The Science vs Religion conflict gets much of the attention of observers. There is, however, a larger picture and context that emerges behind that sniping. The "Science vs Religion" dichotomy is diverting attention away from basic social, economic, and other assumptions, including the polarization against FDR´s progressive pro-religion, pro-social America. FDR´s vision was sustained in the past by Ralph Nader´s pro-citizen Nader´s Raiders lifelong career, in part by Barack Obama as chief executive, and in broader society by projects like Equal Exchange organic and Fair Trade foods Interfaith Partnership and Interfaith Power and Light, among others. The Fossil Fuel industries´ infamous funding of Climate Change denialism reflects much larger efforts that include the Tea Party, and reaches back to the 1971 Powell Memo published in the Washington Post and economist Milton Friedman´s 1969 NY Times article, "The Social Responsibility of Business is Profit," and the founding of right wing think tanks like London´s Institute of Economic Affairs and the US´s Heritage Foundation.
"In December 1940, as America was emerging from the Great Depression, more than 5,000 industrialists from across the nation made their yearly pilgrimage to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, convening for the annual meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers.....Handsome, tall, and somewhat gangly, Reverend James W. Fifield Jr. was a 41-year-old Congregationalist minister who bore more than a passing resemblance to Jimmy Stewart. Addressing a crowd of business leaders, Fifield delivered a passionate defense of the American system of free enterprise and a withering assault on its perceived enemies in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. Decrying the New Deal’s “encroachment upon our American freedoms,” the minister listed a litany of sins committed by the Democratic government, ranging from its devaluation of currency to its disrespect for the Supreme Court. Singling out the regulatory state for condemnation, he denounced “the multitude of federal agencies attached to the executive branch” and warned ominously of “the menace of autocracy approaching through bureaucracy.”
It all sounds familiar enough today, but Fifield’s audience of executives was stunned. Over the preceding decade, as America first descended into and then crawled its way out of the Great Depression, these titans of industry had been told, time and time again, that they were to blame for the nation’s downfall. Fifield, in contrast, insisted that they were the source of its salvation.
They just needed to do one thing: Get religion.
Fifield told the industrialists that clergymen would be crucial in regaining the upper hand in their war with Roosevelt. As men of God, ministers could voice the same conservative complaints as business leaders, but without any suspicion that they were motivated solely by self-interest. They could push back against claims, made often by Roosevelt and his allies, that business had somehow sinned and the welfare state was doing God’s work. The assembled industrialists gave a rousing amen. “When he had finished,” a journalist noted, “rumors report that the N.A.M. applause could be heard in Hoboken.”....
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/corporate-america-invented-religious-right-conservative-roosevelt-princeton-117030
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