Figuring Out Evangelicals

IN HER NEW BOOK "Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Alter of Donald Trump", researcher Sarah Posner, who has spent fifteen years studying the tangled intersection of American religion and politics, attempts to elucidate a phenomenon more inscrutable than the psychology of alien abduction. Most admirable about her work is her strict refusal to simply gravitate to the answer which seems obvious: that white right wing American evangelical Christians are quite simply morally and intellectually bankrupt reprobates whose piety thinly conceals incipient criminal mentality. Instead, she delves into the modern history of evangelical participation in politics. Jimmy carter, though born again, was a disappointment to the politically awakening religious right, for his lack of hard right public policy. His leadership philosophy was somewhat tooo compassionate, kind, and gentle for their tastes. Evangelicals care for for religious dogma than human rights, carter's pet project. the Christian crusaders elected reformed wonanizer and new dealer Ronald Reagan, and have never looked back. They saw Reagan's neo liberal economic policies as a vast improvement over tax and spend on social programs under Democratic leadership. Render unto Caesar and give unto the lethargic poor simply didn't cut it. The redistributionist policies of Clinton and Obama appalled the pious, who prefer that everyone, rich and poor, work for their money, and their rewards would naturally be in keeping with God's will, The Bush family had the redeeming quality of bombing the hell out of infidel Moslems, but also showed a bit too much compassion for the poor. Trump was a sinner, simple minded in his harmless lies but his hatred of immigrants and liberals made him redeemable and useful to the evangelicals. Besides, anything was better than Hillary Clinton, another one of those do good libs, and a woman to boot. Or something like that. Ms. Posner goes to considerable trouble to coax a reasonable, coherent explanation from mere facts, but you sense that she ultimately surrenders to the only unavoidable explanation for evangelical behavior. that it is irrational, and contradictory. That America's conservative christian community finds Trump appealing because he is a perfect mirror image of themselves, a frightened, vindictive bully, afraid of competition culturally, without intellectual substance whose only true personality is a relentless, vicious desire to dominate others utterly.