Laissez Prayer: When American business got religion

December 14, 2016 6:45 PM

So a bunch of American business leaders go to a meeting in a fancy New York City hotel. They don't know that they're about to become warriors for the salvation of the American economy in a battle against the forces of the New Deal, but there they are: the newly-minted Christian-Libertarian soldiers of Rev. James Fifield's Spiritual Mobilization movement. It's 1940, and this is what happened next.

Fifield, who ministered to a flock of Los Angeles's wealthy residents,

believed that the New Deal expansion of the federal government was wholly unconstitutional. As it fought the "restricting trends" of "pagan statism," the church would find natural allies in corporate America because "business, like the church, is naturally interested in the preservation of basic freedom in this nation. Goodness and Christian ideals run proportionately high among businessmen," Fifield said. To lead this [non-denominational] crusade of churches and corporations in defense of freedom, Fifield created an organization he called Spiritual Mobilization. Its credo: "Man, being created free as a child of God, has certain inalienable rights and responsibilities; the state must not be permitted to usurp them; it is the duty of the church to help protect them."

To support his organization, founded in 1935, he would go on to partner with a number of the nation's wealthy industrialists, "recruit[ing] preachers and laymen eager to resist the massive redistribution of wealth envisioned by President Roosevelt. His appeal was simplistic but effective. American clergymen needed to start preaching the Eighth Commandment: "Thou shalt not steal." In this, the shortest commandment, Fifield and his followers believed they had found the biblical basis for private property and a limit to the government's ability to redistribute wealth, tax, and otherwise impede commerce."

In 1949, the organization launched a publication, Faith and Freedom, as well as a radio program, "The Freedom Story." With a circulation of 50,000 subscribers and a network of 500-plus radio stations, the message spread far beyond Fifield's 1940 lecture to National Manufacturing Association members at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. By 1951, its Committee to Proclaim Liberty organized a national celebration on "Independence Sunday" to encourage Americans in public readings of the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence, an event carried nationwide on CBS radio:

Cecil B. DeMille worked with his old friend Fifield to plan the production, giving it a professional tone and attracting an impressive array of Hollywood stars. Jimmy Stewart served as master of ceremonies, while Bing Crosby and Gloria Swanson offered short messages of their own. The preamble to the Declaration was read by Lionel Barrymore, who had posed for promotional photos holding a giant quill and looking at a large piece of parchment inscribed with the words “Freedom Under God Will Save Our Country.” The program featured choral performances of “America” as well as “Heritage,” an epic poem composed by a former leader of the US Chamber of Commerce. The keynote came from General Matthew Ridgway, who interrupted his duties leading American forces in Korea to send an address from Tokyo.

That same year, Fifield was called on to apologize for "spreading anti-Jewish fraud...for a radio broadcast in which he stated 'it was a matter of historical record that Benjamin Franklin denounced the Jews at the Constitutional Convention in 1787.'"

A decade later, the Spiritual Mobilization movement folded. The echoes of the fusing of religion, business, media, and patriotism are still here.

Previously: “Freedom Under God.” Title borrowed from this review.

posted by MonkeyToes (16 comments total)

His appeal was simplistic but effective. American clergymen needed to start preaching the Eighth Commandment: "Thou shalt not steal." In this, the shortest commandment, Fifield and his followers believed they had found the biblical basis for private property and a limit to the government's ability to redistribute wealth, tax, and otherwise impede commerce."

15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. 16 So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. 17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” 18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. 20 Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” 21 They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Matthew 22:15-21
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:50 PM on December 14, 2016 [23 favorites]

Not being familiar with the Bible, I was going to assume there was a long history of scholarship over whether taxation was permissible, since taxation is so fundamental to most civilizations that it had to have come up before. But, nope, there you go, straight out of the Bible. How did clergy pass this off without getting laughed at?
posted by indubitable at 7:56 PM on December 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

How did clergy pass this off without getting laughed at?

Because the rich and everyone who fancies themselves potentially-rich really want to hear it.
posted by tclark at 8:02 PM on December 14, 2016 [9 favorites]

Not being familiar with the Bible, I was going to assume there was a long history of scholarship over whether taxation was permissible, since taxation is so fundamental to most civilizations that it had to have come up before. But, nope, there you go, straight out of the Bible. How did clergy pass this off without getting laughed at?

Thank the Pilgrims on the Mayflower.

Their abandonment of all authority, their rejection of any special status for bishops, their adoption of sola scriptura in its most radical form, enabled the emergence of the most vacuous clergy in all Christendom centuries later.

