[Torus34]

Commentaries on current American politics often include the phrase 'evangelicals'. These folks aren't as easily defined as some might think. One common denominator, though, is a belief in the Bible as the word of God. Thus, the subject above.

It has been interesting to note the percent of those who identify as evangelicals who are supporters of President of the United States of America Donald Trump. It is large, and continues to remain large. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, displays a disregard, in his words and conduct, of the morality detailed in the Bible's New Testament. Despite the forgiveness promised to those who repent, the President seems to 'double down' rather than bend the knee to humility.

It is not out of place, given the facts presently before us, to ask whether the evangelicals are placing service to their politics ahead of service to their God. Thus the subject.

Are they rendering too much to Caesar?

[Victoribus Spolia]

You have to understand, Evangelicals regard the legalization of abortion as the equivalent of a state-sanctioned genocide of millions of children.

Whether they are right or wrong on this is quite irrelevant, but if any politician seeks to do anything about this issue and is even remotely able to win, they will vote for him every time. Saying naughty words is not as bad in their minds as murdering children.

If you understand their ethical priorities, you understand their vote. Keep in mind, the majority of evangelicals are only occasional church attenders and get uptight when the preacher criticizes drinking, smoking, or any one of the many things the average blue collar baptist factory worker engages in. That being said, there will always be some "basic" issues in their minds that they all agree on, from the preacher himself to the mechanic who only attends services on Christmas and Easter.

The absolute and unequivocal wickedness and evil of abortion is one of those issues.

[SolarCross]

Are they rendering too much to Caesar?

Who else is there to vote for? KKillary Klinton? Kolonel Bern down america Sanders? The lesser of two evils calculus works for evangelicals the same as everyone else.

[Drlee]

Whether they are right or wrong on this is quite irrelevant, but if any politician seeks to do anything about this issue and is even remotely able to win, they will vote for him every time. Saying naughty words is not as bad in their minds as murdering children.

I agree with this to some extent but it is not confined to evangelicals. Nevertheless republicans have cashed in on this big time. It is probably their biggest strength.

If you understand their ethical priorities, you understand their vote. Keep in mind, the majority of evangelicals are only occasional church attenders and get uptight when the preacher criticizes drinking, smoking, or any one of the many things the average blue collar baptist factory worker engages in. That being said, there will always be some "basic" issues in their minds that they all agree on, from the preacher himself to the mechanic who only attends services on Christmas and Easter.

I think you understate church attendance. There are plenty of evangelicals who attend church every Sunday; particularly in the Bible belt.

Speaking of that. Evangelicals broker the entire vote in the South on a statewide basis. If the candidate for the presidency wants these electoral votes to win he must give lip service to their beliefs.

[Hindsite]

If the candidate for the presidency wants these electoral votes to win he must give lip service to their beliefs.

I agree. In my mind, President Trump not only has given lip service to our beliefs, but has taken action too. Therefore, I am certain that we will vote for him again in 2020.

[Rugoz]

Religious idiots fuck up everything. No surprise here.

[Sivad]

Religious idiots fuck up everything.

No, idiots fuck up everything, religious fundamentalism is just one of the many forms of idiocy people fall into. And these days it's not even the most destructive, these days the babbitt dinks are doing way more damage than the religious fundies.

[Potemkin]

No, idiots fuck up everything, religious fundamentalism is just one of the many forms of idiocy people fall into. And these days it's not even the most destructive, these days the babbitt dinks are doing way more damage than the religious fundies.

[Victoribus Spolia]

Religious idiots fuck up everything.

Coming from the guy who just defended fucking animals in a different thread, I beg to differ.

[Sivad]

Coming from the guy who just defended fucking animals in a different thread, I beg to differ.

If you're a liberal you can fertilize your crops with human corpses, fuck barn animals all day long, kill newborn babies and harvest their organs, and it's all good. No harm, no foul.

[annatar1914]

Coming from the guy who just defended fucking animals in a different thread, I beg to differ.

1. Their modern state is collapsing, the very thing that they attack like termites, undermining it's foundations. Ironically, for it's ''reactionary'' nature. They chafe within any system's boundaries.

2. The modern state is what protects them from reality in general and normal people in particular, because we abide by the boundaries for the sake of civil peace.

