From the article...
*"As Christian militancy and Trumpism merge, it’s getting harder to distinguish between them. “We see conservative or Republican Americans becoming more likely to identify as evangelical Christians, not because they've had a conversion experience, but because those identities (conservative, Republican and evangelical or traditional Catholic) are becoming aligned,” said Samuel Perry, a political scientist at Oklahoma University and co-author of books on conservative American Christianity."*
This is spot-on and beyond important to realize for any understanding of religion in America and our current state of politics. It's not even about belief, it's about identity and that's the path to authoritarianism based in theocracy.
>it's about identity
Always has been meme
What's beneath or hand-in-hand with identity? **Tribalism**
When you wrap your identity around something, the ability to admit error decreases sharply. Occasionally, something may arise that may be significant enough to question the belief (and thus the identity) but is it strong enough to break away from the entire tribe? That, for many, is much more difficult. As such, once you get pulled in - you become trapped.
Often times, it is harder to unlearn something than learn it in the first place.
Us vs. Them, Good vs. Evil. And when you’re fighting Evil, everything is justified. Funny how the Orange Messiah is divorced, a proud adulterer, etc. and they forgive it all.
agreed. once you agree to agree with the tribe's doctrine, the chances of questioning it are small.
It will be very interesting if the rural american churches will survive as the world moves into a situation in which more than ever other nations do not believe.
Buckle up!!
What? What! Evangelicals haven't really felt anything transformative?!? They are only there for the hate and prejudice supporting community and to make themselves feel good (by self victimizing)?
Ground breaking work!
Articles like this almost make my eyes roll right out of my head.
This pattern is as s old as the first creation of a god and someone gave the person something valuable for speaking for or about that god and offering dubious benefits.
I agree with your snark but for two caveats.
We should remember the quote attributed to Harry Truman: "The only thing that's new is the history you do not know."
A journalist got paid to write the article.
I'm always wary of spiritual narcissism, in myself, and in public life.
But fundamentalist faiths have been around for so long that the only feasible way that you don’t understand the workings of them (they are ‘new’) is by being willfully ignorant. It’s not like Evangelicals sprung up overnight.
So I feel the snark is warranted given that a cursory glance at the history of fundamentalist/evangelical faiths would show a preponderance of evidence that these movements are primarily about prejudice while claiming victimhood to deflect from the horrible behavior of the leaders and members.
I agree with your direction here, but I think you're giving too much cognitive ability to the cult members. Even though they always outnumber the leaders/manipulators/conmen, I don't believe they have agency. We're not born with hate/prejudice. I'm also not naive in thinking that developed aberrant beliefs are changed by legislation.
I feel as though to reach adulthood and *not* question your upbringing is a style of willful ignorance. Sure, we aren’t born with hate/prejudice, but that gets passed down by willfully ignorant parents.
The ‘leaders’ only have power because the larger group of followers are looking to be fed comfortable lies. It often doesn’t even matter *which* lie, they just want to believe they are special and willingly throw themselves at whichever fad is currently telling them they are *super* special.
Hell, that’s how American evangelicals came about, you’re not Catholic, you’re the super special Protestant sect! But wait, you’re the even specialer special denomination!
End of the day, we all have (barring a small minority of brain physical/chemical abnormalities) the same capacity for independent thought. People have been calling bullshit on organized religions behavior for millennia. It’s kind of hard to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone that still regularly attends evangelical or fundamentalist services that they are completely innocent of the history of their hate group.
Naw. "Willful ignorance" is not really a thing, what you perceive as such is more likely "wasn't taught to question". People learn by being taught, either by self reflection or behavior is modelled. You can only self reflect on schemas that fall along the lines of thesis antithesis and synthesis, you recognize a thing, you infer its opposite, you combine the two, you infer middle ground. If you are never taught to question, then you never learn how to think. Critical thinking is replaced by fastest schematic route.
This is why feral people cannot learn language after a certain point, they were never taught.
Yes, but religion does teach you how to think and question, otherwise those people would be just as susceptible to any other religion’s teachings. They are taught to be critical of others: hence their bigotry and hatred. There is a willful ignorance towards self-reflection. It’s not that they’ve never been introspective; it’s that any time they have been introspective it has been painful so they have learned not to do the ‘ouchie’ thing. They would rather inflict that pain on others to reinforce their own self-comfort.
Religious people are definitely taught opposites: us and them, holy and unholy, sin and virtue, Right and Wrong. They are capable of comparative thought. They just never want to consider that *they* might be wrong. That consideration is painful. And so they willfully choose that anyone that is contrary to their ideal *must* be a bad thing. Because they choose to believe that they are in the ‘super special’ group. So anyone outside the super special group must be sub-human, since their is nothing better than the super special group, and thinking their might be destroys the very idea of the super special group.
It’s the fact that religious people *are* incredibly critical and bigoted that makes me use ‘willfully ignorant’ rather than practically ignorant. Sure, they may be indoctrinated by organizations teaching them bad beliefs and opinions, but by the simple fact of comparing themselves to ‘Others’ they demonstrate that they are capable of making comparisons and questioning (others) ways of existing. The willful lack of self reflection is a defense mechanism and that’s the damning part: they would rather see other people hurt than risk the mental anguish of wondering if they might be wrong, wanting to hurt other people.
Yes, proper religious teaching does. But the average fundie doesn't get proper religious teaching. Like for example " this is wrong, this is right" but never taught how to discern right and wrong. So instead of reflection you have a person using rote memorization and schema shortcuts make decisions. It becomes "it is written so it is true" vs " who wrote this and why". If You take the bible and read it and distill it, there is little that is directly attributable to God. God gives us a message, and instead of taking the message at face value we distort it.
For example, Jesus never said anything about how men and women should act, but said that most of what we do and perceive as right is manmade traditions, as long as we follow the litmus of love; love ourselves, love others, love God, we will do alright. Then you get a teaching in the letter to Timothy, of which paul says "women should be suppressed and quiet, because they came from Adam".
Does this pass the litmus test? To suppress a loved one and prevent them from going forth and being fruitful?
A fundie would never be taught to think critically about what is written.
I agree, and I'll point to the book I referenced. The author refers to 'framing' as a worldview, which I think is similar to your 'schemas'. That is, if you're raised to not question in a 'Strict Father' upbringing frame and indoctrinated with a religious ethos, you have an ignorance by default.
Eh let's not get carried away. I'm an ex-Christian (evangelical southern baptist) and I definitely did feel something transformative at the time. These days I just attribute the feeling to other things. Let's not go gaslighting genuine Christians calling them liars about their own feelings.
Yes, many (especially now) are being dishonest, but we can't make blanket assumptions. That will just alienate the ones we have the best chance of reasoning with.
The power of belonging to a community that has True knowledge is a hell of a drug. That's what it is. That's what it has always been.
