By Nancy LeTourneau
Paul Ewell, a business professor and dean at Virginia Wesleyan University, wrote on Facebook recently that anyone who supported Biden for president is “ignorant, anti-American and anti-Christian.” Donald Trump was so impressed with the sentiment that he retweeted the quote with a one word commentary: “Progress!”
We have, of course, become somewhat immune to that kind of divisiveness from the president. But when we hear it from the dean of a Christian college on social media, or as we saw when Franklin Graham and radio talk show host Eric Metaxas agree that those who oppose the president are succumbing to a demonic influence, the sentiment isn’t isolated to a few individuals among white evangelicals.
This Manichean view of the 2020 election is what drove roughly 80 percent of white evangelical Christians to vote for Trump. Their political alignment with the right means that 40 percent of Trump voters identify as white evangelical Christians, even though they represent only 15 percent of the population.
Diana Butler Bass, an American historian of Christianity, wrote that this melding of religion and politics has “hardened into forms of identity that seem intractable at the moment.” She went on to point out how voting for Republicans has been equated with theology.
Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.
2 comments on “Why Christian Nationalists Merge Their Religious and Political Identities”
Absolutely true. But it has to be taken a bit further; not only have Christian nationalists
but they have also elevated America to be God’s chosen nation, the equal and protector of Israel, with a divine mission in the world. Their ideas seem to be tied up with Armageddon, the destiny of Israel, the mission of the US. and what they call the end times. Weird stuff.
eejit
am in almost daily discussions with a born again christian
an intelligent university i t guy
but has that same compartmentalizing gene/meme as francis collins
tho he goes a step further and accepts intelligent design
no shaking his american megachurch christian nationalist faith
and of course he gives trump the benefit of the doubt
because of the abortion issue
Comments are closed.