Just a random from the top results of Googling “god wants me to have a private jet”
And just to make sure it’s clear that this isn’t some oddball rogue televangelist:
So yeah, those are the kinds of people evangelicals get their gospel from @Jegpeg .
I can almost see the marks sending Kenneth Copeland money if he was a radio preacher, but he’s one creepy looking guy on tv, imho.
Get thee behind me, Trump! But not too close. 
Yeah, you don’t want him grabbing you.
Some people say they would follow their messiah straight off a cliff. Let’s hope that happens here.
People assume the evangelicals are all about their religious beliefs. Frequently not true. They use their religious beliefs as sword and shield for their political beliefs. This was always about politics for them.
I wouldn’t say Trump got them to do anything. He’s not that bright. He’s a simple-minded con man whose beliefs are often the same as the more simple-minded Republicans, and he doubles down when he can’t do anything else, which is most of the time. His followers, including conservative evangelicals, see this as being a “strong leader” and “speaking [their] language.”
As someone who knows a lot of evangelicals, simply by living in the Bible Belt, I can say there are some who openly are against Trump. My cousins, for example, who even lead their own Bible studies at times, were very much anti-Trump. (They even pointed out that the golden statues of him were like the Golden Calf in scripture.)
I get the perception that a lot of those who call themselves “Evangelical Christians” see that as a cultural marker. And that a lot of them have so blended their conservative politics with their conservative religion that they were able to come up with excuses to keep them together even as the right went authoritarian, they moved that way. And, finally, many of them are so angry that anyone who is angry at the same sorts of people is an ally, regardless.
As for how he got them to ignore everyone else? Simply by being the darling of the news channels that told you to believe they were lying. And just a lifetime of being told that they need to ignore everyone who is against what their community and/or pastors tell them to believe.
Sounds like a really cool, worthy of your time group. How was your response received?
Modern American Christianity is irrevocably entwined with modern American conservativism. They are for all intents and purposes the same.
So where does the Bible shoehorn in? If it does.
This isn’t strictly on-topic, but reading this thread, a line from the book I’m reading* comes to mind:
Likewise, it has been found that among humans, the most confident, talkative member of a group often becomes the group’s leader, more or less regardless of the quality of his or her input (a phenomenon called “the babble effect”).
*“On Trails” by Robert Moor
It fits when it features passages that support their political views (e.g., condemning homosexuality), but passages that are about accepting immigrants, Jesus’s humility, etc. are conveniently overlooked.
It depends on the denomination. The Episcopalian Church is liberal, as is the United Church of Christ (NOT the ugly-conservative Church of Christ.) The Society of Friends (Quakers) has long been liberal. There are a number of others. Please note that I don’t mean they’re liberal relative to conservative denominations. They’re liberal, period.
No, there are still some folks out there who follow Jesus and his teachings.
As well as what will be remaining of the United Methodist Church, once the conservative members and congregations complete their departure from the denomination during the ongoing schism over acceptance of homosexuality.
I’m a member of a very liberal UMC congregation, and we’re pretty disgusted by the actions and words of many conservative Christians.
It is worshipped as an idol, not a book with actual words to be studied, understood, or even applied to one’s life. Well the harsh negative things are to be forcefully applied to other people’s lives, preferably by the government.
If my club was co-opted by a bunch of nutbags, I’d find a new club or just quit that hobby. Who would want to be associated with something so diametrically opposed to what their club believes?
And I say that as someone who left a group I was part of for over a decade (search and rescue). It was taken over by a few that wanted it to be a militia group and pushed that until they had alienated all the normal folks. It was a group directly under the county sheriff…and I can see now how elected country sheriffs draw the nutbags.
I had a long post typed, but it was verging into Pit material. Let me just say instead that Jesus, the Bible, and doctrine are irrelevant. All that matters is being in the in-group and driving away and punishing the “demons” outside. The few who genuinely believe in Jesus’s teachings (insofar as they have actually been taught them) also tend to be the most indoctrinated, and hence, the ones most afraid of losing the safety of the tribe, so they mostly don’t push back.
They don’t want a moral leader, or even one who believes in what their religion says. They want a demagogue who will reassure them that they are “in” and do bad things to those who are “out”, because that makes the tiny child inside them who had nightmares after their preacher’s hellfire & brimstone sermons feel safe.
Have all evangelical churches been taken over by nutbags? I know the leadership of certain denominations are pretty hateful, but I’m wondering if that means each individual church within that denomination has been taken over, or, if not, whether they’re all following the commands from HQ.
What’s being “co-opted”?
This isn’t a political party that elected a new leader, or a corporation being taken over by a new CEO. It’s set of beliefs, and some people who share those beliefs are assholes, some aren’t.
You don’t suddenly change your belief system because some jerks proclaim they believe the same thing. That’s ludicrous. You have a very strange idea of how religion works.
By the way, it’s very common for people who share the same core beliefs to diverge from each other on something important. That’s how denominations come to exist in the first place.