Reacting to Lawrence Auster's visceral reactions towards anyone on the right who is not viewed as sufficiently supportive of Israel, Dennis Mangan remarks that it was not so-called "Judeo-Christian" morality that shaped Western civilization, but simply Christian morality that did.
While Dennis' assertion would have gone undisputed in the fifties when he was a toddling around, time has steadily chipped away at its veracity, and there is no sign of a slow down. The following graph created via Google's Ngram viewer from books published in the US traces the ascension of the phrase over close to the last six decades. Prior to 1955, it was almost non-existent (click on the images for better resolution):
Unlike the hybridization that yokes Christianity to Judaism and American interests to those of Israel, plain old "Christian" is old hat, as it floats along sideways:
Look, both religions' moral foundations are found in the first five books of the Old Testament, and where would Americans be today without the admonition against coveting a neighbor's things? That American Jews concerned with Israel's well being have an enormous amount to gain by marrying the cultural and political aims of white Christian centrists and rightists in the US to their own is merely incidental! Similarly, that mainstream white Christians like Bill O'Reilly and Richard Land are able to pitch for "traditional" (ie, Christian) morality with only blunted disapproval from media gatekeepers who reserve far less vitriol for the promotion of Judeo-Christian morality than they ever could for Christian morality is just an unintended byproduct of the firm biblical basis for the phrase's essential invention in the sixties!
While Dennis' assertion would have gone undisputed in the fifties when he was a toddling around, time has steadily chipped away at its veracity, and there is no sign of a slow down. The following graph created via Google's Ngram viewer from books published in the US traces the ascension of the phrase over close to the last six decades. Prior to 1955, it was almost non-existent (click on the images for better resolution):
Unlike the hybridization that yokes Christianity to Judaism and American interests to those of Israel, plain old "Christian" is old hat, as it floats along sideways:
Look, both religions' moral foundations are found in the first five books of the Old Testament, and where would Americans be today without the admonition against coveting a neighbor's things? That American Jews concerned with Israel's well being have an enormous amount to gain by marrying the cultural and political aims of white Christian centrists and rightists in the US to their own is merely incidental! Similarly, that mainstream white Christians like Bill O'Reilly and Richard Land are able to pitch for "traditional" (ie, Christian) morality with only blunted disapproval from media gatekeepers who reserve far less vitriol for the promotion of Judeo-Christian morality than they ever could for Christian morality is just an unintended byproduct of the firm biblical basis for the phrase's essential invention in the sixties!
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