The Christian origins of the New Deal?

Posted Wednesday night, August 7, 2019.

Teenage Franklin Roosevelt (in the plain white turtleneck, seated second from the left in the front row) with teammates on the Groton football teams, circa 1899.  Photo courtesy of the FDR Presidential Library and Museum.

There was a community service requirement for students at Groton when Franklin Roosevelt went there. The teenage self-satisfaction and the rich boy’s condescension in his letter home to his parents telling them about his appointment as a "special missionary" are risible, but the young FDR was sincere, and he remained sincere the rest of his life. Roosevelt was a pious, church-going Episcopalian and he made it clear that his faith informed his plans for the New Deal. So maybe it’s not a stretch to say the New Deal began with this…

In January 1899, in Franklin’s third year, the local Missionary Society appointed him and a classmate “special missionaries to look after Mrs Freeman[,] am old woman [who lives] near the school. She is an old coloured [sic] lady, living all alone and 84 years old. We [paid] our first visit to her today, right after church, and talked and gave her the latest news, for nearly an hour. We are to visit her a couple of times a week, see that she has coat water, etc., feed her hens...and in case of a snowstorm we are to dig her out...it will be very pleasant as she is a dear old thing, and it will be a good occupation for us.”

---from “Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life” by Robert Dallek.

Comments

[RepubAnon]

These days, some Young Republicans would sell that woman a reverse mortgage, take the money as a commission, foreclose on her house and make her homeless. They'd put this on their résumés when applying for a summer internship at a private equity firm...