American evangelicalism has gone off the rails.
It happened on November 9th, the day they helped elect Donald Trump as president.
Trump is not only a vile, amoral man, he is petty and vindictive, not to mention being completely unqualified to be president. Yet evangelicals went for him to the tune of 81%.
I predict they will never recover from the stunning hypocrisy their vote represents.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that you cannot make moral pronouncements as they have been doing for years and then turn around and throw your support behind a man like Trump and there be no consequences.
Evangelicals may believe they had good reasons for supporting him, but what the public saw was their naked hypocrisy in supporting someone who is the antithesis of what they say they believe and believe in.
Yet, evangelical support for Trump was actually something quite predictable.
One reason is that they are much more Republican than Christian when it comes to politics than they pretend to be, and have been since the founding of the Moral Majority in 1979.
Evangelicals always support Republican candidates. They didn’t even support Jimmy Carter who was – and is – as genuinely Christian as one can be. That alone says all we need to know about why they vote as they do.
But another critical reason is that they are unashamedly anti-intellectual, which means that history, study, and facts play virtually no role in shaping their understanding of faith, morality, or politics.
There was a time when evangelicalism produced some of the world’s best biblical scholars, but the role of scholarship has dramatically declined since anti-intellectual fundamentalism all but took control at the beginning of 20th century and made biblical literalism the cornerstone of evangelical beliefs.
This anti-intellectualism is why they believe the earth is only ten thousand years old, that Adam and Eve were actual people, that God made the world in seven days, that Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt, that Jonah lived in the belly of a big fish, or that heaven is a place with a pearly gate and streets of gold, to name a few evangelical claims that defy science, history, and logic.
When you believe these things it is relatively easy to miss or ignore the contradiction between the moral code you say you live by and voting for Donald Trump.
That vote didn’t make any sense to the rest of us, but “sense” doesn’t matter to people who don’t value critical thinking and don’t believe conflict over public issues, especially moral ones, is never simple or easy to resolve.
So evangelicals joined the Republican march to elect Donald Trump without realizing their vote was going to undermine the one thing they had going for them.
Most people found their beliefs too anti-science to be credible, but they did accept the sincerity of their moral convictions.
That is now gone, a consequence of voting for Donald Trump they didn’t anticipate.
And so, while I wish more Americans were alarmed by the level of anti-intellectualism that has led too many people to believe opinions matter as much as facts, one thing about us has not changed.
We do not abide blatant hypocrisy well, especially from people who talk about moral decline as much as they do.
What I suspect that means for evangelicals is that even though they may continue to wield power in the Republican Party, when it comes to our nation’s views and pubic policies regarding moral issues, they will discover that anything they have to say will matter only to themselves because no one else will be paying attention to them.
And, to be honest, I believe the nation will be better for it.
linnposts.com 
One of your best posts ever, Jan! Hypocrisy to the Nth degree!
Thanks, Rollie.
RIGHT ON! Evangelicals supporting trump is the most disgusting example of HYPOCRISY imaginable. They are more REPUBLICAN than CHRISTIAN.
That is why I decided to write this post, Bob. Thanks.
I am not an Evangelical. But Evangelicals were voting for JOBS, the economy, trade agreements that equalized U.S. with other nations, the Supreme Court nominees, law and order, etc. Neither Trump nor Clinton have ANY “moral supremacy” to brag about. Voting was not about the person; it was about the policies; there was a choice on platforms, and that’s what they were voting for. Meat and potatoes, not pie in the sky. Evidence the formerly “blue” rust belt states; the Democrats there changed and voted Republican.
Many Germans made the same argument when they voted for Hitler to become Chancellor. It’s called the Machiavellian principle that ends justify means. It never works out that way and it won’t this time. Your “moral supremacy” comment is foolishness. Donald Trump is a classic narcissist and paranoid, a man who has proven he will lie and cheat to get his way. He should not be president and you will soon discover that nothing justified your vote for him. What is more, the irony of everything you said is that Republicans have never had economic policies that helped the middle class. How many times do tax cuts for the wealthy and spending cuts against the poor have to be done before the “meat and potatoes” voters believe they are voting against themselves when they vote Republican? Wait until Paul Ryan gets started on cutting Medicare and Social Security, then tell me electing Trump was a good for rust belt people.
I do not believe your analogy with “Hitler” even applies here. The Clinton/Obama policies were NOT working; people did not want any more of it. I think they knew what they were doing. Even those who stayed home and did not vote knew what/why they were not voting, on a basis of principles they could not accommodate. Hillary’s character is NOT sterling either, with lying and cheating going on for years. She is not any paragon of virtue, and somehow her character is ignored in your reply. I saw a long list of what is on Paul Ryan’s budget cuts, an S.S. is not among them. (wish I had it handy right now) With prospective trade agreements, rebuilding infrastructure, etc. announced, the stock market seems to be energized by that news. A positive look at what can be expected financially for USA. We shall see.
From what I’ve read of your country’s history, I get the sense that you’ve been through at least one phase like this before – in 1928, when Al Smith, the Governor of New York lost to Herbert Hoover. All were confident that the Stock Market would continue to climb, and that Hoover’s wittering on that “…we shall see the last triumph over poverty” was the actual truth.
Little did people realise that on the other side of the gentle rise in the ground just ahead lay the edge of the chasm.
Nigel, I think you know American history better than a lot of Americans. A big worry.
Al Smith lost to H. H. because Al was a Catholic. The nation was “afraid” of Catholics. Let’s see–isn’t that zenophobic? Or some kind of “racist”?
Jan, this is an eloquent statement of the hypocrisy of the evangelicals, a perversion of a once honorable position. Your refutation of J D Swanson leaves nothing else to be said. Your eloquence and grounding of facts says it all.
Cheerz!
As always, Gene, I am grateful that you read my blog and for your responses.
Jan, I too think the evangelical vote was a scar on Christianity. Regardless of how much Trumo supporters try to put the focus on other issues, in the end they still have to reconcile that they did indeed vote for Donald Trump and all the corrupt, dishonest, and vile behavior that defines him. Their “end justifies the means” argument rings hollow for me. You said it well.
Jan you are so right in your what you are saying. I’m scared of Trump and his cabinet choices. I would have never thought this country would elect a man like Donald Trump. It’s downright scary.