There is a book I’m going to recommend if you want insight into fundamentalist evangelicalism. It’s not a well-known book. I would’ve never bought it if it wasn’t a Kindle Daily Deal. It’s a memoir, which is not my favorite literary format, but it’s one of the most enlightening books I ever read.
The book is I Fired God by Joyce Zichterman . She lays out the abuse and corruption inside her Fundamentalist Baptist church in a very clear and readable manner, and her work has been used as a foundation for criminal prosecutions.
Her church, and many like them, impose a highly authoritarian structure on the lives of their members. Critical thinking and independent ideas are the work of the devil. Self-empowerment is heretical. These people are taught to look up when they are searching for answers instead of looking inside. They like it when the answers they get from above are clear, unambiguous, strong and simple. Nuance and shaded, well-reasoned positions are weak. The answers they seek are “good or evil?”, “black or white?” If you say it’s “gray”, they don’t know what to do or think and you lose credence as a leader.
They are weak people, raised to be the soldiers of God.
The decision tree is a straight line. Wife and kids——-husband——-pastor——God. These groups are insular and think the secular world is looking to destroy them. They were ready for a Trump. They are what I call a cult-in-waiting.
They are out there. I am fascinated by cults, I’ve read dozens of books about cults. They are way more common than you think, probably.
Sometimes, frequently even, there is a insular highly bonded group that subscribes to the hierarchical decision making structure I’ve described above. All they need to become a cult is a powerful abusive leader. Sometimes that leader evolves, the pastor that gradually becomes more abusive and controlling. Sometimes that leader comes from outside.
And, this one time, he was elected President of the United States.
Trump came into an evangelical community that was primed to receive him. The evangelical leadership inserted him into the decision tree of their cult between pastor and God. He gave them that easily understandable black and white world that they longed for. He affirmed every bias they held. He assured them they were right and the outside world wrong.
For years, these people that thought they were special in the eyes of God sometimes didn’t feel so special. They performed the same blue collar routines day after day, hauling the water for the secular world that disrespected them. Every day they got a little older and a little flabbier. They watched their wives get less attractive and their dicks get less reliable, day by day, as the world ignored them, laughed at them and passed them by.
These were men with a mission, raised to be soldiers of God, wondering if that God had forsaken him.
Then came Trump and they found their purpose. They knew why they had been put on this earth.
And here we are now.