what is it about Christianity as a faith in America that either collectively affirms negative views or attracts those with negative views to it?
Many Christian churches base their theology on self-loathing. They see man as an imperfect creature who because of his sins is unworthy of God's love. They see in the message of Jesus a path for obtaining that love, but they are scared of falling off the path and thus losing God's love. In order to stay on the path, they feel the need to liberate themselves from free will and submit to God's perfect will. Their theology is based on the fear that God will not love them. Of course for many of them, they see the path being a fairly easy one, acknowledge Jesus as God, and presto-change-o they are saved. They fail to see that Jesus' path had far more to do with goodliness than godliness.
By contrast, Judaism bases itself not on the story of Adam, but that of Abraham. They have a covenant with God and thus can be assured of God's love, tho it is often tough love. So it isn't as prone to self-loathing as Christianity sometimes can be.
Incidentally, I suspect the above explains in part why creationism is so popular among Evangelicals. If your theology is based upon the premise that man's inherent sinfulness makes him unworthy of God's perfect love, you need there to have been a real Garden of Eden to explain how there came to be a perfect God and imperfect man.
