this point by @mtsw is interesting and a common conception and SEEMS right but as a historian of religion I think it's incorrect. (brief thread) 1/ #twitterstorians

the misconception, I think, comes from the premise in the 2nd tweet that evangelical [and this should have 'white' in front of it, but it's clear that's what he means] churches derive their value system from the white south (guessing he's thinking Jim Crow back to Civil War) 2/

that is likely true but that original racist culture was constructed out of mainline 19th-c Protestant Christianity, one that used it as a tool to "civilize" those they thought inferior. 3/

there's a growing literature, for example, about the Civil War as a religious war (on both sides) but also about how the Lost Cause was/ is an ideology premised on a narrative of biblical election, that the white south is the chosen people that sinned but could be redeemed. 4/

it's no coincidence that the destruction of Reconstruction was termed "Redemption." 5/

but the larger point, I think, is that there's no "downstream" here. religion and politics flow together. we - all Americans! - tend to think of those 2 categories as separate and distinguishable but they're really not! 6/

that too comes from the same period and people, the academic construction of "religion" as a category, made in the shape of those who created it. religion was interior, all else wasn't "real" and hence was politics. 7/

see this thread from a couple of days ago 8/ https://twitter.com/prof_gabriele/status/1258775244220792833?s=20

this even helps us understand things we usually see as far disconnected, like economics on the right! 9/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/the-prosperity-gospel-of-american-health-care/525264/

so ultimately still thinking in this way exculpates (certain types of) Christianity in troublesome ways and more importantly obscures what's going on. 10/10