The awkward marriage of conservative religionists and Trump

[_honorentheos]

For example, look at what Haidt says here:
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2 ... ject/?_r=0

One of the issues I am most passionate about is political civility. I co-run a site at http://www.CivilPolitics.org where we define civility as “the ability to disagree with others while respecting their sincerity and decency.” We explain our goals like this: “We believe this ability [civility] is best fostered by indirect methods (changing contexts, payoffs and institutions) rather than by direct methods (such as pleading with people to be more civil, or asking people to sign civility pledges).” In other words, we hope to open up space for civil disagreement by creating contexts in which elephants (automatic processes and intuitions) are calmer, rather than by asking riders (controlled processes, including reasoning) to try harder.

Take a good look at how you responded to me above.

If you have any idea why EVS love Trump more than other republicans do, by all means, share it. All the ideas you've shared have been nothing more than the obvious reasons why any republican would vote for and support Trump.

My issue with the OP isn't that I don't get what you are saying. It's that I see it as coming from a very liberal "elephant" position rather than meeting the evangelical voter where they are. As your quote from Haidt says, "...respecting their sincerity and decency". As I noted very early on, I saw the OP as an mirrored example of what it was also attempting to do.

I think the economist article is much better for the reason that it approaches the question from a position of attempting to actually understand rather than define in a way that has tons of appeal to liberal biases regarding conservatives.

I'm sure you've listen to Fox et. al., and know that much of the conservative talk show bread and butter comes from reframing everything Democrats do in ways no Democrat would honestly recognize and therefore becomes dismissive of while the conservative viewer is convinced this alternative motive is in fact exactly what motivates liberals. My elephant percieved the OP as a liberal version of that.

As to why evangelicals love Trump, I guess we're having a complete inability to communicate if you do not see my comments for what they are intended to convey. That being, the obvious reasons from Gorsuch to bombing Syria after the chemical attack to his EO's to his rhetoric all seem sufficient to explain their support. This idea that they are putting up Tiger Beat posters of Trump in their bedrooms is...I don't know. It sounds like liberal elephant language rather than genuine attempts to examine and understand what is going on.

[_Some Schmo]

I still have a problem with the premise that EV's especially like him. The ones I know all talk about him in terms of he's better than Hillary. Not exactly a glowing review.

Are they hiding their enthusiasm from me? Perhaps. But if they know enough to hide it, doesn't that say something about their true opinion?

[_Jersey Girl]

He earned a lot of credibility early by channeling WND and InfoWars and going after Obama as not really being an American, through the birth certificate nonsense.

What is WND?

[_krose]

World Net Daily, the 'news' site that published every Obama rumor out there. Somewhere between Drudge and Alex Jones.

[_subgenius]

World Net Daily, the 'news' site that published every Obama rumor out there. Somewhere between Drudge and Alex Jones.

and yet still has less bias than mediamatters or msnbc

[_Jersey Girl]

World Net Daily, the 'news' site that published every Obama rumor out there. Somewhere between Drudge and Alex Jones.

Okay thanks. I don't tune into those things. I recognized the name "Infowars" but I don't really know what that is either. I'm assuming these are on TV and have websites?

I don't watch TV. I'm out of the loop and happily so some days!

[_The CCC]

Subs:
UHH No. SEE https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029088609

[_beastie]

I actually found an excellent article that I think has provided reasonable answers. You can find it here:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... en/521409/

I think anyone interested in this topic should read the article, but I’ll summarize my take-away. Much of this article is based on the author’s understanding and application of a scholarly history of EV in the US called The Evangelicals by Frances FitzGerald. However, she diverges a bit from FitzGerald’s own own conclusion, which was that the alignment of EVs with Trump signaled that they valued Tea Party Values and that the Christian right had lost its power. Molly Worthen, the author of the article, believes it’s a bit more nuanced and complicated than that.

I’m going to paraphrase, summarize and sometimes quote the author.

The EV alignment with Trump is totally predictable once you understand the history of EVs and politics in this country. “The great revivals of the early 18th century brought forth evangelicalism as we know it today, more or less.” Although FitzGerald thought the EVS alliance with the Tea Party was aberrant, in fact EV, in the past, aligned with useful infidels (like Thomas Jefferson) to achieve their goals.

Their political ideas were rooted in a “commitment to freedom from civil tyranny with a demand for the spiritual freedom to decide, without political coercion, to accept Christ.” EV were deeply suspicious of the expanding federal government for that reason. Eventually, the idea of spiritual liberty “fused with free market ideology”. Capitalists and EV ministers worked together in the 19th century to convince EVs of this idea in order to calm a restive labor force. The evangelist Dwight Moody, in 1886, warned “Either these people are to be evangelized, or the leaven of communism and infidelity will assume enormous proportions that it will break out in a reign of terror such as this country has never known”.

