In other words you're saying when the John Birch Society invented the War on Christmas and promoted Christianity as the counter to Communism with everything not Christian getting lumped together with Communism, that's how capitalism was sold to religious conservatives.
Anti-Communism was how everything was sold to everyone back then, there was nothing unique about the JBS exploiting anti-Soviet sentiment in order to grow its membership. The JBS also had very little to do with the eventual shift in religious voters from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. In '59 & '60, Kennedy still had to deal with a Democratic Party that was still largely Christian, so much so that his Catholicism was an issue with the heavily Protestant base. Remember his: "I'm not the Catholic candidate, I'm the Democratic candidate" speech? LBJ made no secret of his religious views, and he relied heavily on Billy Graham for spiritual support during Vietnam. It was in LBJ's second term, when the '60s counterculture movement and the New Left got started for real, that the Democratic Party's platform started to swing further to the left, and it was their influence that drove the Democratic agenda for the next twenty years.
You seem to be claiming that the Democratic Party is not largely Christian today, which would be quite a feat considering that slightly over 70% of the nation is still Christian. What's different about Christians within the Democratic Party versus Christians in the Republican Party is that the Democratic Party Christians don't seem to show approval only to candidates who give lip service to religious ideals.
Secularism isn't something that excludes the religious. It just means you don't allow religion to pervade areas where it's not appropriate, like politics and polite dinner conversations.
Of course, over the last thirty years the Democratic Party has been swinging to the Right to try to keep up with the conservative trend of the nation. Currently we seem to be swinging back toward more liberal thinking, although we'll see how long it takes the Democratic Party leadership to notice.
The Democratic Party certainly isn't swinging as fast to the left as it was in the '60s and '70s, but I don't know that I would categorize that slowing as "swinging to the Right".
In other words you're saying when the John Birch Society invented the War on Christmas and promoted Christianity as the counter to Communism with everything not Christian getting lumped together with Communism, that's how capitalism was sold to religious conservatives.
Anti-Communism was how everything was sold to everyone back then, there was nothing unique about the JBS exploiting anti-Soviet sentiment in order to grow its membership. The JBS also had very little to do with the eventual shift in religious voters from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. In '59 & '60, Kennedy still had to deal with a Democratic Party that was still largely Christian, so much so that his Catholicism was an issue with the heavily Protestant base. Remember his: "I'm not the Catholic candidate, I'm the Democratic candidate" speech? LBJ made no secret of his religious views, and he relied heavily on Billy Graham for spiritual support during Vietnam. It was in LBJ's second term, when the '60s counterculture movement and the New Left got started for real, that the Democratic Party's platform started to swing further to the left, and it was their influence that drove the Democratic agenda for the next twenty years.
You seem to be claiming that the Democratic Party is not largely Christian today, which would be quite a feat considering that slightly over 70% of the nation is still Christian. What's different about Christians within the Democratic Party versus Christians in the Republican Party is that the Democratic Party Christians don't seem to show approval only to candidates who give lip service to religious ideals.
Secularism isn't something that excludes the religious. It just means you don't allow religion to pervade areas where it's not appropriate, like politics and polite dinner conversations.
Of course, over the last thirty years the Democratic Party has been swinging to the Right to try to keep up with the conservative trend of the nation. Currently we seem to be swinging back toward more liberal thinking, although we'll see how long it takes the Democratic Party leadership to notice.
The Democratic Party isn't "largely Christian" today.
The Democratic Party certainly isn't swinging as fast to the left as it was in the '60s and '70s, but I don't know that I would categorize that slowing as "swinging to the Right".