Hi and welcome back! Recently, I showed you an evangelical’s request that his tribe quit thinking so transactionally. Indeed, Mark Wingfield wanted evangelicals to change their approach not just to religion, but also to politics. He thinks evangelicals’ transactional mindset is absolutely tanking their sales — along with their reputation as a business. Whatever’s actually behind evangelicals’ losses, their pastors are losing their minds over their declines in power. Today, let me show you the two basic responses I’m seeing to those losses: fear and rage.
(Egor Myznik.) Fear and anger lead only to desolation.
A Tale of Two Strategies: Rage and Fear.
To be evangelical is to spend every waking moment hovering around two emotional states: fear and rage. Evangelicals are seriously the angriest and most vicious bunch of self-pitying, constantly-moaning whinybutts I’ve ever encountered.
(What unexpectedly perfect ambassadors evangelicals truly are for their Mad Blood God of the Desert!)
Evangelical leaders seem to like their flocks to be in these states. After all, almost everything they do in their leadership capacity centers around stoking and encouraging their followers’ fear and anger — along with rewarding them emotionally for maintaining their affiliation with evangelicalism, of course.
I can see why these leaders treasure fear and anger like they do. People in those states don’t tend to think clearly, nor to value long-term benefits over short-term gains. The authoritarian followers these leaders want most can be easily goaded into such states and then kept there for decades on end. They likely won’t even notice how manipulative their leaders’ tactics are, and if they do then they’ll just consider that manipulation a necessary means to a morally-desirable end.
As we talk about the two strategies I see evangelical pastors deploying lately, be thinking about how each strategy pushes evangelicals into greater depths of fear and anger.
The Tool of Fear: Persecution Ahoy!
Donald Trump speaks to that part of the evangelical psyche that craves power — and also fears being powerless. He surrounds himself with lickspittles and hangers-on who drink deeply from that very authoritarian cup.
- Franklin Graham wrung his widdle handsies well before the 2016 election: “I Fear That Our End Will Be Near.” He means the Endtimes, of course.
- Kayleigh McEnany, obsessed with the false martyrdom narrative of the Columbine High School massacre, sought safety from the threats she imagined were everywhere for TRUE CHRISTIANS™ like herself.
- James Dobson screeched during the pre-election about all the awful things that’d happen to his followers’ children if they didn’t support every single one of his culture-war causes and vote accordingly. After it, though, he went absolutely pants-on-head apocalyptic.
Let’s now zero in on that last link. After the election, James Dobson went absolutely haywire. His post festers with over-the-top speculations about the post-Trump world. Of course, even on November 17, Dobson refused to fully acknowledge Biden’s victory! Willful ignorance really is one of the most important evangelical virtues.
We’ll talk more about his hand-wringing later, I think. For now, I’ll just rest here: James Dobson and his peers need evangelical flocks to be absolutely terrified of losing power.
Unca Pat: “We Don’t Want That” …
Fear certainly functions as one major aspect of the evangelical psyche. The other aspect is anger. To get their sheep moving in the correct directions, evangelical leaders seek to terrify them and enrage them.
Before the 2020 election, the lich-king Pat Robertson offered some dire warnings about the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. After mistakenly deciding that BLM is all about “Marxist communism,” Unca Pat spewed imaginary threats against all that his followers hold dear:
“They’re talking about destroying the nuclear family. They’re talking about destroying essentially Christianity as being racist. And all the way through, they want to upend the capitalist structure and destroy America. [. . .] [W]e don’t want to go along with a lesbian, anti-family, anti-capitalist Marxist revolution. We don’t want that for America.”
Of course he worded it this way. “We don’t want that for America.” Because in his wacky world, we, meaning evangelicals like himself, get to make that call. Evangelicals love to imagine themselves as the Designated Adults of America. Everyone outside their tribe becomes a belligerent, pouty little child who wants candy for dinner.
… Which Leads Inevitably to “We Cannot ALLOW That.”
After the election, of course, Robertson scrunched together his very best O-face, then talked in his out-loud voice to command his imaginary friend to stop his imaginary enemy from making Americans believe Joe Biden had won. He told his audience after his creepy prayer,
“We cannot allow that [win].”
But what does it look like to not “go along with” major societal change? Or to “stop” Americans from believing that something that happened really happened? Or to not “allow that” election win to happen when it already has?
