“The Truth Will Set You Free”

How can evangelical Christians claim Trump as their guy with a straight face? His actions and demeanor run counter to everything for which they supposedly stand. pic.twitter.com/AuupE6gzLP https://t.co/q58Wwbd5Eh

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) January 3, 2024

Slowly but surely the truth about the “evangelicals” created in large part as a political and social force by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (not created ab initio, let the reader understand. Evangelicals were there, Falwell and Robertson & Co. just turned them into a political force which, yes, turned them away from their core American Puritanism), is being revealed.

All things hidden will be brought into the light. Like ETTD, it’s a rule of nature.

Evangelicals, at least the ones who sought political and social power, betrayed “everything for which they supposedly stand” a long time ago. Robertson was always a power hungry boob (as was Oral Roberts, but he confined his grift to the city of Tulsa, who finally saw through him). Falwell was always a racist fascist.  Their only interests were ever power. Their “evangelism” was just a means to an end, and that end wasn’t saving souls.

But because they wielded social and political power, and market share on cable TeeVee (the latter perhaps more important than the other two), none dared say the emperor was naked.

Now that the emperor is dead, however…

The decline in church attendance, the decline in church affiliation, the decline in the social and political power of evangelicals is all of a piece. Arguably the latter led to the two former, but power inevitably leaves those who seek it for themselves, and they are discarded by the roadside. All that’s left now is the public recognition that they were like that from the beginning, and we just never acknowledged it.

Followed quickly by assurances we all knew it all the time and were never fooled by it. Just like we didn’t teach the Nazis how to write eugenics into law because we were never anything like the Nazis! We have a wonderful capacity for purging our history (all those lynchings and mass race murders in the 20th century, literally gone with the wind, as if they never happened. If white people don’t remember them, did they happen?), in order to keep our collective hearts pure, our public mind guilt-free.

Same as it ever was.