I certainly agree with your points and am disappointed that you don't know how the fundamentalists reconcile their love of a market based on individual greed with their alleged love of one who had no place to lay his head.
I will attempt, as best as I can, to sketch out my own theory of the relationship between the lures of consumptive capitalism and a certain type of fundamentalist Christianity, always with the caveats that it is (a) only my own idea; (b) only tentative; and (c) subject to revision at any time.
Ahem.
I think the whole "Calvinism Makes America Great" thesis, redolent of a nearly century old German book, is wrong on any number of fronts. There is a history of hyper-Calvinism in America's past, but, as the late church historian Clarence Goen pointed out, by the time of the War for Independence, church membership and attendance in New England, home of our fight against the British, was in the single digits. Laws passed the previous century limiting public participation, including voting rights, to those in full communion with the church were ignored because the resultant disenfranchisement would include many prominent community leaders. In Virginia, there was a movement, before hostilities broke out, to disestablish the Anglican Church, which only succeeded during the Revolution with the passage of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom. Overall, across the colonies (as they still were at the time), only Catholic Maryland had church attendance and membership rates higher than 10 or twelve percent.
The "religion" we inherited from our American ancestors was largely secularized, devoid of serious content, and was full of class, ethnic, racial, and sexual prejudices which still dominate. At the same time, the pursuit of wealth (as noted by de Tocqueville) had replaced the pursuit of salvation as America's defining creed. As such, it is no surprise that it found its way in to American religious thought, along with our breathless optimism and belief in the power of reform, i.e. working within the system to effect change. There is a direct line from early proponents of American economic ingenuity and The Power of Positive Thinking, and no one can doubt the latter is much more reflective of our mood as Americans (like it or not) than any abstruse doctrinal dispute or denominational battle. In other words, our religion reflects who we are as a people, for better and for worse. Those who have more power simply display this tendency to a greater degree than those without it.
The actual words of the Bible are, ironically, irrelevant to those who declare most loudly their adherence to an uncritical acceptance of them. What exists first for such people are a set of logical premises that are necessary for constructing a world-view. They view the public role of religion as a private sanctuary from the storms of the world; in essence, the church is a place where we go to feel good about ourselves, or cry with other people when we are sad. Clergy are magicians, waving their hands to make us feel better when we are sick, comfort us when we mourn. Their words should be limited to bourgeois platitudes that support our view of the world, or at worst, challenge those parts of our society and culture we don't like. The church, in other words, is a prop for the powerful, offering slops to the less-powerful in the language of an eternal home in the bosom of Jesus in the sky when we die.
I think the struggle between fundamentalists and progressive Christians is part and parcel of a larger struggle that involves issues of race, class, gender, and devolves, in the end, to the issue of power. I dot not believe that my own, admittedly quirky, Christian beliefs are any less filled to the brim with all sorts of contingencies that will someday be seen as quaint, antiquated nonsense. The difference between my own view of these matters and those of a fundamentalist, however, is that I recognize my own fallibility, my own limitations, and the probability that I am wrong. A fundamentalist, especially one in a position of power, cannot do so for fear that the entire world- and supernatural view constructed will crumble to the ground if the person says, "I believe this, even though I don't think it is, or can be considered, either True (note the capital) or Eternal." I think I am much more comfortable with my own fallibility and contingency than many of those on the right, and I think there is a certain fear at the heart of the fundamentalist/capitalist dogma - the fear of insignificance, of contingency, of loss, and of meaninglessness - that I cannot share.*
As an aside, let me just say that I can go so far as to say that, should everything I believe turn out to be a bunch of nonsense; should meaninglessness rule the universe after all, I'm OK with that, because I believe we largely construct meaning anyway. I do not believe the Universe, as a whole, has a narrative. That's a subject for another day, though.