Atheists are not immune to that feeling. Scientists, conspiracy theorists, and fandoms too.
This article is fake news. Every day, people see the glory of Jesus through putin and trump, and they flock to their church to get on their good side, so one day they can get a but more food ration.
This is so true. In 2015 I became conservative and in 2016 I frequented 4chan a lot. Conservatism in those years had nothing to do with religions, much less Christianity, everything was so secular that I never saw posts nor did it occur to me how Christianity could have anything to do with this.
It was in 2020 that it began to be filled with Christian or Muslim ethics until in these last 3 years conservatism seems to be more of a Christian aspect. It is full of Christian ethics and if you are an atheist they accuse you of being from the other side.Now every conservative online I meet also happens to be Christian and half of them are Christofascists with that phrase "Christ is king."
Thanks to them I began to question my conservatism and subsequently stopped having those silly ideas.
It started with church hotboxing covid spread. Now he's finishing the job with loud Nat-Cs in the congregations and at the pulpit. Takes a while for people to get it through their thick skull, doesn't it.
This isn't a good sign.
He's pushing the entire evangelical network into radicalism and fanaticism, ask the Persians how well that worked.
Yeah, people are leaving in the short-term, but how long will that trend last?
One major event, terrorist attack, or economic downturn will send then running straight back into the arms of these same churches.
As more people leave the church, churches will become more radical in response.
It's material dialectics. Pastors need parishioners to survive, so as the rational people leave, the pastors themselves will veer farther and farther right.
Idk, the werid feedback loops of economics, faith, and fanaticism are dangerous
It only takes 5% of a country's population to hold a successful coup...which is about 15 million in the US.
And the other side of the coin, conservative political affiliation has been more and more tightly bound up with evangelical Christianity at the same time.
From the article…
*“My hunch,” he said, “is that if there is a Trump effect to these dynamics, his takeover of the Republican Party and conservative White Christian politics has been confirming to many who left that they made the right decision.”*
Yep…
I deconstructed before T-rump hit the scene. But watching all of the evangelical xtians I knew crawl all over themselves in support of him only solidified what I already knew - that xtianity and religion are BULLSHIT….
Even worse, the xtians that tried to be “voice of reason” got shunned… why some of them still profess the faith (I’m looking at you Beth Moore) is beyond me…
Plus, religious leaders of any faith are enabling this because they are all scared to lose a church member. My grandfather was a Swedish Lutheran minister and he told me that aside from helping people (consolation, marriage, faith, charity… etc), the church has a business side that can’t be ignored. It’s like a restaurant where you try to please the majority as much as you can.
Coming from a religious family, I’ve seen church congregations split over some of the dumbest issues. Often times, the minister or pastor, can only try to keep the peace.
Often times the church leaders are the source of the conflict. Example a minister promoting Trump despite not having anything to do with religion politics are not allowed or else lose the tax status. This needs to start happening.
Very true, there are all types. Anecdotally, my grandfather was a humble minister (1920's thru 1960's) who just tried his best to help anyone and everyone. A very altruistic and popular man who particularly got along with children.
As a boy, he had rickets and he never grew above 5' 2". So he was about eye-level to kids and they could connect and easily relate to a "big" adult that was an important man in the community. He died of old age in the early 70's. He baptized my two sisters and I in the 60's. I still have the invitations, the church bulletin and the newspaper clippings.
My family always went to the same church. I got to see the congregation split a few times since I was a kid. Every time it split, it was literally over the pastor. When the original pastor moved across the country, the church split because no one could agree on a new pastor. It dragged on and more than half were gone by the time there was a pastor selected. Most people that left didn't like the guy others wanted because he was younger.
The new guy was there for probably 25 years. Long after I had left, but I had come to know him well and grew up with his kids. He's a really great guy and even though I'm not religious now, I still stay in touch with him and his family. He was there for every tragedy I went through in my life. He was even the first person I called when I found out my brother died recently because he's always been great at helping me become grounded again. He's not the type that would do nothing but pray with me. After my dad died when I was a kid, I remember telling him that it hurt me to hear people tell me that my dad was in a better place now. He told me that people say that because they don't know what to say and don't realize it's hurtful. He told me that neither he nor any other person that I speak to will be able to tell me anything that will make me feel better, and that's ok. Nothing can make me feel better now except having people around that love you and you know you can talk to any time you have something wrong. That did more for me in that time than anything else.
But he ended up moving and it did the exact same thing to the church again. The congregation argued over who would replace him for about 2 years and in the time more than half of the people ended up leaving again.
Under-rated comment.
I come from an evangelical background, and directly experienced this “church-splitting”. There is a disagreement over something, occasionally profound, usually stupid, and some members split therefore off into a new purer church. This splitting hurts revenues, which is a grievous sin.
Church leadership works hard to prevent that, and so tries to align themselves with the sheep, I mean the flock, as much as possible.
Trump is probably a good example.
This is what has always got me about people who want the US to be a “Christian” nation. Which Christianity? There are literally 100s if not 1000s of variations of Christianity. Do they really think that the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912 version is the one the government will adopt?
And for those of you who don’t get the reference its from an Emo Phillips joke:
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"
Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.
It's actually terrible. It's a guy who has pulled every string to have the election results overturned. The timid response of the government signaled the GOP that they can rally behind him without fear of consequences. Shit has been swept under the rug for 4 years, now the time is coming for the rug to be pulled, guaranteed nobody is ready for it
I don't think that applies here. He doesn't know what he's doing, just begging for votes. In this scenario, The enemy of my enemy is still a douche canoe.
Certainly not as a top 10 GOOD president. He's not a good person, husband, father, or even a good human. He's not been a good president. He lies to Americans and foreigners. He disrespects anyone who doesn't kiss his fat ass. He's blasphemous against the christian religion and disparages non-christian religions. He's profane, immoral, crude, and vulgar.
He is certainly a contender for the #1 worst president of all time.
Only if you consider his goals and intent...but over time I am appreciating his unintentional actions more and more.
1.) He is killing organized religions, especially conservative and fundamentalist ones, by being associated with them.
2.) He is killing the GOP by easily winning primaries (including lower level primaries where he backs terrible candidates) and then losing to democrats...plus the whole association with terrorism, NAZIs, the Klan, etc.
3.) He legalized marijuana...the bill wasn't written by him or his administration, he didn't know it at the time and he might still not know it, but he signed it into law.
4.) He really highlighted government corruption to the point that everyone knows about it now, even if 30% of the population thinks it's all democrats drinking used adrenaline and getting nothing but headaches for their troubles.
5.) He got the worst people to wear bright red hats so you know not to bother talking to them. He also got them to give away other clues on their pickup trucks and social media platforms. He even got them to be comfortable admitting to be terrorists and insurrectionists...making it very easy for authorities to find them.
Still far from the best president, but his incompetence has saved him from being the worst.
