> On Nov 17, 2007, at 4:00 PM, Marvin Gandall wrote:
>
>> But you'll find precisely these sentiments also expressed by Polish-
>> American
>> and Irish-American Catholics, for example, and even by
>> traditionally liberal
>> Jewish-Americans against the poor and unemployed - especially
>> against the
>> non-white poor and unemployed.
>
> Historically though they've been more likely to vote Democrat than
> their Protestant counterparts. And fundie Protestants are the most
> Republican demographic of all.
=================================
Yes, that has been the case for the past three decades, among the most
stable and prosperous in American history. But that hasn't been so during
previous periods of economic distress and turbulent social unrest, notably
before WWI and during the Depression, when populist and socialist movements
united people of diverse backgrounds along class lines, including
traditionally favoured Protestant whites.
I think the contemporary animus among rank and file Republicans against the welfare poor is inspired mainly by race prejudice than by Calvinist economic doctrine. Until the Democrats moved against segregation and attracted masses of newly enfranchised blacks, for example, Southern Protestants were more attracted to the welfare-statist prescriptions of the DP than to the free-market nostrums of the Republicans. Despite the success of the "Southern strategy", there remains a considerable amount of working-clsss Republican distrust towards the Eastern establishment wing of the party and Wall Street.
I was responding to the proposition that there is something inherent in Protestantism which predisposes their adherents to favour capitalism. My own view is that the Bible can be invoked to justify either social inequality or social justice, and in periods of social crisis, when such issues are thrust to the forefront, Protestants, like other believers, have tended to divide between those at the bottom interpreting scripture to support their demands for justice and the higher clergy resisting their claims on behalf of the propertied classes.