The Summer 2004 Wilson Quarterly discusses the article “‘Godless Communism’ and Its Legacies” by Stephen Bates, in Society (March–April 2004):
Many Americans believed that what differentiated the Soviet Union from the United States was not the communist state’s totalitarianism and terror, or its denial of basic freedoms, or even its command economy, but rather its rejection of God. Senator Joseph McCarthy warned in 1950 that the “final, all-out battle” would be between “communistic atheism and Christianity.”
Funny, but I don’t happen to remember Armageddon occurring between communism and Christianity, do you?
“If Cold War communism imperiled religion, then religion needed to be part of the counterforce,” says Bates. The 1953 presidential inauguration of Dwight D. Eisenhower featured a parade float depicting scenes of worship and a prayer composed and recited by the new chief executive (who was “the spiritual leader of our times,” at least according to the Republican National Committee). Ike scheduled the first “National Day of Prayer” for July 4, and declared belief in a Supreme Being “the most basic expression of Americanism.”
Before about 1950, few besides clergymen advanced religious arguments against communism. When Look magazine in 1947 gave its readers nine characteristics by which to identify an American Communist, disbelief in God was not among them. But after the Communists won China in 1949, and the Soviets exploded an atomic bomb that same year, religious anticommunist rhetoric “crossed over to the secular culture.”
It is probably no coincidence that the 1950s marks the beginning of the end of traditional liberalism in American churches and the beginning of the upswing in right-wing evangelicalism. Theological liberalism had been a mainstay of American churches since the nation was founded; starting in the 1950s, though, conservative evangelicalism and conservative politics came to be fused and more aggressive, painting opponents not just as politically wrong, but religiously incorrect as well.
The question is, can this be reversed?
Read More:
FOUR GOSPELS FAIL VERIFICATION TEST
To be accepted as authentic, any book describing a historic man or woman must:
1. Specify the times and places of events recorded
2. Identify the author with his credentials and qualifications
3. Identify the sources with their credentials and qualifications
4. Be verified by others
The four Gospels have none of these qualifications.
1. Times and places are vague or absent
2. The authors are anonymous. with no credentials
3. No sources are identified
4. There were no verifications from any of the 50 Greek, Roman, Egyptian or Jewish writers present at the time of Jesus..
With these requirements for authenticity absent, the four gospels cannot be accepted as historically factual.
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