3. When they fully undermine the foundations of their own modernity, we'll be waiting to clean up their mess... Ditches, lots of ditches.

[Hong Wu]

Commentaries on current American politics often include the phrase 'evangelicals'. These folks aren't as easily defined as some might think. One common denominator, though, is a belief in the Bible as the word of God. Thus, the subject above.

It has been interesting to note the percent of those who identify as evangelicals who are supporters of President of the United States of America Donald Trump. It is large, and continues to remain large. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, displays a disregard, in his words and conduct, of the morality detailed in the Bible's New Testament. Despite the forgiveness promised to those who repent, the President seems to 'double down' rather than bend the knee to humility.

It is not out of place, given the facts presently before us, to ask whether the evangelicals are placing service to their politics ahead of service to their God. Thus the subject.

Are they rendering too much to Caesar?

I think the explanation for this is that Christian restraint and humility is generally not understood as total pacifism and since the far left have essentially declared themselves to be non-White and part of a different spiritual zeitgeist, they are no longer interacted with in the same ways that they used to be. This has been a long time in coming and although they don't understand what they are doing, the far left has been and continues to ask for it.

It reminds me of a recent Paul Krugman thing where he put up a graph showing that there's a lot of far leftists but he basically ignored that there is a clear center to the Overton Window in America and he either doesn't understand or doesn't care that social legitimacy goes to the ones who can claim the most of this middle, numbers are only important insofar as they move the middle because without a middle we are no longer one people.

[Rugoz]

Coming from the guy who just defended fucking animals in a different thread, I beg to differ.

I didn't defend it, I'm simply not a bloody hypocrite. That's what annoys me the most about religious people.

If you're a liberal you can fertilize your crops with human corpses, fuck barn animals all day long, kill newborn babies and harvest their organs, and it's all good. No harm, no foul.

Nice collection of straw men.

[quetzalcoatl]

.
If you understand their ethical priorities, you understand their vote...there will always be some "basic" issues in their minds that they all agree on, from the preacher himself to the mechanic who only attends services on Christmas and Easter.

The absolute and unequivocal wickedness and evil of abortion is one of those issues.

This makes sense, and I think I get it. What I don't get is the limited and narrow specificity of these "basic" issues. There's no outrage over thousands of children being deliberately starved in Yemen, for example. Why is their no anti-war movement in the Evangelical community? Even if you're not a pacifist and you do accept the need for military self-defense, there's no moral basis for the dozens of worldwide military conflicts the US is involved in. And without a moral base, the mass killing of war is certainly just as bad as abortion, would you not agree?

[Torus34]

Hong Wu: While off topic, your response was worth reading. Thank you for posting.

One problem in the present American political scene is the general absence of intellectual rigor on the part of the three P's; the politicians, the pundits and the public. Its substitute is a number of hard and fast [Ed.: and often extreme] ideological litmus tests. A single issue such as abortion can be the sole bases for the votes of a significant percent of those who go to the polls. The demagoguery of some politicians as they exploit these divisions is not quite what the framers of our constitution, many of whom were the intellectuals of their day, envisioned.

[Drlee]

I have come to the conclusion that people today on the right are just simply not very smart or educated. They back deniers of all sorts. They ignore science even when it is obvious. They do not understand how our government is constructed.

Often they claim to be Christian but then support the most un Christian government programs in our history. In short, the right is a hodgepodge of single issue voters centering around abortion, guns, overt racism and 6th grade Rand-ian selfishness.

The are an uneducated, unintelligent and uninformed bunch of dullards.

[Hindsite]

This makes sense, and I think I get it. What I don't get is the limited and narrow specificity of these "basic" issues. There's no outrage over thousands of children being deliberately starved in Yemen, for example. Why is their no anti-war movement in the Evangelical community? Even if you're not a pacifist and you do accept the need for military self-defense, there's no moral basis for the dozens of worldwide military conflicts the US is involved in. And without a moral base, the mass killing of war is certainly just as bad as abortion, would you not agree?

We know that babies in the womb are innocent. They have never had an opportunity to do anything bad. I don't know anything about the children in Yemen. They may be evil Muslims for all we know.

