God called the firmament heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day," that does not necessarily mean twenty-four hours?
A--I do not think it necessarily does.
Q--Do you think it does or does not?
A--I know a great many think so.
Q--What do you think?
A--I do not think it does.
Q--You think those were not literal days?
A--I do not think they were twenty-four-hour days.
Q--What do you think about it?
A--That is my opinion--I do not know that my opinion is better on that subject than those who think it does.
Q--You do not think that ?
A--No. But I think it would be just as easy for the kind of God we believe in to make the earth in six days as in six years or in 6,000,000 years or in 600,000,000 years. I do not think it important whether we believe one or the other.
Q--Do you think those were literal days?
A--My impression is they were periods, but I would not attempt to argue as against anybody who wanted to believe in literal days.
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/day7.htm

But Bryan's differences with what are now called "young earth creationists" were generally regarded as differences *within* the fundamentalist camp. On the Fundamentalism vs. Modernism controversy which raged in the 1920's, there was no question where Bryan stood.
 
Well, "fundamentalist" in the sense of creationism. But if we compare what many of the people thought of women's rights, gay rights, etc., in that era, then a significant amount of people then would indeed come off as fundamentalist (we of course would be projecting modern views back on older days, which brings its own issues).

But I suppose that in me being wrong, that just proves that "Christian fundamentalism" had a very changing definition over time. Old Earth creationism allows spaces for evolution and evolution-related theories to be taught--that's why the modern creationist movements hate it, and that might be why YEC has seized control of creationism. It's more evidence that the fundamentalist camp was never unified enough to make a theocracy. After all, they'd be quite concerned about which denomination got which posts. Which I believe was a key argument as to why religious freedom was established in the US to begin with, to prevent various churches from infighting.
 
I highly doubt it. Most people besides fundamentalist Christians would think that that's just another insane nutjob. Satanism has been used as an excuse for crimes quite often. Actual Satanists like the LaVeyans (not actually Satanists, but they call themselves Satanists and the media calls them that, so...), as well as theistic Satanist groups, would almost certainly disown this individual(s). A self-identified Satanist doing this isn't going to convince everyone to start believing in creationism (1/3 of Americans already do, apparently), accept the Bible as literal and inerrant, etc.

Believe it or not there are atheist who don't dismiss creationism. If in the past a whole lot of people claiming to be Satanist were able to blow up huge building's killing 1000's then unlike the Islam thing I think it might push some on the unsure camp to worrying that there just might be a real devil "making" people do it. I know it's used as an excuse for crime's often but if a group of Satanist had done 9/11 instead of Islamic terrorist we might be looking at a different world today. Though I really have no idea if it would lead to more people becoming Christian or not.

Sorry if this is offensive but from my point of view independent of any religion related stuff Satanist seem dangerous and they should honestly pick a different title if they don't believe there is a devil/Satan to follow. It's like if the GOP started calling themselves the Nazi party and said that Actual Nazi's would disown killing Jews. May as well start saying actual Nazi's would disown Hitler.

That's just my 2 cent's on the subject though.
 
Believe it or not there are atheist who don't dismiss creationism. If in the past a whole lot of people claiming to be Satanist were able to blow up huge building's killing 1000's then unlike the Islam thing I think it might push some on the unsure camp to worrying that there just might be a real devil "making" people do it. I know it's used as an excuse for crime's often but if a group of Satanist had done 9/11 instead of Islamic terrorist we might be looking at a different world today. Though I really have no idea if it would lead to more people becoming Christian or not.

There are agnostics and other irreligious people who support intelligent design, but probably not so much atheists, although there might be. But certainly there are no atheists who are Young Earth Creationists, and at this point, "Young Earth Creationist" and "Creationist" are near synonymous. And the amount of agnostics (or even atheists) who believe in ideas classified as "intelligent design" are probably far more than the amount who believe that that's what should be taught in schools. And that's the part that really gets people worried.

Certainly Satanists (or someone claiming to be a Satanist) doing 9/11 would be huge, if only because it would be a domestic terrorist act instead of one involving foreigners. So instead we get a mixture of the post-Columbine panic and the classic Satanic panic. But that's probably not going to have a bigger (long-term) effect on Christianity than 9/11 itself did. And most of the censorship is going to be self-censorship instead of government mandated censorship. And like any moral panic, it's gonna die down, because organised Satanism in the US is a miniscule phenonema with almost no power leaving the worst of this second Satanic panic on the same level as 9/11 Truthers. A Satanist 9/11 is much easier to deal with than 9/11 OTL. Government investigation happens, all the criminals involved are arrested and locked up for a very long time or possibly executed. That will be enough to settle most people down. No foreign wars. No assigning blame on the second largest religion on the planet (tens of thousands of Satanists, at most when you count other associated occultists, versus one billion Muslims). No association with an extremely well-funded international terrorist organisation already long on the radar with links to foreign governments. That would make the fallout of Satanic 9/11 far less worse internationally and domestically than OTL 9/11.

Sorry if this is offensive but from my point of view independent of any religion related stuff Satanist seem dangerous and they should honestly pick a different title if they don't believe there is a devil/Satan to follow. It's like if the GOP started calling themselves the Nazi party and said that Actual Nazi's would disown killing Jews. May as well start saying actual Nazi's would disown Hitler.

That's your point of view, not the point of view of the LaVeyan Satanists or other groups who use Satan as a symbol for their beliefs.
 
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