Kruse, Kevin Michael

"Explore[s] the origins of a divided America. In the middle of the 1970s, America entered a new era of doubt and division. Major political, economic, and social crises--Watergate, Vietnam, the rights revolutions of the 1960s--had cracked the existing social order. In the years that followed, the story of our own lifetimes would be written. Longstanding historical fault lines over income inequality, racial division, and a revolution in gender roles and sexual norms would deepen and fuel a polarized political landscape"--Provided by publisher.

"... argues that the story of Christian America begins with the Great Depression, when a coalition of businessmen and religious leaders united in opposition to the New Deal. As Kruse shows, corporations from General Motors and Kraft Foods to J.C. Penney and Hilton Hotels poured money into the coffers of conservative religious leaders, who in turn used those funds to attack FDR's New Deal administration as a program of 'pagan statism' that perverted the central tenet of Christianity: the salvation of the individual"--Provided by publisher.