Christianity and the Development of American Society
Harris puts Donald Trump and Project 2025 in the spotlight in Wisconsin.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaking at her first nationally televised campaign event as the presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee in West Allis, a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, July 23rd, 2024.
On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris attacked Donald Trump’s public health and welfare policy proposals in her first national campaign speech in Wisconsin.
The new Democratic Party presidential candidate and presumptive nominee spoke to a crowd of enthusiastic supporters at West Allis Central High School in West Allis, a suburb of Milwaukee. Harris’ event comes less than a week after former President Donald Trump officially accepted the GOP nomination in Milwaukee at the end of the Republican National Convention on Thursday, July 18th.
Democratic Party voters, delegates, and leaders are rallying around the Vice President after President Joe Biden ended his campaign on Sunday. The new enthusiasm has helped VP Harris raise a record $100 million in just two days after Biden endorsed her twenty minutes after dropping out of the race for the White House.
Vice President Harris focused on affordable health care, childcare, and The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 during her remarks on Tuesday afternoon.
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Vice President Kamala Harris speaking at her first nationally televised campaign event as the presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee in West Allis, a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, July 23rd, 2024.
“Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency,” Harris said.
The Vice President also vowed to stop “extreme abortion bans” by Mr. Trump and the Republicans. “We trust women to make decisions about their own bodies,” continued Harris.
Kamala Harris then targeted Project 2025 – a 900-page policy proposal written by the Heritage Foundation with the aid of at least 140 people who worked for Donald Trump in his presidential administration from 2016 through 2021. “He and his extreme Project 2025 agenda will weaken the middle class. We know we got to take that seriously,” Harris declared. “Can you believe they put that thing in writing?”
The Project 2025 plan includes a comprehensive list of draconian public health policy proposals, including cuts to Social Security and Medicare, tax breaks to corporations, and abolishing the Departments of Education and the Environment. The question is, why would the Heritage Foundation and Trump administrative lieutenants propose Project 2025?
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Photo courtesy of the British Library on Unsplash.
For an answer, we must revisit the contentious, centuries-old arguments about the founding of the United States of America.
The White people from Western Europe who initially invaded, settled, and eventually established the United States of America often shared Christian religious beliefs and principles. Those who practiced Christianity believed the “new world” sacred and saw it as their divine mission to claim the expanse of the land for themselves and other White European Christians.
These individuals banded together in groups and organizations for survival. The settlements were characterized by cooperative, long-term familial and communal relationships based on farming, trade, and market economics. In addition, the settlers had a powerful emotional and psychological attachment to the Christian religion.
Religion also significantly influenced the pioneers’ cultural and social life. Christian-based “nuclear family” units gave the colonists basic orientations to colonial life. Being the leaders of those communities became part of the identity of the White men of the settlements.
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Photo by Alisa Bright on Unsplash.
On the other hand, the females of the colonies tended to be more anonymous, with family roles based on clearly defined gender social roles and divisions of labor.
These drastic developmental, social, and expansive cultural changes in the burgeoning American colonies became necessary as power consolidated under the control of White social elites. The leaders of early colonial societies sometimes manipulated the Christian religion to justify social injustices such as slavery and gender inequality. The elites then used that power to exercise a high degree of control over everyone else.
Certain aspects of the Christian religions allowed White European Americans to assume they were naturally superior to indigenous tribes and Black laborers. In addition, the White colonists interpreted the texts and theology of Christianity as a sanction to impose legal, social, and economic constraints on White women, Native Americans, and Black people.
White colonists used Christian philosophy to deny Black and native people opportunities to integrate or engage in farming or commerce.
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Photo by J. Amill Santiago on Unsplash.
White supremacy has always had a profound influence on the Evangelical Christian movement in the US.
White Europeans have long judged Black people, Native Americans, and other minority ethnic groups as ethnically inferior and culturally immoral people who would degrade American culture and civilization. Still and all, Donald Trump has a sordid history of promiscuity, womanizing, multiple divorces, and advocacy of pro-choice political advocacy as a former Democratic Party member and donor.
So why did American White evangelicals eagerly embrace Mr. Trump in 2015 and 2016? Donald Trump was born and raised as a Presbyterian Protestant of German heritage. He now identifies as a non-denominational Christian.
Although he was not a practicing Christian until the 2016 Presidential campaign, Mr. Trump received unwavering support from fundamentalist Christians in the US by holding true to the campaign promises he made to his most loyal voting constituency.
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Former US President Donald Trump and his former Vice President Mike Pence are celebrating at a Republican Party-political event in Washington, DC, in 2020. Photo by History in HD on Unsplash.
Among assurances Donald Trump made to Evangelical voters were a promise to appoint pro-life judges to the federal judiciary, zealous Zionist advocacy for Israel – and aggressive policy stances against Muslim immigrants, and radical jihadist terrorism.
Public Health Policy Reviews has devoted six blog entries to Evangelicalism and Christian nationalism. “Christianity and the Development of American Society” makes it seven essays. As we wrote in Public Health Policy Reviews 48, Christian nationalists believe America is “ordained” by biblical prophecy to be a Christian nation.
The Heritage Foundation is paying back Donald Trump’s devotion to his political promises by ushering in the modern version of the philosophies of the original colonial settlers via Project 2025 and Christian divination.