It’s the very fact that they do that must be reckoned with.
In another post, I wrote about the cataclysm for political evangelicals in supporting the libertine Trump. Since their politics is about making other people live by their morality, they lose everything they have by making an exception for the president. What they have is moral credibility: that is why anyone else even listens to them. When they suddenly find nuances in their absolute moral vision, they must be opposed at every turn, with any sympathy (including for their followers) undermined by their own cynical self-unmasking.
A number of pieces have appeared recently to explain evangelical Christians’ support for Trump. Because they support patriarchy, national superiority and purity, or simply a macho strongman, they can support Trump because he is all these things. They are, in that way, consistent with their own beliefs.
These are all plausible, based on sound facts, and may all be true. But all they accomplish is to tell us how they are able to reconcile Trump’s immoral behavior with their own deeply held beliefs. (One wonders if there is in fact even a little excusing in this “understanding,” which liberals are currently contorting themselves to do vis-a-vis Trump support).
I’m not that interested in why they believe what they believe, or can comfortably have any truck with Trump. Taking a trip inside their heads is not my idea of a luxury vacation anyhow.
I’m interested in stopping them from imposing their beliefs on other people.
Poor women, gay people, humanities based education, or the credibility of scientists. I’m interested in prying away anyone inclined to grant religious politics the benefit of the doubt because, while nonbelievers themselves, and often Democrats, they “can see the desire of ordinary people to have something to believe in” or “understand the power of the religious worldview.”
That worldview has no power where its power is corrupt.
Patriarchy? Nationalism? Machismo? Those are beliefs that, where they are granted power, affect others not privy to them, or not holding them. In that, they are noxious.
My guess is that this unholy three “Biblical Ubermensch” moral principles are unpalatable to a broad segment of the American populace, and that evangelical leaders know this. So they “sell” their religion as that of the mellow guy with the beard and sandals who preaches humility and equality instead. And the rest of us buy it, not just Joe and Mary churchgoers.
If that is so, that spin factor , the noxious principles it masks, and the patent hypocrisy around it all just points up the fact that leaders like Tony Perkins—who, injury of injuries, says he no longer has “another cheek to turn” he has been beaten so much—are playing a cynical game.
And by the way, if you believe in a patriarchal system modeled on the Bible, that does not admit of said patriarchs screwing porn stars while your wife is minding your newborn son. And certainly not porn stars with a rolled up copy of Forbes, Capitalist Tool.
Oh, and speaking of adults. Joe and Mary churchgoer out there in America are adults and should be able to see this hypocrisy for themselves. It’s up to our movement—but mainly our politicians—to simply keep reminding them, and the rest of the voting public, of that blatant contradiction.
Sort of like what the kids are doing with hypocrisy around “gun safety.” It matters.