I don’t know, it sounds more like an unsupported axiom that you use to justify other premises, i.e. the government is self-evidently inefficient, therefore taxation is theft, fuck the poor, etc. As a dogma, it’s fine, but it doesn’t really carry its weight in what is ostensibly a reasoned argument.
I tend to disagree. I feel that this group of voters does have a distinct identity separate from other groups that share their political ideologies. They do have a clear religious affiliation.
I think these people can best be defined as political conservatives and religious believers who have mixed their politics and their religion together.
I would completely agree that that is how they see themselves. Of course, their four paragraph theological statements, largely uncredentialed clergy and failure to study any theology that doesn’t fit within a fundamentalist worldview belies that assertion, but nonetheless, I’m certain that’s how they see themselves.
Sure, which actually validates my earlier claim about rigid moralities that you seemed to take umbrage with. And of course the fact that they say that probably is also evidence against them being “serious theologians.”
Despite what “Coexist” bumper stickers would lead you to believe, pretty much all major religions make contradictory claims compared to the others. They believe these claims to be accurate representations of reality (aka truth). The goal is to convince others of this truth. “Denegrating other faiths” makes the assumption that they are all equally valid.
I also challenge your assertion about doing good works and loving ones neighbor. If you look around at people doing these things, more often then not they are motivated by their faith. From homeless shelters, food kitchens / pantries, etc; I know of numerous examples that fly under many people’s radar.
Evangelicals work based on different foundational assumptions than you, considering eternal destination as part of the calculus.
Your broad brush sounds like shades of the old “religion is for dumb people who don’t know any better” trope. I’m not sure of the source of your view, but all of the evangelical churches I’ve been around and involved with have leadership with masters or PhD level credentials in theology. Can you name some of these theologies they fail to study?
From an Evangelical point of view, there is a concrete, absolute reality about the world. That reality includes a perfect, holy God with standards for morality. These standards have an eternal impact on the lives of each person far beyond a handful of decades here in this life. You may disagree, but there are numerous reasons that these beliefs can be rationally held (for example, I point you to the work of Dr. William Lane Craig at reasonablefaith.org).
At the risk of highjacking my own thread, why do you view this as an either or proposition? If Jesus commands us to do all we can to help the needy why can’t we give of our own, and additionally vote for government policies that help the poor as well. Or do you believe that government inefficiency is so great that on a dollar for dollar basis, tax cuts for the wealthy do more to help the poor than food stamps and medicaid?
To some extent this is a perfect example of what I am talking about. I also don’t recall Jesus saying give to the poor but not too much less they become lazy and shiftless. But concern that government money is being given to some “other” who I don’t know or trust, would fit a “white traditionalist” concern, which is then rationalized by making a distinction between individual charity and other methods of supporting the poor.
I guess the question then is which is primary. If presented with say a pro life Jesse Jackson, who is clearly culturally liberal, but also obviously religious, or Trump who hits the cultural touch stones but is the antithesis of everything Jesus represents, who would they vote for?
Wrong. Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism — right there are three of the world’s “five great religions” that do NOT generally proselytize. Many minor religions could be added to this list. Amusingly, the religions evangelicals most hate — Islam and Roman Catholicism — are the same ones that Evangelism most resembles.
I do not doubt that many individuals who identify as Evangelicals do good deeds. Evangelical organizations, OTOH, tend to focus their “charity” on religious schools where they can inculcate, and care-giving opportunities to proselytize. They focus strongly on issues like abortions and guns, deliberately to increase partisan rancor. Lately they have joined Trump and FoxNews in spreading deliberate lies. Nasty and unscrupulous “televangelists” pander to personal greed rather than charity; if this is a caricature of “evangelism”, why do these televangelists get millions of viewers?
I’ve read about 3 pages of Allan J Lichtman’s White Protestant Nation (2008). It grounds modern conservatism in the 1920s rather than among libertarians of the 1950s. Sociologically, this feels appropriate, but it led to David Frum panning the book in the New York Times when it was published. In Trump’s America, the book seems prescient.
Unfortunately I haven’t read enough of the book to make a more substantive comment.
The thing is that those inconsistencies have been pretty consistently in favor of making it clear to non-straight WASPs that they should sit at the back of the bus.
Not that being a white US Evangelical (WUE) necessarily means being mean. If most WUEs were like Rob Bell, there would hardly be a problem and Trump wouldn’t be in the White House.
Are you using “Christian” to mean “white US Evangelical”? Most Christians in the West don’t have that much of a problem voting for politicians who don’t want to make abortion illegal. The Irish voted 2-to-1 to make abortion legal. It’s the WUEs who are aberrant in that regard.
Then there’s the fact that the Bible sees murder as deserving the death penalty but not assault which results in miscarriage. Looks like YHVH himself doesn’t think abortion is killing babies.
You mention homosexuality but say no more about it. If WUEs invoke Leviticus 20:13 to justify opposition to homosexuality, shouldn’t they be consistent and propose to actually apply that verse?
So, does this mean that a majority of WUEs want to abolish Medicare and Social Security?
I’d give even more to charity if they government didn’t take so much of my money.
I’m a white evangelical Republican (more Trump as opposed to old school) and I agree with this entirely. Does a politician support killing unborn babies? If yes they’re not getting my vote, period as I consider supporting the killing of unborn babies as fundamentally incompatible with Christianity as supporting the killing random people walking down the streets is. As for helping the poor, somehow liberals get the idea that the only way to “help the poor” is to advocate having the government vacuum out your wallet and use the money they see fit, not for you to write checks directly to charities (or donate your time, etc) as you see fit. I give quite a bit of my time and money to charity.
