"'Spiritual mobilization' is his effort to recruit other ministers to the cause. So he is serving, in many ways, as a frontman for a number of corporate leaders. His main sponsors are Sun Oil President J. Howard Pew, Alfred Sloan of General Motors, the heads of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, they all heavily fund this organization. But what Fifield sets out to do is recruit other ministers to his cause. Within the span of just a decade's time, he has about 17,000 so-called minister representatives who belong to the organization who are literally preaching sermons on its Christian libertarian message to their congregations, who are competing in sermon contest[s] for cash prizes and they're doing all they can in their local communities to spread this message that the New Deal is essentially evil, it's a manifestation of creeping socialism that is rotting away the country from within. Instead they need to rally around business leaders and make common cause with them to defend what they call 'the American way of life.'"
Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air interviews Kevin M. Kruse about his new book One Nation Under God: How Corporate American Invented Christian America.
"Despite the argument Kruse makes beginning with his subtitle, 'corporate America' played no significant role in conceiving any of these initiatives"
Michael Kazin reviews the book in The New York Times.
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