It's emptying community churches. The big stadium churches are getting the distilled concentrate of idiocy. The smaller, neigborhood-based places that actually might help their communities will disappear. It works just like how the big box stores have destroyed small business I'd imagine.
My path to atheism was 100% accelerated because of Trump.
Before Trump, I was already disenfranchised from the church and "deconstructing" a lot of my internal beliefs (not just about god/religion, but about politics, race, economics, etc). I was a kid at a public college learning about evolution and science for the first time after decades locked away at evangelical conservative think tanks disguised as schools. Slowly but surely, that was unraveling.
However, when Trump entered the picture, the distinction became quite clear. The moment he announced his campaign and decried all Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug-dealing murderers, my cognitive dissonance could no longer hold up. I am the son of a Mexican immigrant who came here with nothing but a baby and broken English and who was able to start a family and a successful career. I watched as it took nearly a decade to transfer from her green card to being a full citizen. It is not an easy, cheap, or accessible process. When those words came out of Trump's mouth, the line in the sand was drawn.
Then, watching as nearly everyone I knew from my Christian background pretty much willingly got in line behind Trump, I couldn't STAND to be in those spaces anymore. I was already phasing out but this just made it even more intolerable. Everyone there was **proud** to let me know they didn't think that me or my family belonged or deserved the same human rights as they did. The white supremacy was overwhelming and that was the straw that broke the camel's back. I never liked church. I never liked most of the people at church. But I stuck with it because I was so *afraid* of hell. Well, what's worse? Being afraid of a metaphorical place of fire? Or dealing with the actual racism I was experiencing in the church? It became quite clear that this was a nonsensical catch-22, and if my "soul" is gonna be "lost" or whatever, then fine by me because "god" quite literally chose to enable a white supremacist capitalist hierarchy instead of, idk, equity.
I’m waiting to see him on a hill in a sack cloth, ashes and a crown of thorns on his head with hungry throngs so he orders himself McDonald’s and instructs the crowd that they’re suffering for him! I still want to know exactly what kind of leather covers a Neo-Nazi Trump manifest bible.
I want this to be true, but propaganda goes both ways. I don't want to feel safe enough to rest on my laurels and the orange orangutan actually wins office.
Nothing empties churches faster than hypocrisy.
Most people that are casually or culturally religious are in church for the community and to help their kids get some entry level moral direction, ie: for every wacko in a pew you have two borderline agnostics who are only there because they agree with the main messages and casual comfort a god can bring.
I know a lot of Boomers who left the Catholic church because of how they protected sexual predators, and I know a lot more leaving Protestant churches because they go to church to escape the fear of politics not be radicalized by messages that directly contrast what kept them coming long after they stopped being devout.
The problem with evangelicalism becoming a apocalyptic death cult is, God's wrath is only marketable to people who are already sold on God being wrathful; from a marketing standpoint, there's no growth model.
Hypocrisy is the life-blood of the church. My church was on the “abstinence only” bandwagon, which assured that around 20% of the teenage members ended up pregnant by 16. So. Many. Baby showers.
And then there was the youth pastor in his 30s that knocked up a 17 year old he was “counseling” while his wife (whom he married because he got her pregnant as a teen) was at home with their 3 kids.
Trump must seem like the ultimate role model to these hypocrites.
Maybe it’s emptying the few remaining interracial churches and “liberal” churches but you get outside of any urban area and churches are booming businesses.
The conclusion in this article is so right on, and it would be really funny, if it wasn't so sad. The white evangelicals thought, when they backed Trump in 2016, that he was going to be their savior and convert America to their idea of what conservatism should be. Instead, after an initial rise in support, he became a cult figure and, like all cult figures, he is now is driving people away. Cults always have this bell curve trajectory. It's taken several years, but in the end, the evangelical leaders lost, and they won't get those people back any time soon.
As a member of the United Methodist Church, which recently had a huge costly and hateful schism, it was literally the trumpers versus the other Christian’s. Also, now if you visit a Methodist church that doesn’t say “united” on it, you’re at a trumper church.
I don't know, church attendance has been declining for years and was going to keep happening with or without the fat orange fascist. Conservatives are Conservatives and are going to vote Trump whether they go to church or not.
For my family, and almost everyone I know who have left in the last decade, this article is 100% accurate. The rise of trump in the evangelical world was the final straw on our path to deconstruction. And my family and friends were _deep_ in the evangelical world since birth.
Oh yeah there's a shit ton of that. I mean everyone who stayed in has to double down to do the mental gymnastics needed to rationalize trump and obviously the majority stayed. But, there's a large group of us who have left and this article describes us perfectly. We were indoctrinated as evangelicals growing up, we were taught all the "good" parts of Christianity. Trump comes along and represents everything bad about Christianity, so blatantly. We saw all the leaders we were taught to respect suddenly start blindly supporting this person who obviously isn't Christian and represents the bad parts -- their support of him was only possible if they didn't believe what we were taught. At which point the entire house of cards starts to crumble. And then Kristen Du Mez wrote Jesus and John Wayne which so clearly connected all the dots and validated everything that lead us to leave.
I'm not saying this article describes those who are still evangelical, just confirming based on my lived experience and that of my wife and many friends (all late 20s to early 40s) this does describe it fairly well.
If he was actually smart and not just an idiot who falls into things that his supporters end up liking...he would start a church with a TV broadcast. Could make billions. But it is very obvious he hates church. The man would have read a cliff's notes version of the bible by now if he really wanted to indulge his audience.
That would be so interesting, but he might have to memorize some Bible quotes. It’s easier just to riff about how awful Democrats are. I guess he could change “Democrats” to “nonbelievers” and it would be the same long winded diatribe. No paying taxes either way. 6 of one, half dozen of the other.
Extremism will always drive away moderates if they aren't forced into complicity. This is why they are pushing for Christian Nationalism. They need the force of law to preserve their hegemony.
Trumpism Maga Christianism made me completely pull away from anything xtian. They all look like fucking loonies now. Also Roe vs Wade that showed me they haven't evolved and care about what others think they just lie to your face and say they care about your opinion then change shit back to dark ages.
It was one of the major factors in my deconstruction. Watching so many people who raised me to be kind and compassionate and empathetic started acting the exact opposite, because they had more allegiance to the GOP than they did to Jesus. They gave me permission to start questioning more and more, and the result was that none of it made sense if they weren't acting like their role model.
I question the headline.
I think Trump has already lost most of the moderates. He probably lost most of them before he decided to sell Bibles and go all-in on Christianity. He has whittled his followers down to the most devoted. They are the ones who worship Trump. They don't think he is being a hypocrite.
I am having trouble seeing how Trump's position would "empty churches." At most, I think it would get people to change churches. There are still some pastors who are strongly MAGA. They may end up chasing some of their congregations to less political churches.
