The divide in American Christianity over right wing politics is deep. [View all]

[lees1975]

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-divide-in-american-christianity.html

And it is a danger to the conservative, Evangelical churches who are now losing members in the millions. It is an even bigger danger to American Constitutional Democracy.

Americans who are politically liberal, and who tend to be religiously unaffiliated or not directly involved in a Christian church, can sometimes be dismissive of something they've resolved in their own minds, and which they now see as having developed from a major nuisance to a danger to American democracy itself. If it is, indeed, that much of a danger, then being dismissive isn't going to resolve the issue, nor will it be of much benefit in confronting the problem and solving it...

...None of the Republicans who have served as President since Jerry Falwell and James Robison brought Reagan into the fold with their endorsement in 1980 have been Evangelical in the practice of their Christian faith. As it turns out, Reagan, according to Nancy's statements about it after his dementia set in and his death, was involved in New Age religion, considered a cult by Evangelicals. Bush Senior was a liberal Episcopalian, a weak, wishy-washy President pushed around by stronger elements in the GOP, resentful of much of what they made him do. Dubya was a member of a liberal Methodist church, in spite of "knowing the lingo," did not share a lot of conservative theology and doctrine with conservative Evangelicals. Trump is just a more worldly, unethical, morally bankrupt character whose lack of knowledge of anything having to do with Christian faith is obvious and visible.

But having strong Christian credentials and setting a strong Christian example doesn't matter. Conservative Evangelicals have invented a thousand convolutions to get around Biblical instruction and Christian principle when it comes to their embrace of right wing extremism as their political expression. They do not see the inconsistency of this, and, as Rick Pidcock points out, it is driving the sincere, genuine Christians whose convictions and faith practice are governed by the gospel of Christ, out of the church. And it has caused the disillusion of two generations of young Americans who have turned away completely from any interest in Christian faith, and made many of them hostile to the conservative, Evangelical version of it.