These Evangelical Women Are Abandoning Trump and the Church

[riversedge]

It is great to see that for some--Enough is Enough!

Link to tweet

?s=20
Judy Abrams holds a necklace with a cross. After voting Republican her entire life, Abrams recently registered as a Democrat.


These Evangelical Women Are Abandoning Trump and the Church

https://gen.medium.com/these-evangelical-women-are-abandoning-trump-and-the-church-ee8899837fe

The #MeToo movement, pandemic, and protests for racial justice have divided the evangelical community from their strongman

Jul 23 · 17 min read
...............................

...........................

In exit polls from the 2016 election, 80% of white evangelicals and the majority of self-identified Christians said they voted for Donald Trump. The thrice-married, profane, biblically illiterate, sexually predacious candidate mirrored no beatitudes. While some believers rejected Trump for lack of decency, for many Christian voters, his personal failings were not disqualifying — here, at last, was a president who could muscle forward their political interests.

In her 2019 book, Red State Christians, journalist and Lutheran pastor Angela Denker describes traveling across the country after the election, talking to Christian voters and trying to understand their relationship with Donald Trump. Denker argues Trump may not know much about the Bible or evangelical Christianity, but his rhetoric resonated with a civic religion common in many Evangelical churches, especially in the South, “with its unique blend of nostalgia, plus a little misogyny and dog-whistle race politics on the side.” There’s a degree to which many churches have adopted a Christian nationalism that has wrapped faith tightly in patriotism and relies, in some cases, less on the gospel and more on “God, guns, and country.”

Many Southern Baptist churches celebrate the Sundays closest to the Fourth of July and Veterans Day with as much fervor as Easter, with services that might feature the Pledge of Allegiance, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” sermons on American exceptionalism, and video montages of war veterans. It’s a church-country linkage popularized during the Cold War, a perceived battle against threats to “Christian America” rooted in a dominionist theology that portrays the white European settlement of America as a fulfillment of God’s promise. Winning the culture wars and “restoring” Christian political primacy became a spiritual mandate, a restoration of God’s promise. By the time Obama’s administration championed same-sex marriage and birth control coverage, “Democrats sounded like foreigners to Red State Christians across the South and rural America,” writes Dennker.
When Churches Stay Open, It May Be to Chase the Almighty Dollar
Pastors don’t want to miss out on lucrative holidays or essential donations—even during a pandemic
gen.medium.com

Despite Obama’s regular church attendance, his administration’s progressivism was perceived by many evangelical Christians as sweeping the country far from an idealized nation of school prayer and father-headed nuclear families toward one that was liberal, predominantly non-Christian, and often not white. To Denker, it was no coincidence that Donald Trump, who kept dog-whistling Obama as being Muslim and not a U.S. citizen, became these voters’ candidate. “Actual church attendance and Bible knowledge mattered less than a politician’s ability to catalog their list of perceived cultural wrongs and manufactured fears.”.................................

[chia]

1. "There's a degree to which many churches have adopted a Christian nationalism that has wrapped faith

tightly in patriotism and relies, in some cases, less on the gospel and more on “God, guns, and country."

This is so true. I see it both in long-time (18 years) internet interactions and life-long (in my 50s) interpersonal real-life relationships.

This is a great article, because so many people can relate to it. I certainly can. I know this environment. I lived it.

Within many American faith communities is a national origin myth that asserts America, like ancient Israel, has a special covenant with God. It’s “this very utopian ideal, that this is the promised land,” a shining city on the hill for European settlers and their descendants, explains Rev. Carol Howard Merritt. Such an idea becomes pervasive, she explains, because many evangelicals are homeschooled. “They’re not using the textbooks the rest of us are using.”

I went to a Christian high school where everything, especially history, was seen through the lens of Manifest Destiny, Christian Dominionism, and an end-times battle between the forces of "evil" (particularly political and cultural liberalism) and the forces of "good" (God's temporal leaders e.g. Moral Majority and anyone they endorsed, and spiritual warriors, e.g. 'godly men and women'). I know that now. I didn't understand it then, I was too docile, too accustomed to accepting the authority of the authoritarians. Sad to say, I was late to learn: I've learned most of my Black history in the BLM era and most of my women's history (I literally had no idea how much I owed to the women who fought for women's rights before me) in a Women's History class in college (I entered community college at 50 and and graduated state university at 56).

Davis still hasn’t come out to her friends as what she is now — a liberal. It would destroy her relationships.

It's hard to break away from it when it's so woven into your upbringing, your family, your social circles, your school, your church. They tell you you're going to hell. That feminism is demon possessed and destroys the family. They put women on a purity pedestal that I came to understand in my studies was benevolent sexism. But break away from all of it I have, doing it gradually, in little bits and pieces, since 2012 when I left the GOP. Most everyone knows by now that I'm not the same person I was then and I can't ever go back. Some of them even know I voted for Hillary, which is pretty much the most heretical and radical action someone in my circles could take.

[Karadeniz]

4. What a great post! Thanks for sharing your story!❤

[chia]

5. Thank you for reading it. :)

[Marcuse]

6. Almost as rough as leaving Scientology.

[UpInArms]

2. Fascinating read

Thank you for sharing that

[onetexan]

3. Oh so now these evangelical women are tired of giving the Idiot mulligans for every screwup,

one for each day of his fake presidency?