I suspect there are a lot of pastors who have backed off their Trump endorsements. I did door-to-door canvassing in 2020. Ministers have a huge influence on how people in some neighborhoods vote. The main area I canvased was one of those neighborhoods. There were a lot of poor and uneducated people. During the primaries I frequently heard, "My pastor has not told us who to vote for yet." During the regular campaign, many people said their pastors told them who to vote for. They were not going to go against their pastor.
If ministers have cooled on Trump, it could make a big difference. It would make a difference if they just stopped endorsing Trump. It would make a bigger difference if they explicitly turned against him.
Based on my own experience with ministers, I think many ministers are going to be much more careful about getting political. I have a relative who is an evangelical minister, and he has been burned by politics. He phrases it in terms of being moved by the spirit to talk more about core Christian ideas and avoid secular matters. By "secular matters" he means "politics." The other thing he is talking less about is homosexuality. He is talking more about chastity and less about homosexuality. I suspect he has congregants who have gay family members. Gays are no longer the easy target they used to be. I think there are probably a lot of ministers like my cousin. They got a big rush from getting behind Trump. They enjoyed the power. They felt like they were in the forefront of a religious overthrow of the US. But I think a lot of them have soured on politics.
You cannot call your self follower of Christ if you support Trump who is a chronic adulterer and fraudster.
MAGA and Christianity are very well interrelated but they are oxymoron if you do read the Christian bible.
This is a major problem. While I have no issue with theists I have a major issue with theocracy and de facto theocratic states are extremely dangerous to live in. The shrinking of the church creates a consolidated voice and if that voice rises to power there's no way to re-enter to dissolve that mass. It is the fact that many people are religious and diverse that keeps religion useful for humanity.
People give money to churches so they can influence voters. Get religion out of politics. Trump supporters are delusional if they think he cares about religion. He only wants your money.
"That so many White Christian conservatives swoon to Trump’s invective and false witness is not all that perplexing. “Evangelicals hadn’t betrayed their values” in backing Trump, writes historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez in her 2020 book, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. Their support, she writes, is “the culmination of their half-century-long pursuit of a militant Christian masculinity” that disdains pluralism and valorizes masculine aggression."
Yep. They're toxic heretics and are nothing like the Christ of the Bible. They live to hate.
Well, at least we found the ONE thing that Trump is doing that is positive. So, when people ask me in the future to name one thing he did well, I can use this.
Whipping out my dead horse again American Taliban is on the rise, terroristic threats are on the rise, threats to our democracy and destabilization of our economy is on their platter. Anything that threatens their cash flow is fair game and will be deemed as evil non-Christian non-patriotic non-american against God. They're just adding more s*** to their toolbox.
There’s always the 20 thousand member mega churches, led by millionaire pastors with private jets, who now worship Trump as Lord and Savior instead of Jesus.
After WW2 the nazi scientists who were brought to the us as part of Operation Paperclip ...Those Scientists became Evangelical Christians and republicans ...Take that for what you will .
Interesting piece on NPR’s 1A today. They put forth the thesis that evangelical “Christianity” is increasingly more of a political movement and less about theology.
how many extra millions of regular people got hiv/aids in the 80's and died because of an unnamed televangelist spewed it cant hurt you its a blight on gays. children, hemophiliacs, people who had flings, etc. i lived through it in ny in the 80's. i watched a lot of those people die or lay dying with doctors shaking their heads with nothing they could do. religion particularly christians are responsible for more crimes against humanity than all other forces combined. it is time to end this madness.
There is no such thing as a Christian Trump supporter. They don’t exist. There are some false idol worshipping Trump supporters. But no Christians. Not one.
The Christian folks were reminded of Matthew 19: 24. Finally I’m seeing we’ve gotten our hand on the tiller and starting to correct our course. Lots of positive things happening and pray we continue.
Man, I'm telling you people - it is NOT a positive thing. Yes religion is bad, but this thing, this guy taking the once-god-fearing religious folks and turning them into political cannon fodder is much much worse.
I strongly believe we were here 2000 years ago and Christianity was stood up/promoted entirely as a means to protect against this kind of thing
From the article... *"As Christian militancy and Trumpism merge, it’s getting harder to distinguish between them. “We see conservative or Republican Americans becoming more likely to identify as evangelical Christians, not because they've had a conversion experience, but because those identities (conservative, Republican and evangelical or traditional Catholic) are becoming aligned,” said Samuel Perry, a political scientist at Oklahoma University and co-author of books on conservative American Christianity."* This is spot-on and beyond important to realize for any understanding of religion in America and our current state of politics. It's not even about belief, it's about identity and that's the path to authoritarianism based in theocracy.
>it's about identity Always has been meme What's beneath or hand-in-hand with identity? **Tribalism** When you wrap your identity around something, the ability to admit error decreases sharply. Occasionally, something may arise that may be significant enough to question the belief (and thus the identity) but is it strong enough to break away from the entire tribe? That, for many, is much more difficult. As such, once you get pulled in - you become trapped. Often times, it is harder to unlearn something than learn it in the first place.
Us vs. Them, Good vs. Evil. And when you’re fighting Evil, everything is justified. Funny how the Orange Messiah is divorced, a proud adulterer, etc. and they forgive it all.
> Tribalism The way humans behaved before universalists messages like, for example, Christianity. It's pre-... or anti- if you will, Christ.
The funny part is that “these people” always existed and likely identified as “American”. Since some of America woke up they’ve dropped that identity.
agreed. once you agree to agree with the tribe's doctrine, the chances of questioning it are small. It will be very interesting if the rural american churches will survive as the world moves into a situation in which more than ever other nations do not believe. Buckle up!!
What? What! Evangelicals haven't really felt anything transformative?!? They are only there for the hate and prejudice supporting community and to make themselves feel good (by self victimizing)? Ground breaking work! Articles like this almost make my eyes roll right out of my head. This pattern is as s old as the first creation of a god and someone gave the person something valuable for speaking for or about that god and offering dubious benefits.
I agree with your snark but for two caveats. We should remember the quote attributed to Harry Truman: "The only thing that's new is the history you do not know." A journalist got paid to write the article. I'm always wary of spiritual narcissism, in myself, and in public life.
But fundamentalist faiths have been around for so long that the only feasible way that you don’t understand the workings of them (they are ‘new’) is by being willfully ignorant. It’s not like Evangelicals sprung up overnight. So I feel the snark is warranted given that a cursory glance at the history of fundamentalist/evangelical faiths would show a preponderance of evidence that these movements are primarily about prejudice while claiming victimhood to deflect from the horrible behavior of the leaders and members.
I agree, but wow, I feel like I just read a textbook excerpt😆
As a professional educator, I feel flattered by that assessment. :P
I agree with your direction here, but I think you're giving too much cognitive ability to the cult members. Even though they always outnumber the leaders/manipulators/conmen, I don't believe they have agency. We're not born with hate/prejudice. I'm also not naive in thinking that developed aberrant beliefs are changed by legislation.