Ironically, their descendant congregations, the UCC and the Unitarian movements, didn't touch any of this with a ten foot pole. But so it goes.
posted by ocschwar at 8:19 PM on December 14, 2016 [6 favorites]

Give people a chance to hear why it's actually ok to be rich and not want to give money to support social programs, or to hear why it's okay to hate people that are brown and speak funny and nobody will bother to fact check you.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 8:26 PM on December 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

"business, like the church, is naturally interested in the preservation of basic freedom in this nation.

Delusional. Capitalism is a religion, and they're both interested in "freedom" as they live it, which in practice is the acquisition of property. Property of minds, resources, and territory. They are natural allies, yes, because they have the same goals. Call it symbiosis for self-interested gain, spinning off foundations and non-profits as necessary to fend off the rabble from taking up residence in their eighth summer cottages.

Did Fifield die in pain? Please say he did.
posted by rhizome at 8:32 PM on December 14, 2016

For contrast, the early Christians practiced communism, like the Essenes. There are passages in the New Testament of people being miraculously struck dead for not giving all they owned to the church. Corporate leaders were likely alarmed when they realized how fertile the American ground was for European socialism, so they tried to steer clear of compassion altogether.
posted by Brian B. at 8:34 PM on December 14, 2016

Let me remind you youngsters that although the last few decades have seen an abundance of pro-Christian rhetoric in all areas of public discourse (especially in the media), that when I was growing up in the 50's/60's, some of us do not recall any of this pro-Christian dogma in everyday life. (Of course, I and my five siblings were limited to 60 minutes of TV time a day, and we did not choose whatever Christian programs were on the air.)

But everybody seemed to be Christian in those days. There didn't seem to be a need to crow about it. It was just there, as background noise, everywhere. That's why my parents sent the six of us to church/Sunday school, even though they were atheists. To educate us about America's ideology. (My mother, raised by an atheist mom--an early Planned Parenthood pioneer--did not understand much of the English literature she studied in college. You can't understand the Nine Circles of Hell unless you at least grok the idea of Man's fallen nature--and his Savior's role in...umm...saving humanity from the Devil. So she wanted us to be prepared to read Western Literature.)

Oh, and by the way, all of my friends/girlfriends growing up were Jews (many non-observant...I went to a public school). So there's that.

These days there are more and more non-Christians in the country.

So: thanks for this background info. The Christian Narrative has never been absent from U.S. politicians' background stories and even their stories about their plans for national Salvation. But the prospect of resurrecting (sorry) antiquated Christian personal redemption plans into national policy could hardly be more troubling. Each day brings a new Trumpian nightmare, no?
posted by kozad at 8:45 PM on December 14, 2016 [4 favorites]

"Actually, we did do it by ourselves." 1%
posted by emf at 8:59 PM on December 14, 2016

and this is what happened next.

stahp.
posted by srboisvert at 9:04 PM on December 14, 2016 [3 favorites]

Matthew 19:24
Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

Apparently being rich allows for the procurement of really big needles.
posted by mygoditsbob at 11:18 PM on December 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

"American clergymen needed to start preaching the Eighth Commandment: "Thou shalt not steal."

That is, "Thou shalt not steal from the rich". Now, when it comes to nickel-and-diming the poor and working classes in order to amass a fortune, your very success is proof of God's approval.
posted by sudon't at 7:10 AM on December 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

Another commandment says that you should not take the Lord's name in vain. That's not saying that swearing will damn you to hell. That is saying that claiming God has endorsed your sin is one of the worst sins of all. When I see this kind of rhetoric against a large government and idolatry of the free market as superior to regulation, I think of the Golden Calf. Money is not the root of all evil, the love of money is. Valuing money above the life of your fellow human seems to be the root of most evil.
posted by soelo at 7:27 AM on December 15, 2016 [7 favorites]

When I see this kind of rhetoric against a large government and idolatry of the free market as superior to regulation, I think of the Golden Calf.

Absolutely not a joke - sometime in early 2009, in an effort to stave off the recession, a Christian group held a prayer circle down by the Charging Bull statue on Wall Street, with many members actually touching the statue while they prayed.

The irony of a bunch of Christians literally praying to a golden calf did not seem to strike them.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:54 AM on December 15, 2016 [5 favorites]

Now I've been looking up this guy's relationship with prosperity gospel and it's all so angerizing.
posted by rhizome at 8:59 AM on December 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

EmpressCallipygos,

You should have set up a money-changing table nearby.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:24 AM on December 15, 2016 [2 favorites]