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So what you're saying is to slow down human progression into not creating a reactionary religious right group(s)? How does that create a leftist America as well as a religious one?
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This is impossible. The scientific method does not mix well with broad, sweeping statements about the nature of the world. Or at least, it isn't supposed to. I mean, religion can be a complement to science, but integrating religion into science or vice versa wouldn't work out (and this is not exclusive to religion, the Soviets didn't believe in Charles Darwin either).
So what you're saying is to slow down human progression into not creating a reactionary religious right group(s)? How does that create a leftist America as well as a religious one?
Mostly I'm brain-storming. Nothing's going to put a lid on Darwin's theory, in the end - Mendel guarantees that. But if you don't want to use a 1914-1918 PoD, one of the (several) seeds the premillenial dispensationalism that's the grand-daddy of so much modern fundamentalism forms around is the anxieties the popularity of On The Origin of Species provoked. If it seeps into society instead of bursting in as the big, everyone's talking about it theory of the 1860s and 1870s, maybe the fundies don't form with as much force?
So slowly inserting Darwin's theories, along with many scientific discoveries; having a more Unitarianism or Quaker religion rise in America (somehow) will do the trick. But what about social issues such as race, gender, and orientation relations. After all the reactionary religious right came up with the claim that God wanted to keep all races separate.
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Had another thought, didn't want to clutter up the quotes with a late edit. Not Darwin. Huxley. Butterfly Huxley and you don't have the idea spreading as quickly, thoroughly, and secularly. Remember, there's a good forty years from the 1880s to the 1920s when a lot of biologists thought Darwin was in wrong in the sense of the mechanism proposed for evolution - Lamarck's theories get aired out again, there are some orthogenicists talking about change factors. These are secular, wrong, but still a bit less threatening to certain species of fundamentalists than natural selection. No Huxley, and natural selection doesn't have the flare before its eclipse. Fr. Mendal still will show that Darwin's right, but the idea won't take off as fast.
In fact, if you slow down Darwin, you also have some butterflys on Herbert Spencer as well. Without the grand daddy libertarian saying "charity? Fuck'em all - Science says so!" you also have less elite interest in finding some stick to beat the Social Gospel and Progressive contingents with.
Was the civil rights movement not lead by a minister called MLK?
Get Bobby Kennedy elected President in 1968 with Jimmy Carter as VP. Both were religious liberals.
That's true, yes. Many of the other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement were religious folks as well.
It's very possible. Just look at Williams Jennings Bryan! Very leftist, and very religious! And of course the abolitionist movement was very religious too, not to mention many leaders of the civil rights movement were religions and ministers too!!
What kind of environment do you think caused those people, who were very religious, and progressive too?
Not all of the abolitionist movement was economically "leftist", either by modern standards or standards of the time. Henry Ward Beecher, for example, supported union busting and held strong social Darwinist views.
What's quite ironic about this is that, on the other hand, he actually supported allowing Chinese immigration to continue to the U.S., believe it or not; albeit mainly because the Irish had started to gain more influence, at least up North and our West, anyway, and because he thought these new workers were perfect menial workers, thanks to their culture, and by "the habits of a thousand years", as he called it; yes, that would, of course, sound somewhat racist(and certainly rather culturally prejudiced)to modern ears, but admittedly, it was actually a moderate position for the day in which he made those remarks(the 1880s).
In modern times the religious people tend to be more conservative, but in the past this would have been complete nonsense. The abolitionist movement, most of the first social movements, and the rise of the belief that all men and women have equal intrinsic value were birthed from religious feeling. That's not to say that there were not as many or far more religious groups that opposed those movements, as they would for the most part replace them in the twentieth century.How can a more religious (compared to OTL) yet leftist (more leftist than Western Europe) United States can come into fruition?
Was the civil rights movement not lead by a minister called MLK?
Get Bobby Kennedy elected President in 1968 with Jimmy Carter as VP. Both were religious liberals.