That’s some very seditious talk, there, potentially, considering how much this wingnut claims to fetishize patriotism.
But oh, I mean, let’s be real. Pat Robertson’s probably far too much of a natural coward to actually take any of his rhetoric to its real-world conclusions. He’s no revolutionary, just a basic opportunist. He just paints the same apocalyptic nightmare world for his followers that James Dobson did, and then he lets the cards fall from there.
His way-more-opportunistic peers have no such sense of propriety. They’re quite happy to make tangible suggestions for how the flocks can deal with their stoked-up fury, terror, and rage.
After Fera: Stoking the Rage Flames.
Along with trying to terrify the pants off their sheep and enrage them, less-responsible evangelical leaders also seek to mobilize them.
Also before the 2020 election, Rick Joyner (an evangelical name-it-and-claim-it pastor associated with that magical grift carnival now called the Toronto Blessing) told his followers to get ready for actual, honest-to-goodness civil war:
We’re in time for war,” Joyner said. “We need to recognize that. [. . .] I’m talking to law enforcement, talking to people. One of the things I saw in a dream I had related to our civil war was that militias would pop up like mushrooms. And it was God. These were good militias.”
“If God’s people don’t become a part of the militia movements, the good militias, the bad people will take them over,” he continued. “Jesus himself said, ‘There’s gonna be a time when you need to sell your coat and buy a sword.’ Now that was a physical weapon of their day, and we’re in that time here. We need to realize that.”
In these sentiments, Joyner simply echoed a common refrain among the more belligerent, chest-thumpy leaders in his end of Christianity. They’ve been sporting giant boners for civil war ever since Barack Obama got elected, after all.
In their orange calf idol’s stunning election loss they see a chance to regain relevance. With relevance, they can grab for renewed and enlarged bases of personal power.
Hooray Team Jesus!
Redefined Love Can’t Cast Out Fear.
The more outrageous and hyperbolic evangelicals’ threats get, the more absolutely wackadoodle their imaginary enemies grow, the more expansive their demands of the flocks become, and the more frightened they show themselves to be.
So much for perfect love casting out fear!
Or for those feeling true love to never dishonor others, glorify themselves, fall prey to impatience and unkindness, or delight in evil. Evangelicals read that Love Chapter and then set out with a mission statement to disobey every single verse in it.
(They started with redefining love in a way that would allow them to abuse people they hate.)
And none of this frenetic activity is ever going to work for them. It’ll just make them feel better as their giant cruise ship sinks under the ocean waters.
All for Worse Than No Returns.
All the threats and power-grabs evangelicals can possibly muster will not get them back their former cultural dominance. In fact, this behavior is backfiring hard. It’s showing the few decent evangelicals left in their tribe exactly who their bunkmates really are. It’s ripping away whatever illusions those decent evangelicals used to believe about their religion, their peers, and their entire way of life.
Oh, their Dear Leaders still command a fanbase that froths at the mouth. That’s true. Evangelicals grow more extremist and polarized by the hour. Their leaders play them like lutes and manipulate them like marionettes.
However, that fanbase shrinks more and more every day. They can’t come even close to replacing the people who are leaving. Nor can they recapture the deference they used to enjoy. That’s because their antics are not only driving away current members and destroying recruitment efforts, but also decimating their already-eroding credibility levels.
By now, not one single reputable survey house or religion researcher gives evangelicals even half a chance of regaining their onetime dominance. They may base that opinion on a number of trends and factors, but they always land in the same spot on the gameboard.
Please. Remember that fact, any time you start losing hope. Remember it.
The Tiny Toolbox.
In days to come, we will see more hyperbolic threats, worse strawmanning, and more egregious behavior from evangelicals. Their toolbox is quite small and limited. And their tactics’ success entirely depends on the power they can bring to bear.
To be evangelical is to flail through life in a permanent state of terror and rage, yes. Even in their times of joy, these states remain simmering in the background.
But it is also to smugly refuse to evolve in tactics or make any big changes to how things get handled.
And so to be evangelical is to fail in any environment where their tribe lacks decisive power.
NEXT UP: An angry authoritarian evangelical dude at work fought The Man with his tribe’s fully-approved, time-tested tactics… and lost in more ways than the obvious one. See you tomorrow!
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H/t to Wondering Eagle for finding the James Dobson blatherpost. He’s a good egg and I like his blog, which mostly focuses on sharing fundie doings.
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