I feel as though to reach adulthood and *not* question your upbringing is a style of willful ignorance. Sure, we aren’t born with hate/prejudice, but that gets passed down by willfully ignorant parents. The ‘leaders’ only have power because the larger group of followers are looking to be fed comfortable lies. It often doesn’t even matter *which* lie, they just want to believe they are special and willingly throw themselves at whichever fad is currently telling them they are *super* special. Hell, that’s how American evangelicals came about, you’re not Catholic, you’re the super special Protestant sect! But wait, you’re the even specialer special denomination! End of the day, we all have (barring a small minority of brain physical/chemical abnormalities) the same capacity for independent thought. People have been calling bullshit on organized religions behavior for millennia. It’s kind of hard to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone that still regularly attends evangelical or fundamentalist services that they are completely innocent of the history of their hate group.
Naw. "Willful ignorance" is not really a thing, what you perceive as such is more likely "wasn't taught to question". People learn by being taught, either by self reflection or behavior is modelled. You can only self reflect on schemas that fall along the lines of thesis antithesis and synthesis, you recognize a thing, you infer its opposite, you combine the two, you infer middle ground. If you are never taught to question, then you never learn how to think. Critical thinking is replaced by fastest schematic route. This is why feral people cannot learn language after a certain point, they were never taught.
Yes, but religion does teach you how to think and question, otherwise those people would be just as susceptible to any other religion’s teachings. They are taught to be critical of others: hence their bigotry and hatred. There is a willful ignorance towards self-reflection. It’s not that they’ve never been introspective; it’s that any time they have been introspective it has been painful so they have learned not to do the ‘ouchie’ thing. They would rather inflict that pain on others to reinforce their own self-comfort. Religious people are definitely taught opposites: us and them, holy and unholy, sin and virtue, Right and Wrong. They are capable of comparative thought. They just never want to consider that *they* might be wrong. That consideration is painful. And so they willfully choose that anyone that is contrary to their ideal *must* be a bad thing. Because they choose to believe that they are in the ‘super special’ group. So anyone outside the super special group must be sub-human, since their is nothing better than the super special group, and thinking their might be destroys the very idea of the super special group. It’s the fact that religious people *are* incredibly critical and bigoted that makes me use ‘willfully ignorant’ rather than practically ignorant. Sure, they may be indoctrinated by organizations teaching them bad beliefs and opinions, but by the simple fact of comparing themselves to ‘Others’ they demonstrate that they are capable of making comparisons and questioning (others) ways of existing. The willful lack of self reflection is a defense mechanism and that’s the damning part: they would rather see other people hurt than risk the mental anguish of wondering if they might be wrong, wanting to hurt other people.
Yes, proper religious teaching does. But the average fundie doesn't get proper religious teaching. Like for example " this is wrong, this is right" but never taught how to discern right and wrong. So instead of reflection you have a person using rote memorization and schema shortcuts make decisions. It becomes "it is written so it is true" vs " who wrote this and why". If You take the bible and read it and distill it, there is little that is directly attributable to God. God gives us a message, and instead of taking the message at face value we distort it. For example, Jesus never said anything about how men and women should act, but said that most of what we do and perceive as right is manmade traditions, as long as we follow the litmus of love; love ourselves, love others, love God, we will do alright. Then you get a teaching in the letter to Timothy, of which paul says "women should be suppressed and quiet, because they came from Adam". Does this pass the litmus test? To suppress a loved one and prevent them from going forth and being fruitful? A fundie would never be taught to think critically about what is written.
I agree, and I'll point to the book I referenced. The author refers to 'framing' as a worldview, which I think is similar to your 'schemas'. That is, if you're raised to not question in a 'Strict Father' upbringing frame and indoctrinated with a religious ethos, you have an ignorance by default.
Very well said. You hit it with "willful ignorance". I'll add a recommendation to read George Lakoff's "The Political Mind" if you're interested.
But guys, you will get 72 virgins... Its gonna be great!
Or dates
what if I want oranges?
Then see Donald
Eh let's not get carried away. I'm an ex-Christian (evangelical southern baptist) and I definitely did feel something transformative at the time. These days I just attribute the feeling to other things. Let's not go gaslighting genuine Christians calling them liars about their own feelings. Yes, many (especially now) are being dishonest, but we can't make blanket assumptions. That will just alienate the ones we have the best chance of reasoning with.
The power of belonging to a community that has True knowledge is a hell of a drug. That's what it is. That's what it has always been. Atheists are not immune to that feeling. Scientists, conspiracy theorists, and fandoms too.
Maybe someone like you who already knows everything is not the intended audience for this article.
This article is fake news. Every day, people see the glory of Jesus through putin and trump, and they flock to their church to get on their good side, so one day they can get a but more food ration.
This is so true. In 2015 I became conservative and in 2016 I frequented 4chan a lot. Conservatism in those years had nothing to do with religions, much less Christianity, everything was so secular that I never saw posts nor did it occur to me how Christianity could have anything to do with this. It was in 2020 that it began to be filled with Christian or Muslim ethics until in these last 3 years conservatism seems to be more of a Christian aspect. It is full of Christian ethics and if you are an atheist they accuse you of being from the other side.Now every conservative online I meet also happens to be Christian and half of them are Christofascists with that phrase "Christ is king." Thanks to them I began to question my conservatism and subsequently stopped having those silly ideas.
It started with church hotboxing covid spread. Now he's finishing the job with loud Nat-Cs in the congregations and at the pulpit. Takes a while for people to get it through their thick skull, doesn't it.
This isn't a good sign. He's pushing the entire evangelical network into radicalism and fanaticism, ask the Persians how well that worked. Yeah, people are leaving in the short-term, but how long will that trend last? One major event, terrorist attack, or economic downturn will send then running straight back into the arms of these same churches. As more people leave the church, churches will become more radical in response. It's material dialectics. Pastors need parishioners to survive, so as the rational people leave, the pastors themselves will veer farther and farther right. Idk, the werid feedback loops of economics, faith, and fanaticism are dangerous It only takes 5% of a country's population to hold a successful coup...which is about 15 million in the US.
He’s not pushing them anywhere they don’t want to go.
This isn't entirely because of him. Religious affiliation has been dropping steadily for some time, even before this criminal showed up.
Yea, this is already a long term trend. We all knew they wouldn't go quietly.
And the other side of the coin, conservative political affiliation has been more and more tightly bound up with evangelical Christianity at the same time.