[Torus34]

Drlee:

"I have come to the conclusion that people today on the right are just simply not very smart or educated."

Sir, I would say that those on the right are no different in basic 'smarts'. What they are is uneducated in the ways of intellectual rigor. They're willing to accept their own prejudices* unexamined. If you listen to 'conservative' talk radio, you'll hear their mindset stroked by the hosts.

What these people have learned, as opposed to learning to examine issues and winkle out the factual components, is a set of 'talking points' which they apply to known stimuli. It's rather like call and response songs, or sections of the Protestant service.

As a side note, when I first began listening to contemporary talk radio, I was amused by the callers. I marveled at how the producers of the show were able to line up actors who could parody the uneducated so accurately. It was later that I realized the callers weren't actors.

* 'Prejudices' is used here in its formal meaning.

PS: The same mental attitude can be found on the left as well, though in considerably fewer numbers.

[Victoribus Spolia]

There's no outrage over thousands of children being deliberately starved in Yemen, for example. Why is their no anti-war movement in the Evangelical community? Even if you're not a pacifist and you do accept the need for military self-defense, there's no moral basis for the dozens of worldwide military conflicts the US is involved in. And without a moral base, the mass killing of war is certainly just as bad as abortion, would you not agree?

I don't think most of your average evangelicals could even tell you where Yemen is on a map and most don't likely even know anything is going on there. Even if they could, they would have a hard time picking sides between two Islamic peoples killing each other a million miles away.

Even if there was a side that clearly was right or wrong (that they could discern) and they could clearly figure this correct side out (two HUGE assumptions), it is hardly a vested interest for them as a voter base.

After all, evangelicals are NOT inherently anti-war as most do believe in a justified form of war and most American evangelicals think (wrongly) that most American wars were, in fact, justified. This, of course, being exaggerated further because they view ANY lack of patriotism with serious suspicion and they are aren't exactly friends to Islam either.

For these reasons, most evangelicals aren't going to see conflicts abroad as even registering on the same moral scale as the issue of abortion.

After all, the pro-life evangelicals are outraged about abortion laws HERE in the U.S., they aren't booking flight tickets to protest this issue in Belfast (for instance). Most would probably think Belfast is a brand of breakfast shake anyway.

I am not saying these things as a defense per se, only as to clarify what they are thinking. Rarely are any voters in a particular base acting as in a plainly irrational manner as their critics would like to suppose. Evangelicals are no exception to this.

[Drlee]

Sir, I would say that those on the right are no different in basic 'smarts'. What they are is uneducated in the ways of intellectual rigor. They're willing to accept their own prejudices* unexamined. If you listen to 'conservative' talk radio, you'll hear their mindset stroked by the hosts.

Perhaps in many cases that is true. I will concede the point. You are absolutely correct that they are the subjects of a distinct and concerted effort at indoctrination at the very least and what was once called brainwashing possibly.

One could look at Bush's No Child Left Behind program and other similar state programs and perhaps find an answer in the younger right wingers. They were not taught critical thinking skills but rather tutored for a standardized test consuming a great deal of the time normally spent on what we used to call a liberal* education.

@Victoribus Spolia After all, evangelicals are NOT inherently anti-war as most do believe in a justified form of war and most American evangelicals think (wrongly) that most American wars were, in fact, justified. This, of course, being exaggerated further because they view ANY lack of patriotism with serious suspicion and they are aren't exactly friends to Islam either.

True. Many Americans see violence as a symbol of manhood. They are quick to take offense as well. Perhaps it is that Americans have never lost a war or even suffered to terribly (comparatively) from one. Our bloodiest war was one we fought with ourselves. (Side note. When I was born there were still civil war veterans alive and I know people who know many of them well. There are still a couple of children of people who fought in the civil war alive.)

Anyway this is a growing problem. I do not know many real soldiers who are particularly violent people. Military training and certainly war tends to take that out of you. Soldiers know what violence really is and understand that it hurts so many people.

The American obsession with guns is a good example of this. That single voting block (and it is a powerful one), feeding on the combined irrational beliefs that guns make them manlier* and that someone is out to get the guns is a great example of voting a position that in barely defensible.





(*Not that kind of liberal for those who are already foaming at the mouth.)