It's not just happening to Mormons millennials. Trump is characterized as a moral freak show who is largely responsible for the exodus of young evangelicals from the church.
Peter Wehner in Atlantic Magazine wrote: In speaking about the widespread, reflexive evangelical support for the president, Coppock—who is theologically orthodox and generally sympathetic to conservatism—lamented the effect this moral freak show is having, especially on the younger generation. With unusual passion, he told me, “We’re losing an entire generation. They’re just gone. It’s one of the worst things to happen to the Church.”
"The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things which lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy." Steven Weinberg
I wonder what spin sub will put on this. Did not Cohen at the request of Trump asked by Jerry Falwell Jr standing next to him to retrieve some embarrassing photos? Cohen said he destroyed all but one.
Hilary Clinton " I won the places that represent two-thirds of America's GDP.I won in places are optimistic diverse, dynamic, moving forward"
Arc wrote:It's not just happening to Mormons millennials. Trump is characterized as a moral freak show who is largely responsible for the exodus of young evangelicals from the church.
When you say "the church," to which church are you referring?
"Finally, for your rather strange idea that miracles are somehow linked to the amount of gay sexual gratification that is taking place would require that primitive Christianity was launched by gay sex, would it not?"
This is horrible. Is there not some state labor laws that stop it?
"he minimum wage for a tipped position in Arkansas — like the one I held as a bartender — is $2.63 an hour. The assumption is that tipped workers will earn their own minimum wages by making up the difference in tips. When this happens, a “tip credit” is given to employers, and they save money by paying less than the standard minimum wage.
It was the way I spoke that landed me the job. I had no experience, but the owner of the bar told a friend she hired me because, “she speaks well and has all her own teeth.” I guess she assumed I would learn to make drinks. I didn’t. I wasn’t very good at my job, but one thing I was good at was listening. And what I often heard was a growing dissatisfaction among poor whites who were struggling to make ends meet in the failing economy."
Hilary Clinton " I won the places that represent two-thirds of America's GDP.I won in places are optimistic diverse, dynamic, moving forward"
Arc wrote:It's not just happening to Mormons millennials. Trump is characterized as a moral freak show who is largely responsible for the exodus of young evangelicals from the church.
When you say "the church," to which church are you referring?
In Evangelical circles the church is usually not a specific denomination but generic. It does seem natural to wonder if the comments apply to some groups more than others. I found myself wondering if the sentiments were fears or wishful thinking. Do they have some data reference? Perhaps an anecdotal basis?
Thanks for posting this, Arc. One thing I found interesting was this combined idea that Trump was wronged by the wrong kinds of people, and his election and ability to come out on top evidenced divine protection and thus God's blessing.
I recently exchanged emails with a pro-Trump figure who attended the president’s reelection rally in Orlando, Florida, on June 18. (He spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, so as to avoid personal or professional repercussions.) He had interviewed scores of people, many of them evangelical Christians. “I have never witnessed the kind of excitement and enthusiasm for a political figure in my life,” he told me. “I honestly couldn’t believe the unwavering support they have. And to a person, it was all about ‘the fight.’ There is a very strong sense (I believe justified, you disagree) that he has been wronged. Wronged by Mueller, wronged by the media, wronged by the anti-Trump forces. A passionate belief that he never gets credit for anything"...
Part of the answer is their belief that they are engaged in an existential struggle against a wicked enemy—not Russia, not North Korea, not Iran, but rather American liberals and the left. If you listen to Trump supporters who are evangelical (and non-evangelicals, like the radio talk-show host Mark Levin), you will hear adjectives applied to those on the left that could easily be used to describe a Stalinist regime. (Ask yourself how many evangelicals have publicly criticized Trump for his lavish praise of Kim Jong Un, the leader of perhaps the most savage regime in the world and the worst persecutor of Christians in the world.)
That's the world we live in. Yay.
That said, the article makes interesting points. The concept of culture care was new to me. I also found this positive if not something I've heard in conversation outside the article -
Labberton speaks about what it means to live as people in exile, trying to find the capacity to love in unexpected ways; to see the enemy, the foreigner, the stranger, and the alien, and to go toward rather than away from them. He asks what a life of faithfulness looks like while one lives in a world of fear.
He adds, “The Church is in one of its deepest moments of crisis—not because of some election result or not, but because of what has been exposed to be the poverty of the American Church in its capacity to be able to see and love and serve and engage in ways in which we simply fail to do. And that vocation is the vocation that must be recovered and must be made real in tangible action.”
The closest is probably Huckleberry's thread in the terrestrial forum. Mostly it's echos of the belief liberals are going to destroy America through reasons that should be clear so they don't need debated.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
Dr. Shades wrote:When you say "the church," to which church are you referring?
In Evangelical circles the church is usually not a specific denomination but generic. It does seem natural to wonder if the comments apply to some groups more than others.
Right. The comments would apply mainly to Southern Baptists. Membership in Southern Baptist Convention churches, of which the are about 47,000, has dropped by more than one million since 2015 and the decline has accelerated more recently.
Among the red states, support for Trump is now strongest in Alabama, which has its own strong Baptist State Convention, formed in 1823.
State by State data from 538 show that support for Trump has weakened in every red state except for Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama, and has weakened significantly in the swing states that were responsible for his electoral college win in 2016.
"The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things which lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy." Steven Weinberg
The Evangelicals may lose some of those so-called "moralists", but they will also gain a number of conservatives who like hiding behind a mask of religion. Especially when it can provide cover for when the horns accidentally poke through the mask.