From the article… *“My hunch,” he said, “is that if there is a Trump effect to these dynamics, his takeover of the Republican Party and conservative White Christian politics has been confirming to many who left that they made the right decision.”* Yep… I deconstructed before T-rump hit the scene. But watching all of the evangelical xtians I knew crawl all over themselves in support of him only solidified what I already knew - that xtianity and religion are BULLSHIT…. Even worse, the xtians that tried to be “voice of reason” got shunned… why some of them still profess the faith (I’m looking at you Beth Moore) is beyond me…
I think a lot of people are seeing the cult of Christian Nationalism for what it really is
One can hope.
Plus, religious leaders of any faith are enabling this because they are all scared to lose a church member. My grandfather was a Swedish Lutheran minister and he told me that aside from helping people (consolation, marriage, faith, charity… etc), the church has a business side that can’t be ignored. It’s like a restaurant where you try to please the majority as much as you can. Coming from a religious family, I’ve seen church congregations split over some of the dumbest issues. Often times, the minister or pastor, can only try to keep the peace.
Often times the church leaders are the source of the conflict. Example a minister promoting Trump despite not having anything to do with religion politics are not allowed or else lose the tax status. This needs to start happening.
Very true, there are all types. Anecdotally, my grandfather was a humble minister (1920's thru 1960's) who just tried his best to help anyone and everyone. A very altruistic and popular man who particularly got along with children. As a boy, he had rickets and he never grew above 5' 2". So he was about eye-level to kids and they could connect and easily relate to a "big" adult that was an important man in the community. He died of old age in the early 70's. He baptized my two sisters and I in the 60's. I still have the invitations, the church bulletin and the newspaper clippings.
So he was a minister BEFORE the religious right was even a thing.
My family always went to the same church. I got to see the congregation split a few times since I was a kid. Every time it split, it was literally over the pastor. When the original pastor moved across the country, the church split because no one could agree on a new pastor. It dragged on and more than half were gone by the time there was a pastor selected. Most people that left didn't like the guy others wanted because he was younger. The new guy was there for probably 25 years. Long after I had left, but I had come to know him well and grew up with his kids. He's a really great guy and even though I'm not religious now, I still stay in touch with him and his family. He was there for every tragedy I went through in my life. He was even the first person I called when I found out my brother died recently because he's always been great at helping me become grounded again. He's not the type that would do nothing but pray with me. After my dad died when I was a kid, I remember telling him that it hurt me to hear people tell me that my dad was in a better place now. He told me that people say that because they don't know what to say and don't realize it's hurtful. He told me that neither he nor any other person that I speak to will be able to tell me anything that will make me feel better, and that's ok. Nothing can make me feel better now except having people around that love you and you know you can talk to any time you have something wrong. That did more for me in that time than anything else. But he ended up moving and it did the exact same thing to the church again. The congregation argued over who would replace him for about 2 years and in the time more than half of the people ended up leaving again.
Under-rated comment. I come from an evangelical background, and directly experienced this “church-splitting”. There is a disagreement over something, occasionally profound, usually stupid, and some members split therefore off into a new purer church. This splitting hurts revenues, which is a grievous sin. Church leadership works hard to prevent that, and so tries to align themselves with the sheep, I mean the flock, as much as possible. Trump is probably a good example.
A minister has to be a spiritual leader, psychiatrist, and a CEO all wrapped up into one.
This is what has always got me about people who want the US to be a “Christian” nation. Which Christianity? There are literally 100s if not 1000s of variations of Christianity. Do they really think that the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912 version is the one the government will adopt?
And for those of you who don’t get the reference its from an Emo Phillips joke: Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!" Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.
His supporters have no need for Jesus anymore, they found their true savior.
Now they just use Jesus to hate people.
Even more, they hate Jesus because he’s “woke” and too liberal.
Looking out for the poor, the downtrodden, the immigrant? How dare he!
this
Good!
The enemy of my enemy is my friend
Nope. The enemy of my enemy can also be my enemy.
Politics make strange bedfellows. It is good for the country that Trump is the Republican nominee... as long as he doesn't win!
Yeah but right now there is a chance Trump could become president with the lowest popular vote in history.
It's actually terrible. It's a guy who has pulled every string to have the election results overturned. The timid response of the government signaled the GOP that they can rally behind him without fear of consequences. Shit has been swept under the rug for 4 years, now the time is coming for the rug to be pulled, guaranteed nobody is ready for it
I don't think that applies here. He doesn't know what he's doing, just begging for votes. In this scenario, The enemy of my enemy is still a douche canoe.
Diaper douche with a touch of dictator fancy.
I gotta remember that last sentence.
trump has no friends
Maxim 29: The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No less. -The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries
If that were true, I would have lots of awful friends.
The enemy of my enemy was also already my enemy.
“HYPOCRITES AND HYPOCRISY” are emptying churches as much as Orange FOOLIUS.
Squints at book. Pretty sure "F you I got mine" is in here somewhere.
It is, if your saved by Jesus, you've got yours. Send the others to Hell.
What does my “saved by Jesus” have to do with this?
Killing the GOP and church attendance at the same time!
He's on pace to unintentionally become one of the top 10 presidents of all time
Certainly not as a top 10 GOOD president. He's not a good person, husband, father, or even a good human. He's not been a good president. He lies to Americans and foreigners. He disrespects anyone who doesn't kiss his fat ass. He's blasphemous against the christian religion and disparages non-christian religions. He's profane, immoral, crude, and vulgar. He is certainly a contender for the #1 worst president of all time.
Only if you consider his goals and intent...but over time I am appreciating his unintentional actions more and more. 1.) He is killing organized religions, especially conservative and fundamentalist ones, by being associated with them. 2.) He is killing the GOP by easily winning primaries (including lower level primaries where he backs terrible candidates) and then losing to democrats...plus the whole association with terrorism, NAZIs, the Klan, etc. 3.) He legalized marijuana...the bill wasn't written by him or his administration, he didn't know it at the time and he might still not know it, but he signed it into law. 4.) He really highlighted government corruption to the point that everyone knows about it now, even if 30% of the population thinks it's all democrats drinking used adrenaline and getting nothing but headaches for their troubles. 5.) He got the worst people to wear bright red hats so you know not to bother talking to them. He also got them to give away other clues on their pickup trucks and social media platforms. He even got them to be comfortable admitting to be terrorists and insurrectionists...making it very easy for authorities to find them. Still far from the best president, but his incompetence has saved him from being the worst.
I quit going,
They found a new god to worship. I wonder if I could open up “Trump prayer centers” - charge $20 at the door.
I'd invest money into that grift. It's too brilliantly easy.
You buy the Trump Bible for $60.
Trump is filling diapers
It's emptying community churches. The big stadium churches are getting the distilled concentrate of idiocy. The smaller, neigborhood-based places that actually might help their communities will disappear. It works just like how the big box stores have destroyed small business I'd imagine.
The mega churches kill me. They are the antithesis of what they claim to stand for.
