The secret of why evangelicals love Herschel Walker (and Donald Trump) [View all]

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Last edited Thu Jun 23, 2022, 11:31 PM - Edit history (2)

The secret of why evangelicals love Herschel Walker (and Donald Trump)
Chris Cillizza
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large

Updated 11:38 AM ET, Wed June 22, 2022
https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/22/politics/herschel-walker-donald-trump-evangelicals-republicans/index.html

How to explain evangelicals enbrace of Trump and Herschel Walker, who have lived less than traditionally moral lives?
Here are excerpts of an interview with Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history at Calvin University and the author of "Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation."

--snipped--
"In Walker's case, his vocal condemnation of absentee fathers now strikes a hypocritical tone.
Fortunately for him, social conservatives have proven quite ready to forgive and forget when politically convenient to do so. We've seen family values conservatives embrace the likes of Roy Moore, Brett Kavanaugh, and of course, President Trump in recent years, despite allegations of abuse and moral failings.
--snip--
Cillizza: In your book, you write that the rise of Donald Trump fits into a long pattern within the evangelical community. Explain.
Du Mez: When it became clear that White evangelicals overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump, pundits (and some evangelicals themselves) responded with shock and confusion. How could family values evangelicals support a man who seemed the very antithesis of the values they held dear? This question only intensified in the days after the release of the "Access Hollywood" tape, when only a handful of evangelicals wavered in their support of a man caught on video bragging about assaulting women. There is certainly hypocrisy at play here, but as a historian of evangelicalism, I knew that what we were looking at couldn't be explained merely in terms of hypocrisy.

For decades, conservative White evangelicals have championed a rugged, even ruthless "warrior" masculinity. Believing that "gender difference" was the foundation of a God-given social order, evangelicals taught that women and men were opposites. God filled men with testosterone so that they could fulfill their God-ordained role as leaders, as protectors and providers. Testosterone made them aggressive, and it gave them a God-given sex drive. Men needed to channel their aggression, and their sex drives, in ways that strengthened both family and nation.

Generations of evangelicals consumed millions of books and listened to countless sermons expounding these "truths." Within this framework, there was ready forgiveness for male sexual misconduct. It was up to women to avoid tempting men who were not their husbands and meet the sexual needs of men who were. When men went astray, there was always a woman to blame. For men, misdeeds could be written off as too much of a good thing or perhaps a necessary evil, as evidence of red-blooded masculinity that needed only to be channeled in redemptive directions."
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Basically it seems to me evangelicals use the King David excuse on Trump, Herschel Walker etc --In the bible, King David sent Bathsheba's husband to his death, so he could have her as his own. But because King David, a warrior king, was doing God's will politically and militarily all was forgiven.

Th point the author makes is that traditionalism especially concerning male/female roles and family is what is driving their political views and as long as their leaders strongly support their positions nothing else matters. Traditionalism even overcomes their racial bias Dr. Mez basically theorizes.