The Great Depression, the New Deal, along with increased immigration of African Americans, catholics, Jews, and eastern Europeans, resulted in a wealth redistribution to the poor (often black and immigrants from other religions). EVS began to fear loss of control over the nation’s culture. This resulted in an EV minister propaganda campaign “funded by donations from tycoons”, warning their flocks of “anti-Christian and anti-American trends toward pagan stateism in America.”

Billy Graham was influential, along with his warnings about communism, combined with anxiety about cultural change helped “catalyze the most powerful ideology in modern American politics: Christian free-market mania.”

At the same time, conservative white evangelicals have a long record of being highly pragmatic, rather than purist, in their libertarianism. Throughout American history, they have been more than happy to use the tools of the federal government to protect their own authority and advance a moral agenda—as they did, for example, during the campaign for Prohibition. This selective libertarianism continues to thrive. Trump’s promises to “drain the swamp” resonate with deeply rooted suspicion of big government, but conservative evangelicals applaud his more intrusive proposals as well. Today, many on the religious right find themselves on the losing side of global capitalism, and they don’t want anyone messing with their Social Security or Medicare.

And here’s the factor that I think is crucial to understand Trump’s EV appeal: his dictator-lite charisma is reminiscent of the evangelical entrepreneurs. Due to the lack of hierarchy within the EV community, dominant leaders develop among subgroups based on their leadership power and charisma. This is particularly evident in the “prosperity gospel” subculture which Trump echoes. (see earlier article I shared) In fact, the author compares Trump University to the promises prosperity gospel entrepreneurs. Fabulous promises of wealth if only you send money to….

The author sums it up thusly:

Throughout the 2016 campaign, historians suggested a range of analogies to explain Trump’s growing popularity. Did his momentum resemble the rise of fascism in 1930s Germany? Do his despotic tendencies and sensitive ego remind us of Napoleon? Maybe Henry VIII? Distant echoes are always tantalizing. The truth is that Trump’s victory—especially his popularity among conservative white evangelicals—has sources closer to home. His ascendancy was certainly galvanized by a 21st-century whirl of social media and global economic discontent. But in the end, Trump won over evangelicals—and won the election—because he exploited beliefs and fears with origins deep in America’s past.

[_honorentheos]

Thanks for sharing the Atlantic article, beastie. That was enlightening for me, and expanded on the previous article's proposals. The idea that there is a nexus around the Christian-Citizen entanglement and the prosperity gospel promises that marry success to God's blessing has a lot of merit it seems.

In some ways, we saw Romney as the Mormon version of this in 2012. His status as a Mormon in good standing with the Church was part of his appeal, but it was his wealth that solidified his status as an exemplary Citizen blessed by God for his righteousness.

I read a book years ago about the American phenomena that turns optimism into a cult, manifesting in everything from the self-help culture to the adoption of military language to describe a person dealing with a cancer diagnosis. The author, Barbara Ehrenreich, began the book after her own experience with breast cancer treatment and the support groups around it. The arc of the book covered similar history as the Atlantic article though it often focused on what became the Christian Scientists.

What was revelatory to me in this discussion was how it explains the almost intractable allegiance many religious conservatives have to the non-theistic and frankly greedy aspects of capitalism. It makes perfect sense that a person who equates wealth to a gift earned from the divine will not view contributing a portion of that wealth back to society as replenishing the well from which they were able to draw to acquire that wealth. Success is not the product of a functioning society but something bestowed through gaining divine favor. On the flip side, moral decay could be seen as also endangering the blessings that make that wealth possible. Two people having homosexual relations becomes more than an act carried out in a bedroom between two consenting adults and instead is seen as the social equivilent of someone lighting matches in the house next to a pile of oily rags.

Very insightful. Again, thanks for sharing it.

[_honorentheos]

The next question asked in the OP was how this group could be successfully engaged by Democrats. That seems complicated, and part of the unfortunate irony of the 2016 election was that Hillary Clinton really was a true believing mainline Christian who embodied the sterotypical success story of the Protestant work ethic. The narrative opportunity was there but her decades of public life made the casting of this narrative into dominance was impossible, in my opinion.

I found it interesting that Trump converted to a hardliner when it came to pro-life issues, but he soft-sold marriage equality to the Republicans even in their own convention. Perhaps if we could peak behind the data of his campaign we'd learn that abortion is a non-starter for evangelicals and other religiously motivated conservative voters but sexual orientation didn't elicit the same responses. Who knows. It does suggest there is opportunity there but shifts in the mindset combined with a different narrative would be needed to appeal to them.