Sometimes conservatives get mistaken impressions like this, than go on to use them to rationalize all kinds of stuff:
Evangelical organizations include Food for the Poor, World Vision, Compassion International, and Samaritans Purse, each of which gives hundreds of millions in aid to poor people around the globe.
Evangelicals and our organizations focus on issues like abortion because it has the potential to save millions of babies from being killed each year, not to increase partisan rancor.
I am not sure who you are talking about with the televangelist comments but there are at least 70 million evangelicals in America, only a small fraction of us are watching greed pandering preachers.
What helps people out of poverty the most is not government handouts but productive jobs. Over the last century and a half neoliberal policies have allowed more people to escape policy, than anything else in the history of mankind. As a Christian we should vote to expand such policies and then give to charity so as to ameliorate the situation of those who can not help themselves. To dismiss conservative economics as just giving tax cuts to rich people shows a lack of understanding of the politics and the economics.
I would rather have a culturally liberal religious person as a preacher but someone like Trump as president because the job descriptions are so different. It would be better to have a good person as president who is working for good goals but that is not currently on the table.
“Republican agenda staunchly supported by this group are in direct contradiction to the teachings of Jesus Christ (protect the poor, judge not, thy neighbor includes the Samaritan etc.) ”
Perhaps Jesus should have realized the awesome potential of the Roman tax-collection apparatus, but I don’t remember that part.
Its right next to “blessed is the industrialist for he shall provide jobs”.
Well, a cheesemaker is sort of an industrialist, isn’t he?
I don’t entirely disagree with the OP, but I do think there is still value in separating out a Religious Right. Yes, they fit under your “white traditionalists” umbrella, but I would still argue there is a difference. They were originally convinced by white traditionalist arguments made into religious ones. Before the big push for the Religious Right, these more fundamentalist evangelicals basically kinda stayed out of politics, because that was part of the modern world.
I think the reason that simply pointing out who Jesus actually was doesn’t work is that they are Fundamentalists, which is a white traditionalist religion. They don’t accept any modern interpretations of Jesus. They are part of a purely tribalistic religion. So yes, it may be better to sidestep the religious issue.
But I also think it’s useful for those of us who are technically part of their religion–or at least part of their culture enough to be able to interact with them at that level–to continue to push the religious arguments. I applaud the Evangelical pastors who are pointing out that a line was crossed with supporting Trump and his hate. I myself am one of those using sola scriptura and my knowledge of how evangelicals preach to convince people that the Bible doesn’t support what they are doing.
It’s just that you can only appeal to a tribalistic religion from the inside. Outsiders are evil. When we run religious ads, we need to virtue signal to show we are “one of them.” That means to state our beliefs in such a way that we communicate with them that we are one of them.
Even if you’re a different kind of Christian, learn the evangelical terminology. If you’re not a Christian, but you can support some Christian values, try that–with the terminology.
But, yes, also appeal to them via other means if you can. Don’t assume that actual religion is their motivating force. Religion is just the way to get them to listen.
In a way, I don’t disagree. It is better that people become self-sufficient rather than rely on the government to pay them. But the problem is that you assume that, in order to make them self-sufficient, you cannot give “handouts.” And you assume that the other parts of conservative economics actually create these productive jobs that would make them self-sufficient.
But the reality seems to be that conservative economics, in practice, seem to do more to help the rich at the expense of the poor. Decreasing regulations may make money in the short term, but greed will exploit anything it can, and it eventually comes crashing down. (See the 2008 crash.) Weakening the government by cutting taxes only makes it harder for the government to stop exploitation.
We are, in effect, questioning the truth of the Bible. It says to help out the poor. Sure, it does say that those who can work should work (the real meaning behind “he who does not work shall not eat,” which was in response to people just quitting their jobs), but those who can’t, whether due to disability, lack of job availability, lack of skills, should be helped out.
That doesn’t mean we can’t also help out the reasons why they are in trouble. But in a country with such disparity, taking some from the top to help out those who need it now doesn’t really hurt them in any significant way, while it helps these people. And if they want to avoid losing that money, maybe that will push them to create productive jobs, since both parties benefit.
Yeah, that’s right: I think that tax breaks actually disincentivize job creation in the long run, and that higher taxes actually push you to create more jobs to get more revenue to offset the tax burden.
Don’t get me wrong: there’s a balance, because it is also possible that too high taxes can keep the company from being able to grow. But that’s reality for you: the actual extremes don’t work. It’s always balance.
The arguments we should be having is on where the balance is.
If you say so. I don’t cruise the Bible looking for God’s validation of my economic theories.
I Googled “Food for the Poor” for the obscure reason that it was the first organization on your list. Google, Wikipedia, et al tell me that it is an ecumenical organization, and do not mention the word ‘evangelical.’ Is Wikipedia confused? I clicked to the Food for the Poor website and clicked again to see a list of their Board of Directories. Several Roman Catholic and at least one Episcopalian bishops appeared. For example, His Eminence Óscar Andrés Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga. And yes, just in case some ‘Good ol boys love Guns and Jesus’ organization in Alabamy is awarding titles like “His Eminence” I Googled the Cardinal. Wikipedia thinks he’s a Roman Catholic. 
Since you apparently define “Evangelical” as “Christian”, needless to say I didn’t bother to Google any of the other organizations in your list.
HTH.