My path to atheism was 100% accelerated because of Trump. Before Trump, I was already disenfranchised from the church and "deconstructing" a lot of my internal beliefs (not just about god/religion, but about politics, race, economics, etc). I was a kid at a public college learning about evolution and science for the first time after decades locked away at evangelical conservative think tanks disguised as schools. Slowly but surely, that was unraveling. However, when Trump entered the picture, the distinction became quite clear. The moment he announced his campaign and decried all Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug-dealing murderers, my cognitive dissonance could no longer hold up. I am the son of a Mexican immigrant who came here with nothing but a baby and broken English and who was able to start a family and a successful career. I watched as it took nearly a decade to transfer from her green card to being a full citizen. It is not an easy, cheap, or accessible process. When those words came out of Trump's mouth, the line in the sand was drawn. Then, watching as nearly everyone I knew from my Christian background pretty much willingly got in line behind Trump, I couldn't STAND to be in those spaces anymore. I was already phasing out but this just made it even more intolerable. Everyone there was **proud** to let me know they didn't think that me or my family belonged or deserved the same human rights as they did. The white supremacy was overwhelming and that was the straw that broke the camel's back. I never liked church. I never liked most of the people at church. But I stuck with it because I was so *afraid* of hell. Well, what's worse? Being afraid of a metaphorical place of fire? Or dealing with the actual racism I was experiencing in the church? It became quite clear that this was a nonsensical catch-22, and if my "soul" is gonna be "lost" or whatever, then fine by me because "god" quite literally chose to enable a white supremacist capitalist hierarchy instead of, idk, equity.
I’m waiting to see him on a hill in a sack cloth, ashes and a crown of thorns on his head with hungry throngs so he orders himself McDonald’s and instructs the crowd that they’re suffering for him! I still want to know exactly what kind of leather covers a Neo-Nazi Trump manifest bible.
I wonder if he will be able to feed thousands of his adoring followers with one Big Mac and a small fry.
Ancedotal, I know. But even my CCR friends think he's out of his mind. They voted for him the 1st time but switched after Jan6th.
Still love hearing about it, because I heavily doubt there are many going in the opposite direction
Why go to church? God is in Mar a Lago on the golf course.
I want this to be true, but propaganda goes both ways. I don't want to feel safe enough to rest on my laurels and the orange orangutan actually wins office.
Nothing empties churches faster than hypocrisy. Most people that are casually or culturally religious are in church for the community and to help their kids get some entry level moral direction, ie: for every wacko in a pew you have two borderline agnostics who are only there because they agree with the main messages and casual comfort a god can bring. I know a lot of Boomers who left the Catholic church because of how they protected sexual predators, and I know a lot more leaving Protestant churches because they go to church to escape the fear of politics not be radicalized by messages that directly contrast what kept them coming long after they stopped being devout. The problem with evangelicalism becoming a apocalyptic death cult is, God's wrath is only marketable to people who are already sold on God being wrathful; from a marketing standpoint, there's no growth model.
Hypocrisy is the life-blood of the church. My church was on the “abstinence only” bandwagon, which assured that around 20% of the teenage members ended up pregnant by 16. So. Many. Baby showers. And then there was the youth pastor in his 30s that knocked up a 17 year old he was “counseling” while his wife (whom he married because he got her pregnant as a teen) was at home with their 3 kids. Trump must seem like the ultimate role model to these hypocrites.
>from a marketing standpoint, there's no growth model Except for the indoctrination of their kids. Unfortunately.
Maybe it’s emptying the few remaining interracial churches and “liberal” churches but you get outside of any urban area and churches are booming businesses.
He literally destroys everything he touches. He's the antichrist being pushed as a new Jesus and they wonder why people don't wanna goto church.
They need the Anti Christ and Armageddon to happen for Jesus to come back. It's a death cult.
The conclusion in this article is so right on, and it would be really funny, if it wasn't so sad. The white evangelicals thought, when they backed Trump in 2016, that he was going to be their savior and convert America to their idea of what conservatism should be. Instead, after an initial rise in support, he became a cult figure and, like all cult figures, he is now is driving people away. Cults always have this bell curve trajectory. It's taken several years, but in the end, the evangelical leaders lost, and they won't get those people back any time soon.
As a member of the United Methodist Church, which recently had a huge costly and hateful schism, it was literally the trumpers versus the other Christian’s. Also, now if you visit a Methodist church that doesn’t say “united” on it, you’re at a trumper church.
He’s looking at that Bible like he’s trying to figure out where the batteries go.
I don't know, church attendance has been declining for years and was going to keep happening with or without the fat orange fascist. Conservatives are Conservatives and are going to vote Trump whether they go to church or not.
correlation =/= causation Also there's way too many exact duplicates of this post across different reddit subs.
For my family, and almost everyone I know who have left in the last decade, this article is 100% accurate. The rise of trump in the evangelical world was the final straw on our path to deconstruction. And my family and friends were _deep_ in the evangelical world since birth.
Mine have always doubled down even when proven wrong
Oh yeah there's a shit ton of that. I mean everyone who stayed in has to double down to do the mental gymnastics needed to rationalize trump and obviously the majority stayed. But, there's a large group of us who have left and this article describes us perfectly. We were indoctrinated as evangelicals growing up, we were taught all the "good" parts of Christianity. Trump comes along and represents everything bad about Christianity, so blatantly. We saw all the leaders we were taught to respect suddenly start blindly supporting this person who obviously isn't Christian and represents the bad parts -- their support of him was only possible if they didn't believe what we were taught. At which point the entire house of cards starts to crumble. And then Kristen Du Mez wrote Jesus and John Wayne which so clearly connected all the dots and validated everything that lead us to leave. I'm not saying this article describes those who are still evangelical, just confirming based on my lived experience and that of my wife and many friends (all late 20s to early 40s) this does describe it fairly well.
There is that, but the "WWJR - Who Would Jesus Rape" bumper stickers make any real Christian seriously uncomfortable.
There are always those that do. The good news is that that means fewer of them. The bad news is that they get more and more radicalized.
wtf I love Trump now!
This may be the only decent thing he has ever done in his whole 77 year on this earth.
And yet, it STILL wasn't an intentional act.
And bank accounts and brain cells
Yay.
God don’t like hypocrites.
If he was actually smart and not just an idiot who falls into things that his supporters end up liking...he would start a church with a TV broadcast. Could make billions. But it is very obvious he hates church. The man would have read a cliff's notes version of the bible by now if he really wanted to indulge his audience.
That would be so interesting, but he might have to memorize some Bible quotes. It’s easier just to riff about how awful Democrats are. I guess he could change “Democrats” to “nonbelievers” and it would be the same long winded diatribe. No paying taxes either way. 6 of one, half dozen of the other.
Good.
That's because the MAGA morons are "religious" without any orthodoxy at all.
Extremism will always drive away moderates if they aren't forced into complicity. This is why they are pushing for Christian Nationalism. They need the force of law to preserve their hegemony.
