Embarrassed? They should be ashamed.
Article about Representative Kizinger and his views as an evengelical:
Why can’t an omnipotent God do his own work?
You just don’t get the kind of smitings you used to get in the old days.
I can see where the far-right tie in to Christianity makes it difficult to recruit young people to that religion.
Maybe that’s how the omnipotent God does his work - by convincing others to do it.
Wait, isn’t it the devil’s job to inflict humans to do evil deeds? I’m so confused…
" I sent a boat, I sent a helicopter…"
Wait, this isn’t the “Punchline” thread?
Yes, I was thinking the same thing.
I have been watching The 700 Club on CBN this week, and was pleasantly surprised. I have seen zero support for Trump, straightforward reporting on President Biden’s actions, and they call those that raided the Capitol building “insurrectionists”.
I can say from personal experience:
Yes.
My parents were both horrified over the capital riots. I talk about this a little bit in another thread but I grew up in the heart of christian evangelicism, and keep a finger on that pulse even today, and there’s def a pretty big shift.
Though I wouldn’t expect it to last long either. They’re very wishy washy about stuff. here today gone tomorrow.
My brother who is a Catholic Republican (so it’s about abortion and gay marriage) called Trump “Satan” during the insurrection itself, but is now back to a mixture of whataboutism and ranting about immorality of the left, Marxism, etc. and Trump is back is his good graces because it’s been proven that he had nothing to do with the assault on the Capitol.
His backlash lasted about 24 hours.
Here’s some:
Evangelical Leaders Condemn ‘Radicalized Christian Nationalism’
In a new open letter, more than 100 pastors, ministry and seminary leaders, and other prominent evangelicals express concern about the growing “radicalization” they’re seeing, particularly among white evangelicals.
The letter [. . . ] calls on other Christian leaders to take a public stand against racism, Christian nationalism, conspiracy theories, and political extremism.
The letter reads, in part:
“We recognize that evangelicalism, and white evangelicalism in particular, has been susceptible to the heresy of Christian nationalism because of a long history of faith leaders accommodating white supremacy. We choose to speak out now because we do not want to be quiet accomplices in this on-going sin.”
Which of these people used to support Trump?
That, I don’t know; I didn’t research them individually.
I took it as signs of a backlash within the evangelical movement as a whole.
You can’t really accurately generalize the evangelical community “as a whole”. The evangelical community isn’t a cohesive block. There are hundreds — at least— of these denominations and independent churches, they splinter and fracture all the time over minor ( to an outside observer) theological differences. A lot of them hate each other’s guts. Although they’ve been politicized by the same river of dark money, their reasons and rationales for supporting Trump were very different —— some were in it for the quid pro quo, others received some sort of prophecy.
And some didn’t support Trump at all. “80% of evangelicals supported Trump” is a true statement”, but that means 20% didn’t, and they weren’t all rogue parishioners.
The organizer of the group that wrote that letter, Doug Pagit, seems to be a rare progressive evangelical, and he runs a group called Vote Common Good, whose purpose is to push back against the influx of Republicanism into evangelical religion.
The letter also referenced Free Will Baptist Church, whose leader described them as “to the right of everyone”. But the group seems to be old-school conservative - a quick browsing of their magazine brought up an article on the seriousness of COVID and the importance of the pastor in encouraging his flock to take public health seriously and another article warning against the use of religion to “throw political shade”.
So I don’t think this article is reflective of anyone changing their position, I think it’s just the outliers pushing back against being lumped in with the toxic white supremacist evangelicals.
I think the more common position is the one being espoused by two of the most politically influential evangelicals. Ralph Reed and Robert Jeffries. Their position is basically “Violence Bad, Trump Good” and they don’t see the contradiction.
They also seem to be settling on a position regarding Trump and election fraud that I find very disconcerting, which is that elections have always been riddled with fraud and Trump was the only one brave and godly enough to call it out.
If they had any critical thinking skills, they would realize that this position calls the legitimacy of Trump’s first term into doubt, but they…don’t.
Fair enough. And certainly I’ve read other stuff by people identifying as evangelical who never supported Trump.
I don’t think of ‘backlash’ as something that can only come from people who have just changed their minds; but it’s true that the OP asked specifically about people changing their minds.
Here’s the counter-point to the OP’s question:
Here’s an excellent in-depth article from back in the spring that adds some insight into the history of the allegiances between Republicans and the religious right.