Thread by @mcjulie

I always have a... certain kind of feeling when I read an article in the sub-genre that I'm going to call... "lament of the NICE evangelical"

https://twitter.com/TheAtlantic/status/1147533426418954241

There's a certain kind of tone to these articles -- a sad, world-weary head-shaking -- and words like "crisis" or "decline" that make it sound like a storm that's ready to pass overhead.

The sub-head of the article, for example: "Support for Trump comes at a high cost for Christian witness." A "high cost." But who's paying it?

The narrative is, sort of, "Evangelicals -- gaining the world, but losing their soul!" framed as, almost, a prophetic warning TO evangelicals? Like a "woe to you my people" kind of thing.

But they seem to me stuck in a pre-2016 mindset, still asking "HOW could the people who proclaimed "character counts" and "family values" embrace such a venal and corrupt man?"

Still asking, "but HOW can you say you follow Jesus and yet embrace all these things that are the exact opposite of what he taught?"

There's often a kind of measured sympathy toward the evangelical point of view, a sense of "on the one hand they're wrong, but on the other hand, they're not ENTIRELY wrong"

Example: "evangelical Christians are also filled with grievances and resentments because they feel they have been mocked, scorned, and dishonored by the elite culture over the years. (Some of those feelings are understandable and warranted.)"

"Some of those feelings are understandable and warranted" Those feelings of being dissed by the "elite culture." But... what is this "elite culture" they're talking about?

I've been seeing this "elite culture" nonsense for decades and it always seemed OBVIOUSLY ridiculous, millionaire TV pundits insinuating that people like me are "elites" because we... have a bachelor's degree?

Who ARE these mysterious elites, who aren't actually politicians, or the extremely wealthy, or the highly influential? Elite... what? What do they actually do? What makes them elite? Is there an entrance exam?

Then, one day, I saw a right winger refer to "elites" with a phrase that maybe wasn't quite so carefully worded as usual, and it jumped out at me: "elite" == "Jewish"

"Elite" is an anti-semitic dog whistle.

Evangelicals, led by their new master, have begun to say the quiet part loud. That's really it. All these things used to be signaled through carefully crafted euphemisms that could seem innocent if taken at face value.

Evangelicals have been speaking in code my whole life, but I used to think it was just... lazy thinking? I guess? You know, reaching for the cliche or the catch phrase rather than thinking things through.

I didn't know how much of the evangelical faith was cover for a flatly racist agenda. And... this article doesn't talk about that. It gets so close, with this quote from radio talk-show host Eric Metaxas:

"The only time we faced an existential struggle like this was in the Civil War and in the Revolution when the nation began … We are on the verge of losing it as we could have lost it in the Civil War.”

Yes, and what was the Civil War about, exactly?

Was it fought over... maybe... slavery? You know? And wasn't the losing side the... you know... pro-slavery side?

But instead of addressing the implicit white supremacy there, the article just goes right into talking about how evangelical resentments aren't ENTIRELY without merit. Cultural elites, you know.

Then, "There’s a very high cost to our politics for celebrating the Trump style, but what is most personally painful to me as a person of the Christian faith is the cost to the Christian witness"

This is the part that hits my cynicism button so hard.

Right after completely failing to fully hold the church to account for its racism, you lament the "cost to the Christian witness" of trmpism and I just think, that ship has SAILED dude, okay?

This is not a fever that's going to break. This is not a temporary madness. This is not new. And the church is not going to survive much longer in its present form.

These articles seem to perpetuate an idea that I used to get from my parents, that there was some kind of Platonic "true church" that existed outside of our actual experience in an actual church, that we valued --

And it was this "true church" that we were really a part of, not the actual people actually surrounding us in the actual pews of the actual church.

And along with that idea went this idea that if you thought the church had become corrupt, that it was better to stick around and try to influence them for good, rather than leaving.

I guess that's it. I guess that why these articles bother me. They feel personal.