Evangelicals’ devotion to a false idol

The Washington Post When Jerry Falwell Jr. was recently asked if there was anything President Trump could do to lose his evangelical support, his simple answer was “No.” This tells you why Trump is counting on religious conservative voters “for his political survival,” said Michael Gerson. While some parts of Trump’s coalition have begun to crack under the weight of his chronic lying, vanity, cruelty, and corruption, his evangelical support “has solidified into something like devotion.” Why? After a century of losing ground to liberal, secular culture, evangelicals see that struggle in “apocalyptic” terms. “In their battle with the Philistines, evangelicals have essentially hired their own Goliath—brutal, pagan, but on their side.” That deal will have a long-lasting cost. Many women, minorities, and young people have come to associate religious conservatism with Trump’s sexism, xenophobia, and racism—further marginalizing Christianity. In the past, Christianity has been used to justify segregation, slavery, and other wrongs. But reformers like William Wilberforce and Martin Luther King have reminded Christians of the faith’s fundamental belief in the dignity of all humankind. After Trump, we’ll need new reformers to save Christianity from those who’ve reduced it to “a sad and sordid game of thrones.”