Thank you for the response and I’m sorry what I wrote proved confusing. In short the history of religion in human civilization is important to understand just how bizarre contemporary American Christianity really is. It helps if you have some knowledge of human history and, I realize, my assumption that readers here would recall the role of religion as it evolved for the surviving religious systems. Apparently that was a mistake on my part. My apologies. My goal was to sketch in some of the broader historical theme to show, again, how strange the claims made by the more extreme and noisy religionists now taking positions in the federal government really are. Let me try to clarify this a bit.
The surviving great religions are grouped around the middle east, south Asia, and China. Depending on how you want to slice this up (and who you want to upset the most) the Judaeo/Christian/Islamic group are often termed Abrahamic because they all have early common prophets starting with Abraham. This was based in Sumerian leading to Hebrew mythology heavily influenced by Egyptian mythology all originating in justifications to rule and conquer other people. The most significant change came when these ruler religions became more involved in defining general morality for the benefit of society. The Hebrew branch of this became the most sophisticated at claiming a basic truth about general morality and copied the historical Egyptian radical changes under Akhenaten of the 18th dynasty that were basically monotheistic. This stuff evolved, changed, was fought over for about 1,500 years and ended up as the classical religions of empire with Islam being the last of these and hence the last to spread through Africa and Asia. The Hindu branch was influenced remotely by the other branch and ended up competing with Islam in northern India. China followed something like the same pattern but much more remote so much more original. Imperial China was early and, in many ways, the most sophisticated with periodically stronger centralized government and a strong tradition of pragmatic ethical philosophy as typified by Confucius.
The whole point of this was mark the peak of religion with powerful divinities in a long mythological tradition that existed to justify government as absolute rule. As these took on a life of their own teaching the “correct” ways of living with other people they came to be justifications for rebellion against “incorrect” rulers and government. And that turned these belief systems into political forces that could be used as alternative justifications for rule under a slightly different set of moral standards. It became increasingly obvious that these divine justifications were all relative and their inflexibility was a problem. Hence the rise of the modern nation-state and relief what the scientific revolution made it clear there were better ways of questioning and supporting flexible answers that could be continuously improved. Religions don’t improve well at all.
The rise of contemporary, populist Christianity (ironically “fundamentalist”)occurred in America in the early and mid 19th century. By the end of the 18th century in Europe religion was becoming a cultural tradition and social ritual as it as nothing much else to offer. As a result religion is almost entirely gone in much of western Europe. Religion survived in remote and primitive areas but in America it became tied to slavery with the Deist scientific Christianity of the New England strongly opposed and the traditionalist, becoming fundamentalist, supporting slavery.
What we have in the 21st century in America is a strange growth of religion that is basically an anti-scientific, authoritarian, political system that is so removed from the origins of the classical religious systems that it purports to represent. It is built on long dead theology that was abandoned by our founding fathers in the 18th century and who would have been appalled at the ignorance it supports.
An interesting turn of events that is so tangled as to be hardly worth the trouble to sort out. But people are again being asked to suffer authoritarian oligarchic rule designed to enrich a small elite using tricks so old they were being abandoned 300 years ago. The level of absurdity and hypocrisy is amazing.
