Although Trump’s support seems to be falling among most groups in the population, it remains unchanged among white evangelical Christians. Now, it’s risky to generalize about any group of people. Humans are complex and don’t really fall into neatly defined categories. But the story behind WHY white evangelicals tend to support Trump so fervently needs to be told. I just read a long Twitter thread by Jared Yates Sexton, a refugee from the evangelical movement. That thread is here. It has 58 parts to it, with many links.
It has shaken me to the core.
I knew a lot of the story, but I didn’t know all of it, not by a long shot. To sum up:
--Trump’s repulsive stunt of holding up a Bible he never reads and understands nothing about may have been a call for violence on the part of his hardcore supporters.
--The origins of the “Religious Right” lie firmly in the Confederacy, which proclaimed itself a “Christian Nation”, one ruled by a God that favored white supremacy, a God that ordained that slavery was right and natural.
--The Confederates considered themselves to be the REAL America.
--Jerry Falwell, Sr. was a vicious white racist and a vile segregationist who thought that any attempt to desegregate was the Devil’s work.
--Falwell and his like-minded cohort believed the civil rights movement was being run by Communists.
--The white racist southern evangelicals hid their racism and began to focus on “prosperity” as their focus.
--Ronald Reagan was “adopted” by Falwell, Robertson, et al, as a means to gain power. Reagan was a borderline lunatic who was deeply influenced by someone of whom I had never heard, a New Age nutjob named Manley P. Hall.
--Many evangelicals are waiting for the end of the world, and they take idiots like Hal Lindsey seriously.
--Francis Schaeffer (whose son Frank has denounced the whole movement) preached that only total “Christian” control of America would suffice to “save” it.
There is much more. Pat Robertson, Newt Gingrich, the NRA, Roger Ailes, Fox “News”, Norman Vincent Peale (!), Donald Trump, and many others appear. The whole scope of this is shocking.
The last Tweet reads as follows:
Please, I'm begging you to tell people about this.The American Right is infected with Neo-Confederate apocalypticism. Many of them are looking to realize a white Christian ethnostate or hasten the end of the world.These are extremely dangerous people.
He’s begging us.
I’m begging you.