Shutdown is Over, But There Will Be a Next Time

[cbayer]

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/7364/shutdown_is_over__but_there_will_be_a_next_time/


October 17, 2013
By DIANE WINSTON
Diane Winston is RD's director. She holds the Knight Chair in Media and Religion at USC's Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, and has worked as a reporter for several of the nation’s leading newspapers, including the Baltimore Sun, Dallas Times Herald and The News and Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. She is the author of Red-Hot and Righteous: The Urban Religion of the Salvation Army (1999) and co-editor of Faith in the Market: Religion and the Rise of Urban Commercial Culture (2002).



Image of man in a dust storm from the FDR Presidential Library archive: "In 1934 & 1936 drought and dust storms ravaged the great American plains and added to the New Deal's reflief burden."


This morning, federal workers thronged back to work after a full 16 days of unpaid holiday. And while the political drama of the past few weeks has certainly received its share of airtime, few commenters have sketched a connection between the grandstanding of right wing politicians and the religion that undergirds so much of our politics.

To begin to tell this story, we need to look back to FDR, a figure who has been held responsible for many things—but government shutdown? What's the connection?

I'd argue that the obstructionist forces opposed to health insurance for low-income Americans and for increased taxes on the wealthy are just the latest iteration of conservatives galvanized by FDR’s New Deal. And like older generations, many of today’s activists are as much motivated by religion as by politics and economics.

Between 1933 and 1936, Roosevelt initiated a series of laws and executive orders to help Americans crushed by the Great Depression. Bereft of jobs, savings and security, millions willingly accepted this New Deal, which transformed the government’s role in the nation’s economy as well as its relationship to citizens. Washington provided government jobs, insured the nation’s banks, established old age pensions and unemployment insurance, subsidized mortgage payments, and lowered trade barriers.

more at link