According to the Pew Research Center’s presidential approval tables for April 2017, white Evangelicals apparently remain determined to go down in history as some of the most notorious villains of our time, if history is not forestalled by nuclear destruction thanks to them placing a dangerously demagogic and incompetent man in the office of the presidency. 78% of them still approve of #IllegitimatePresident’s performance. 63% of them approve strongly.

How anyone can deny, at this point, the essentially authoritarian character of the US white Evangelical community is frankly beyond me. Their evident authoritarianism has clearly played a large role in the radicalization of today’s illiberal, anti-democratic Republican Party. For more detailed analysis of Evangelical authoritarianism, see my two pieces on the topic at Religion Dispatches here and here.

Shamefully, half of all white, non-Hispanic Americans approve of Trump’s performance, while only 44% disapprove. Meanwhile, #SoCalledPresident also has net approval with white Catholics (51%) and men over 50 (54%), and that’s pretty much his coalition – SAD! But what’s really sad to me as an ex-Evangelical, if unfortunately not surprising, is that white Evangelicals remain far and away Trump’s most supportive demographic. In positioning themselves as such, they have shown their true white supremacist colors, in addition to declaring themselves opponents of the rights of anyone who is not a straight, white, conservative Christian.

If we ever recover functional democracy, they will deservedly find themselves the social and political pariahs that they in their paranoid persecution complex imagine themselves to be (while simultaneously conceiving of themselves as the “moral majority”–a psychological profile characteristic of the fascist, who cannot function without enemies). A healthy society relegates such people to the political margins.

Published by Chrissy Stroop

Writer, Scholar, Ex-Evangelical