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78% of white evangelical voters say they will vote for Trump. For years some have described American white evangelicals as racists. Now that polls say 78% of evangelicals are voting for Trump we know its true.

What else do we now know?

Evangelicals have said “hate the sin but love the sinner.” Now polls say 78% of white evangelicals are voting for Trump we know they just hate.

The mask slipped. It’s over.

For year many Americans have regarded evangelicals as members of various personality cults following “strong” celebrity leaders (pastors and evangelists, ministry founders from Pat Robertson, Francis Schaeffer, my dad, to Jim Wallace and from Billy Graham, to Shane Claiborne).

Some leaders were of the left most were of the right, but all were “followed” by “their people” as if they were mini-Jesus’. Now the evangelicals have joined the Trump cult we know evangelicals are into authoritarianism and being led. They were groomed by their celebrity leaders (left or right) to take direction from men and women, as if from God.

For years it has seemed as if evangelicals live in a science-free, history-free, fact-free cocoon where they believe in a literally true Bible but (for instance) not in evolution, man made climate change or that gay women and men are born that way. Now polls say 78% of white evangelicals are voting for Trump we know they have literally rewired their brains to mistrust reality itself.

Evangelicals have now proved they want yet another leader to solve the world for them. And this time they’ve picked someone who leaves the movement–left or right–no place to hide.

Post-Trump (be that if he wins or loses) the white evangelical brand–all of it, left or right–is going to be hated by reasonable people everywhere.

The “cool” white evangelical leaders can show up to speak at places like Gordon College or Wheaton College, wearing dreadlocks, tattooed from toe to head, run a cool church or found an “intentional” community and serve the poor, campaign against the death penalty or march in Black Lives Matter marches, but if they still embrace the white evangelical label, they are aiding and abetting what amounts to the updated KKK.

Post-Trump’s (unintentionally) ripping the mask off the white evangelical face, there’s only one reason a white evangelical would stick with the brand or the theology or still do a speaking tour to the bastions of white evangelical power and thus provide them cover and respectability:

It’s that in the white American evangelical world is where the big God-money is. Period.

Here is who 78% of white evangelicals are saying they want to lead America…

A pervert who makes obsessively repeated statements in public about being sexually attracted to his own daughter
An “economic genius” revealed as a tax scammer who lost $916 million in a boom market
A draft dodger who talks tough about sending other people to war
A would-be president who brags that he’ll order war crimes
A tax cheat who demands that poor people pay taxes to fund the huge tax cuts for the wealthy he wants
A philandering adulterer who brags about sexual conquests- while criticizing other men for doing the same thing
A monster that mocks people with disabilities
A (fake) ‘baby’ Christian of whom the Christian Right requires nothing
A con man who consistently hires workers and doesn’t pay them
A treasonous individual who looked straight into the camera at a major news conference, and invited the Russians to hack into a private American citizen’s email
A snake who whispers sweet nothing’s in the ear of weak Christians causing them to stumble
A nasty tweeter troll who preys on women
A man who knowingly conducted illegal business in a communist country (Cuba) and a terrorist country (Iran)
A misogynist who bullies and demeans women then jokes about their bodies
A man who mocks an honored POW for getting caught
A hero to white supremacists and conspiracy addicts everywhere
A darling of Russian fascists
A man who wants to be an emperor
A bully who enjoys hurting others
A racist who hates any shade of brown
A very stupid man who thinks he’s brilliant
A man who destroys a political party forever
A man that a racist, homophobic myth-embracing political party deserves that destroys them by ripping off their mask
A proven pathological liar loved passionately by evangelical Christians and a murdering Russian dictator
A loser’s loser

78% (in other words the overwhelming majority of white evangelicals) have now proven that white evangelicals mostly must…

be uneducated and gullible
be people who think the fossil record is a lie put here by Satan
not have a clue about who Jesus Christ was (he was not white)
be people who believe that the Bible says God created minorities to serve the whites
have spent lifetimes abdicating free will to their “leaders”
fear brown America so will stick with their inbred racism and vote for someone they know is a psychopath
support Trump because he has hinted that one of his goals is to make the US a theocracy and they love that because they are power hungry
say they are not racist but support a candidate who is racist himself, uses racist rhetoric to inflame his followers, says he will institute policies that are racist, and is followed and loved by millions of proudly self-declared racists including the KKK
believe that the GOP will pick the next SUPREME COURT Judge and THAT is THE most important reason to VOTE GOP—— TO Overturn Roe vs Wade, even if it means putting a Vladimir Putin-shill in charge of America
just hate Hillary as if that hatred is itself a new biblical absolute
not be as saved as they think they are
really follow the Bible which is a racist and sexist book
suffer from terminal holier than thou mental illness
trust Franklin Graham and were groomed by his love of hate
have been groomed by Billy Graham and his love of the irrational
be “followers”… and will follow Trump over the cliff of unreasoning into the abyss of Fox News “reality”
somehow have replaced their “cross” with a “dollar sign”… and (post-prosperity gospel) think it’s equivalent
think that God always concurs with televangelist’s
also be con artists thus evangelical leaders love Trump because they see themselves (empire-building being all evangelical leaders’ middle name)
prove that Christianity Today magazine succeeded in lobotomizing an entire generation with a relentless anti-science pro-fundamentalist view of the Bible, proselytizing for a literal hell and so forth– so revenge politics comes naturally to people who believe in a vengeful god
have read the “Left Behind” novels and thought they were real thus think this is the “End” so who cares who is president?
forgotten what Jefferson said: “History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the LOWEST GRADE OF IGNORANCE of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.”
(Thomas Jefferson, to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813)
excuse themselves because there are some token evangelical leaders on the “left” like Shane Claiborne and Jim Wallace — what might be called the Red Letter Christians club of lefty progressive evangelicals– who enable the 78% to feel somewhat respectable. The progressives do that “justice stuff.” So the 78% can say that not all evangelicals are actually haters. (When are these “good” evangelicals going to denounce the evangelical label — not to mention the backward theology–and walk away from the big speaking fees and book deals?)
have sprinkled a little Pentecostal salvation dust on Trump
call themselves Christians– though clearly brown Jesus (judged on what’s been written that he’s said to have said and said to have done) would call them all motherfuckers… or as he is said to have put it: WOE unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, HYPOCRITES! You are FULL OF DEAD MEN’S BONES, and ALL UNCLEANNESS… and HYPOCRISY and INIQUITY… WOE unto you, HYPOCRITES!… you are the children of them which KILLED the prophets. … You SERPENTS, you GENERATION OF SNAKES… you KILL AND CRUCIFY… you SCOURGE in your synagogues… Behold your house is left unto you DESOLATE”!

Post-Trump the white American evangelical mask has slipped. How can anyone decent ever want to be identified as a white evangelical again? Speaking of delusional thinking post-Trump we know that the evangelical movement can’t be reformed, merely denounced and exposed, fought and replaced. How can anyone provide cover for this movement again? 78% is a lot. It’s more white American evangelicals supporting Trump than German Christians supported Hitler. As noted in Wikipedia, under the Gleichschaltung process, Hitler attempted to create a unified Protestant Reich Church from Germany’s 28 existing Protestant churches. The plan failed, and was resisted by the Confessing Church.

Not so in America 2016.

! Thanks to my Facebook friends for contributing to this article. I made several posts asking questions and the list above reflects many of the answers.

P.S. If you want to know a little more about where I’m coming from and my perspective on politics, religion and the intersection of faith and life– here’s a new movie about me. (It’s below the poster on YouTube) scroll down and watch it for free…