Religion, the Cold War State, and the Resurgence of Evangelicalism in the US, 1942 - 1990

Although many observers consider the Bush administration’s “faith-based initiative” a unique breach in the wall of separation between church and state, close ties between the federal government and religious agencies are no novelty in the history of American public policy. Since the end of the Second World War, billions of dollars of public funds have been made available to religiously-affiliated hospitals, nursing homes, educational institutions, and social services - institutions which were regarded as vital to Cold War preparedness. By the same token, government use of religious foreign aid agencies, the donation of surplus land and military facilities to religious charities, and the funding of the chaplaincy in the armed forces have undergirded Cold War foreign policy goals. Based on the principle of subsidiarity, post-war public policy thus integrated religious groups into the framework of the welfare and national security state in ways which underwrote both the expansion of the federal government and the growth of religious agencies. Crucially, public funding relations involved not only mainline Protestant, Jewish and Catholic organizations, but also white evangelicals, who had traditionally been the most outspoken opponents of closer ties between church and state. Cold War Anti-Communism, the fear of Catholic or secularist control of public funds, and pragmatic considerations, however, ushered in the gradual revision of their separatist views. Ironically, the programs of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, so vilified by the Christian Right, pioneered many of the funding streams most beneficial to evangelical providers. Considering that since 1945 the sprawling and loosely organized evangelical movement has become the largest single religious faction in the US, and that conservative Protestants now form the most strongly Republican group in the religious spectrum, these findings are of particular importance. They suggest that Cold War state-building and the resurgence of Evangelicalism mutually reinforced each other in ways which have been largely ignored by scholarship on conservatism and its focus on the “backlash” against the political and cultural upheaval of the 1960s. Based on newly accessible archival materials and a comprehensive review of secondary literature, this paper suggests that the institutional and ideological ties between evangelicals and the state, which developed in the aftermath of the Second World War, are as important in understanding the political mobilization of conservative Protestants as the more recent “culture war” sentiments.Beobachter der amerikanischen Politik deuten die so genannte „faith-based initiative” der Bush-Regierung, die eine staatliche Mitfinanzierung religiöser Sozialeinrichtungen ermöglicht, zumeist als einen Versuch, die traditionelle Trennung von Kirche und Staat in den USA zu unterminieren. Bei näherem Hinsehen zeigt sich jedoch, dass bundesstaatliche Gelder bereits seit dem zweiten Weltkrieg in großem Umfang zum Aufbau religiöser Krankenhäuser, Universitäten, internationaler Hilfsorganisationen und sozialer Dienste beigetragen haben. Unter der Ägide des Kalten Krieges wurden religiöse Gruppen institutionell und ideologisch in die Staatsbildung der Nachkriegszeit integriert, die weder eine Rückkehr zum „Nachtwächterstaat” der zwanziger Jahre darstellte, noch auf dem Staatsbegriff des New Deal beruhte. Stattdessen war das spezifische Merkmal des „Cold War state“, dass er auf dem Prinzip der Subsidiarität aufbaute, welches den Staat in erster Linie als Geldgeber für den Aufbau einer von privaten, gemeinnützigen und kirchlichen Einrichtungen getragenen sozialstaatlichen Infrastruktur ansah. Zu den besonderen Charakteristika des sich daraus entwickelnden neuen Verhältnisses zwischen Kirche und Staat gehörte, dass konservative protestantische Gruppen, die bislang auf einer strikten Trennung beider Bereiche bestanden, zunehmend in die subsidiaristischen Strukturen eingebunden wurden. Vor allem die Identifikation der Evangelikalen mit dem Antikommunismus und ihre Furcht vor katholischer Dominanz bei der staatlichen Förderung trug zu ihrer neuen Staatsnähe bei. Darüber hinaus profitierten konservative Protestanten insbesondere während der Ausweitung des Wohlfahrtsstaates in den sechziger Jahren (Great Society), die sie ansonsten als Beginn des moralischen Verfalls und staatlichen Versagens angreifen, zunehmend von öffentlichen Mitteln. Dies wirft die Frage auf, welche Rolle diese neue Hinwendung zum Staat für die politische Mobilisierung der Evangelikalen spielte, die in der Forschung zumeist erst in den achtziger Jahren als Resultat der Ablehnung gegenkultureller Impulse angesiedelt wird. Unter Rückgriff auf Theorien der sozialen Bewegungen zeigt der Beitrag auf, dass die ideologische und institutionelle Integration in den Staatsbildungsprozess seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg ebenso wichtig war für das politische Wiedererwachen der Evangelikalen wie ihre Reaktion gegen „sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll” seit den späten siebziger Jahren

Non-uniqueness of the third post-Newtonian binary point-mass dynamics

It is shown that the recently found non-uniqueness of the third post-Newtonian binary point-mass ADM-Hamiltonian is related to the non-uniqueness at the third post-Newtonian approximation of the applied ADM-coordinate conditions.Comment: LaTeX, 2 pages, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Neutron matter on the lattice with pionless effective field theory

We study neutron matter by combining pionless effective field theory with non-perturbative lattice methods. The neutron contact interaction is determined by zero temperature scattering data. We simulate neutron matter on the lattice at temperatures 4 and 8 MeV and densities below one-fifth normal nuclear matter density. Our results at different lattice spacings agree with one another and match bubble chain calculations at low densities. The equation of state of pure neutron matter obtained from our simulations agrees quantitatively with variational calculations based on realistic potentials.Comment: 28 pages, 13 figure

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Binary Black Hole Coalescence in Semi-Analytic Puncture Evolution

Binary black-hole coalescence is treated semi-analytically by a novel approach. Our prescription employs the conservative Skeleton Hamiltonian that describes orbiting Brill-Lindquist wormholes (termed punctures in Numerical Relativity) within a waveless truncation to the Einstein field equations [G. Faye, P. Jaranowski and G. Sch\"afer, Phys. Rev. D {\bf 69}, 124029 (2004)]. We incorporate, in a transparent Hamiltonian way and in Burke-Thorne gauge structure, the effects of gravitational radiation reaction into the above Skeleton dynamics with the help of 3.5PN accurate angular momentum flux for compact binaries in quasi-circular orbits to obtain a Semi-Analytic Puncture Evolution to model merging black-hole binaries. With the help of the TaylorT4 approximant at 3.5PN order, we perform a {\it first-order} comparison between gravitational wave phase evolutions in Numerical Relativity and our approach for equal-mass binary black holes. This comparison reveals that a modified Skeletonian reactive dynamics that employs flexible parameters will be required to prevent the dephasing between our scheme and Numerical Relativity, similar to what is pursued in the Effective One Body approach. A rough estimate for the gravitational waveform associated with the binary black-hole coalescence in our approach is also provided.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure