rifts. The popularity of the New Deal in the 1930s coopted much of socialist party’s plank and melded it to an ameliorated capitalism which drew voters and members away. Thomas criticized the New Deal as “reformed capitalism” and he meant it as an indictment of the programs, but most citizens and politicians were happy with the characterization. Post-World War II social programs minimized economic inequality among white Americans and the Cold War ushered in a second Red Scare. In addition, influential theologians turned away from Christian socialism for either its universal post-Christian aspirations or its utopianism. Reinhold Niebuhr, for example, disavowed his youthful socialism for political realism, which abandoned the notion that the government or any bureaucracy could be perfected in order to achieve social salvation.

As the centuryprogressed, the rise of the New Right political coalition welcomed white evangelical Christians and welded them to a free-market ideology. The social gospel, while not fully replaced, lost its prominence in the pulpit. The proliferation of the prosperity gospel in the late 20th and early 21st centuries wedded Christianity to capitalism — God’s blessings were individual and material. Christ, it appeared, was markedly anti-Keynesian.

A Second Gilded Age

Today we are living in a Second Gilded Age. National and global inequality is reaching similar levels as they were in the late 19th century. Half of the world population lives on less than $ $5.50 a day. In the U.S., the top 1 percent of the population holds 40 percent of the wealth. The largest corporations in the country like Amazon