When did so many (not all) "christians" become hateful psychopaths?

[YoungDemCA]

240. There have ALWAYS been strong currents of right-wing Christianity in the United States....

...but they have gotten more politically active since, roughly, the end of WWII, when America stood unchallenged in terms of economic prosperity and military strength-with the exception of the Soviet Union.

I don't think a lot of people give enough "credit" to the Cold War for its stoking of the fears of many American Christians. After all, the Commies, with their hard-line atheistic stance, posed a direct threat to the authority of religious leaders worldwide. And in America, that threat was amplified by Marxism's ideological and political threat to the capitalist system.

While many American Christians at the time were "Cold War liberals" (and some were further left than that, even), there was a significant segment that had a much more right-wing political orientation. This was especially true of many of the evangelical, fundamentalist, and Pentecostal churches that grew in number during this time period. Anti-Communism, furthermore, was tied in the minds of members of these churches with a highly rigid, absolutist view of morality and a zealous belief in right-wing economic individualism. The emphasis of such churches on personal salvation and their view of collective solutions to social problems as sacrilege gelled well with many middle-class members of the prosperous post-war American economy, particularly as it suited their own lives and circumstances well on an individual level.

Since the economic and cultural upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s, the Religious Right has become more and more active in right-wing politics, particularly as a large segment of the Republican Party. With the decline of more moderate churches (especially much of the 'mainline" Protestant community) and the growth of right-wing conservative churches, the Christian population has become more divided between very nominal (or entirely secular) Christians, and the right-wingers who are very organized politically.