Showing Our True Selves

NO SOONER have Christian conservatives revealed their moral depravity by electing and supporting Trump, they have now revealed, albeit unwittingly, the real reason why. It has to do with like attracting like, birds of a feather flocking together, and so forth. Their leader and role model, Donald J. Trump, is a self proclaimed sexual predator, a fact which not only did not hinder, but may well have helped his election. It has always been surprising, how little his supporters have said about the matter, and how easily his supporters, especially among the evangelical Christians, have ignored the whole mess. Now we know why. Recent revelations indicate that among the evangelicals, sexual predation is quite common, at least as common as throughout the rest of the population, if not more so. Just like the Catholic church, the evangelical community has evidently for decades been hiding this behavior from the world. A recent spate of whistle blowing, coupled with research results, is exposing the darkness. The facts are morally unfavorable, and reflect badly on conservative evangelical Christianity generally. The highly patriarchal culture has been suggested by some scholars as contributing, perhaps even fostering a culture of exploitation of women. Clever conservative Christians often argue that within their community women are not inferior or subordinate to men, but rather, they merely inhabit different roles. The clever apologists never mention that these "different roles" for women involve less power, less social status, less money, and less personal freedom. Christians, especially those of a conservative bent, are widely perceived as paragons of virtue within American society, as exemplars of good traditional American values, and good traditional Christian values. Seldom mentioned is that these values include the pursuit of personal profit, greed, exploitation, and persecution of intellectual and spiritual nonconformists, as well as patriotism and piety. Christians rejoice that their sins are atoned for by torturing a man to death. Core American values obviously include cut throat economic competition and inequality, enormous racial, gender, and social inequality, and violence. It may be time to begin a reexamination of exactly what "virtue" is, who good people are what what they believe in, and how they behave, whoever and wherever they might be.