Why and how has the religious (far) right in the USA developed to where it is today?

Answer 1

basically, the social turmoil of the late 60s and 1970s fueled a reactionary movement to retreat into "the good old days." Ironically, many aspects of these alleged "good old days" never existed, at least in the way they tout.

they fine-tuned a rhetoric of fear and bashing others, appealing to rather base aspects of human emotion. That the calender happened to be aprpoaching the year 2000 gave them a convenient tool to scare people as well, just as other apocalpytians scared people to follow various pogroms and zealotries before.

Answer 2

To really answer this question you have to go at least as far back as the Pilgrims. The Puritans derived their philosophy from Wesley, the idea that God chooses certain people to favor, for his own reasons, which might be completely transparent to us. God shows his favor for people by making them rich and successful, so if a person has a lot of money this is evidence that he is -virtuous-, favored by God, even if he doesn't seem virtuous to you or me.

This tradition was the beginning of a uniquely American view of wealth, that the rich are wiser, more virtuous than the rest of us, more worthy of God's love.

All through American history you see this popping up. By the late 19th century it had developed into a recognizeable pattern of wealth-worship, the idea that the rich are heroes, no matter how they got their money.

At the turn of the 20th century, there were many worldwide movements to help the poor out of their rut. The labor movement was probably the biggest of these in the US. People who did this were demonized by government and church alike. They were called 'anarchists', which was the same as 'terrorist' today. There was also a worlwide Marxist movement, long before the Soviet revolution of 1917, and of course these people were demonized as well.

From at least this far back, American fundamentalist Christianity was inextricably linked with conservative politics. Christians saw Communism as a program engineered and run by the Devil. Labor unions were evil, FDR was evil. The USA was the nation favored God among other nations, and the Republican Party was the Party of God. President McKinley invaded and occupied the Philippines at the end of the Spanish American War saying he only wanted to 'Christianize' the natives there, apparently unaware that they'd been 'Christianized' by the Spanish centuries before.

All through the 20s, church leaders endorsed the Republicans' deregulation of the economy and turned a blind eye to corruption and the concentration of wealth. When the depression came, much of FDRs real opposition came from churches!

When we come to 1980, the 'Reagan Revolution', the Republicans mounted a full court press. In the previous election, many Christians had voted for Carter because he was Christian (probably the last truly sincere Christian to be president of the US), and his sister was even a famous evangelical. So corrupt church leaders like Jerry Falwell formed the 'Christian Coalition' to push Reagan into office by subverting their religious message to a political one. The abortion issue was engineered for this election and it's clear now to anyone who looks back that the Republicans had absolutely no intention of banning abortion--and still don't--just to make use of it as an issue.

And to this day corrupt church leaders tell their flocks that their Christian duty is to vote Republican and Christians (misguided I think) support the GOP in their program of concentration of wealth and power.

Mind you, I'm not against Christianity, as a religion. As a political force it has been responsible for no end of trouble, all through the last 200 years or so. Religion, -any- religion, can be used to steal peoples' shirts and then get them to voluntarily give you their pants.

Answer 3

Fear and idle minds...same way religion has always worked.