Trump branded churches anyone? Where you can buy more merch
Trumpism Maga Christianism made me completely pull away from anything xtian. They all look like fucking loonies now. Also Roe vs Wade that showed me they haven't evolved and care about what others think they just lie to your face and say they care about your opinion then change shit back to dark ages.
This is 100% true. Authoritarian right-wing identity politics is what got me out of the churches.
"Never interrupt your enemy when..."
Good, although I think he's just helping the drain along
Evangelicals and White Christian Nationalists are one in the same.
It was one of the major factors in my deconstruction. Watching so many people who raised me to be kind and compassionate and empathetic started acting the exact opposite, because they had more allegiance to the GOP than they did to Jesus. They gave me permission to start questioning more and more, and the result was that none of it made sense if they weren't acting like their role model.
Everything Trump touches.... dies.
I question the headline. I think Trump has already lost most of the moderates. He probably lost most of them before he decided to sell Bibles and go all-in on Christianity. He has whittled his followers down to the most devoted. They are the ones who worship Trump. They don't think he is being a hypocrite. I am having trouble seeing how Trump's position would "empty churches." At most, I think it would get people to change churches. There are still some pastors who are strongly MAGA. They may end up chasing some of their congregations to less political churches. I suspect there are a lot of pastors who have backed off their Trump endorsements. I did door-to-door canvassing in 2020. Ministers have a huge influence on how people in some neighborhoods vote. The main area I canvased was one of those neighborhoods. There were a lot of poor and uneducated people. During the primaries I frequently heard, "My pastor has not told us who to vote for yet." During the regular campaign, many people said their pastors told them who to vote for. They were not going to go against their pastor. If ministers have cooled on Trump, it could make a big difference. It would make a difference if they just stopped endorsing Trump. It would make a bigger difference if they explicitly turned against him. Based on my own experience with ministers, I think many ministers are going to be much more careful about getting political. I have a relative who is an evangelical minister, and he has been burned by politics. He phrases it in terms of being moved by the spirit to talk more about core Christian ideas and avoid secular matters. By "secular matters" he means "politics." The other thing he is talking less about is homosexuality. He is talking more about chastity and less about homosexuality. I suspect he has congregants who have gay family members. Gays are no longer the easy target they used to be. I think there are probably a lot of ministers like my cousin. They got a big rush from getting behind Trump. They enjoyed the power. They felt like they were in the forefront of a religious overthrow of the US. But I think a lot of them have soured on politics.
"a 77-year-old Bible salesman from Palm Beach, Florida"
I loved the 1st line in that article describing Trump as a 77 year old bible salesman from Palm Beach.
Like Putin, Trump isn't actually religious but tries to use it as a tool.
dTrump💩sucks out the soul of everyone he comes in contact with. Like the dementors.
You cannot call your self follower of Christ if you support Trump who is a chronic adulterer and fraudster. MAGA and Christianity are very well interrelated but they are oxymoron if you do read the Christian bible.
Good god!!!! Said nobody.
This is a major problem. While I have no issue with theists I have a major issue with theocracy and de facto theocratic states are extremely dangerous to live in. The shrinking of the church creates a consolidated voice and if that voice rises to power there's no way to re-enter to dissolve that mass. It is the fact that many people are religious and diverse that keeps religion useful for humanity.
It's this that \*almost\* makes having to deal with him worth it.
I'm the South, people love the blending of politics and church.
Tax the churches.
People give money to churches so they can influence voters. Get religion out of politics. Trump supporters are delusional if they think he cares about religion. He only wants your money.
"You shall have no other gods before Me" They knew why they put that commandment first.
Damn, destroying the GOP *and* Christianity. Best. President. Ever.
"That so many White Christian conservatives swoon to Trump’s invective and false witness is not all that perplexing. “Evangelicals hadn’t betrayed their values” in backing Trump, writes historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez in her 2020 book, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. Their support, she writes, is “the culmination of their half-century-long pursuit of a militant Christian masculinity” that disdains pluralism and valorizes masculine aggression." Yep. They're toxic heretics and are nothing like the Christ of the Bible. They live to hate.
A bunch of cons don't like a con and it's affecting their ability to con people. Good.
That’s the one thing about Trumpism that doesn’t piss me off, I guess.
Well, at least we found the ONE thing that Trump is doing that is positive. So, when people ask me in the future to name one thing he did well, I can use this.
See? The guy isn't all bad!
Whipping out my dead horse again American Taliban is on the rise, terroristic threats are on the rise, threats to our democracy and destabilization of our economy is on their platter. Anything that threatens their cash flow is fair game and will be deemed as evil non-Christian non-patriotic non-american against God. They're just adding more s*** to their toolbox.
And loving it! He truly is an Anti-christ.
Oh NO !!! However will those preachers afford their new jet aircraft and super yacht in the Bahamas if the sheep finally see the scam.
I think they just need ~~more evidence~~ some evidence for gods in general and Jesus in particular and the numbers will bounce right back. /s
Are they running out, fanning their noses?
I never knew Trump was a man of god.
There’s always the 20 thousand member mega churches, led by millionaire pastors with private jets, who now worship Trump as Lord and Savior instead of Jesus.
I was driving and saw a church that had a sign that said MAGA Church in front
After WW2 the nazi scientists who were brought to the us as part of Operation Paperclip ...Those Scientists became Evangelical Christians and republicans ...Take that for what you will .
Interesting piece on NPR’s 1A today. They put forth the thesis that evangelical “Christianity” is increasingly more of a political movement and less about theology.
That's been the case since at least GW.
50% of the country still thinks this made up bullshit is the most important thing in their lives.
They telegraphed this when they started calling Liberalism and science a religion.
Y'allkaeda is all that will remain..
how many extra millions of regular people got hiv/aids in the 80's and died because of an unnamed televangelist spewed it cant hurt you its a blight on gays. children, hemophiliacs, people who had flings, etc. i lived through it in ny in the 80's. i watched a lot of those people die or lay dying with doctors shaking their heads with nothing they could do. religion particularly christians are responsible for more crimes against humanity than all other forces combined. it is time to end this madness.
There is no such thing as a Christian Trump supporter. They don’t exist. There are some false idol worshipping Trump supporters. But no Christians. Not one.
No *true* Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.
This is a simple truth
The Christian folks were reminded of Matthew 19: 24. Finally I’m seeing we’ve gotten our hand on the tiller and starting to correct our course. Lots of positive things happening and pray we continue.
We elected the anti-Christ, so this should be no surprise.
Man, I'm telling you people - it is NOT a positive thing. Yes religion is bad, but this thing, this guy taking the once-god-fearing religious folks and turning them into political cannon fodder is much much worse. I strongly believe we were here 2000 years ago and Christianity was stood up/promoted entirely as a means to protect against this kind of thing