Evangelical Christians, you have a lot of hard thinking to do.
You see, I was raised in that culture. When I was banned from the youth group for irritating the youth pastor too many times, I was sent to the main sanctuary to sit with my parents. I got to see firsthand, and all too often, the preaching of a Christian theocracy. I saw the pastor waving his KJV Bible over his head while bellowing about how it needed to be "the law of the land". Not once, or twice. But every Sunday morning.
What followed was a display of mental gymnastics worthy of their own Olympic event. Particularly memorable was the sermon which opened with the story of the holy family and the flight into Egypt. They were basically refugees fleeing from certain death in their own country. Somehow this segued into a diatribe about immigrants flooding into America and ruining it for everyone. (Don't ask me how Pastor What'shisname accomplished this; it was over forty years ago and I, unlike my dad, didn't take notes) Not long after that I announced to my parents that I wasn't going to church anymore. I was seventeen. To their credit my mom and dad had enough sense to not try to convince or compel me to keep going.
I went on with my life and didn't think about it much. Until 2016, when I started hearing Pastor What'shisname's rhetoric being repeated very often and very loudly. As if someone had exhumed his ideas and repeatedly dosed them with meth. My mom died, my dad got more involved with the church. He also got ill and frail enough to need some help with basic housekeeping. I lived minutes away, and was happy enough to lend him a hand.
His men's group had a meeting once in dad's house while I was there dusting and wiping down the countertops. It went from a discussion of Scripture to a rant about Donald Trump and how terrible it was, the way he was misunderstood and disrespected. I felt seen. And not in a good way.
My dad got sicker. Dementia set in. While he was still lucid at times he'd blindside me with comments about how God himself had put Trump in the White House. And the rest of us needed to accept that. How God was known to use somewhat flawed men to accomplish his purposes. And how eventually the whole country would see the wisdom of this, and be moved to convert. I tried a couple of times to ask my dad how he felt about the bigotry, violence, and oppression that was going on apparently with God's divine approval. That went over like, well, a fart in church.
Time passed, and hate crimes ramped up. Legal protections for the environment, for immigrants, and for LGBTQ+ people were rolled back. Little brown kids were ripped from their parents' arms and caged like animals in a zoo. The pandemic started killing people. True believers of Republican Jesus™ went on doing what they do...praying for their Dear Leader. And now, absorbing conspiracy theories into their doctrine. My dad finally died; in truth, it was a mercy.
I and my family now live in the house I inherited from my dad. It's in a very rural part of north-central Arizona. Cornville, actually. You may have heard of it, it's where John McCain lived. We're surrounded by evangelical Christians who even now are flying Trump banners on their pickup trucks. The church parking lots are festooned with them every Sunday morning. And I wonder...will they decide to accept Joe Biden as having won the election by God's will?
I'm guessing not.
