Living, Loving, Leaving...

THERE ARE FEW IF ANY groups of people, or "communities" which I despise more than I depise white evangelical conservative Christians. Not as human beings, but rather, as political and religious activists and influencers. Several reasons. First, I despise strict, inflexible religious dogma, belief, canon. I much prefer the self correcting, self improving, ever changing nature of science to the unchanging, faith based rigidity of religion, all religion. Anybody who says that I am going to hell; after you. More importantly, I despise them (right wing evangelicals) because more than eighty percent of them still support Trump, despite everything.That horrifies and disgusts me, as it does many people. Approximately fourteen percent of Americans are white conservative evangelicals, down from twenty five percent only a generation ago. The kingdom is shrinking. A higher percentage of Americans are "noners' "none of the above" folks, non religious people with no religious beliefs of any kind, than are white conservative evangelicals. That's comforting and encouraging to some. Young people tend to reject the faith more often than the aged; the younger the person, the more the rejection. Thousands of evangelicals are leaving the faith,so many so that there is a noticeable, definite commmunity of former believers, which has been named, cleverly: "Exvangelicals"... The exodus from the church, the Exvangelical movement, is gathering momentum and growing. A new book,titled "Exvangelicals: Living, Loving, and Leaving the White Evangelical church", by National Public Radio journalist Sarah McCammon, herself a former evangelical, elucidates the exvangelical movement, using her own life as the focus,in a fascinating, revealing narrative of personal growth and evolution, within he context of broader social trends. Ms. McCmamon was raised in a strict evangelical community and family, in which the Bible was literally true, their faith was the one true faith in a sinful fallen world,and their mission was to spread the true faith far and wide. Dancing, drinking, and dating were forbidden, as were nealy all forms and manifestations of secular eulture. National Public Radio was referred to as "National Perverted Radio" by her father, for its secular, intellectual liberal slant. From kindergarten through college she attended only Christian schools,where she was further indoctrinated. McCammon entered adulthood fully indoctrinated, totally on baord with evangelical fundamentalism. However, she had gotten an education, and this, like is does so many others, doomed her ability to continue her embrace of narrow religion at the expense of all else, at the expsnse of the world of science, and scientific reality. Zealous religiosity is the enemy of broad, liberal, education, and vice versa. Among evangelicals, a broad minded education is not only not valued, but feared, for the very good reason that people who become educated, the more educated people become, the greater their tendency to reject tradtional, dogmatic, primitive religions, like evangelical Christianity. It can be argued that strict, blind obeedience to religion is a mental illness. If nothing else, such blind devotion tends to stifle creative thinking and the inherent willingness and desire of the human mind to grow, expand,and learn. The less educated the general population, the more religious it is, and the less capable of governing itself, and the more easily it can be controlled by the powerful few. No wonder it is still widely considered a civic virtue to swallow the opiate, and to be deeply,immovably religious.