If Trump survives the impeachment process and somehow wins a second term, many explanations will be offered. It may be that the Democratic Party went too far left, or picked a nominee with a glass jaw, or couldn’t swim against the political tide of a good economy. But there will be one reason behind all of these reasons: because evangelicals lost their taste for character and gave their blessing to corruption. And this grand act of hypocrisy would mark them for a generation.
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But we should not underestimate the cultural trauma that many leaders of the religious right have inflicted. It is in the order of things that a younger generation should challenge the views and values of its parents. It is a source of cynicism and social disruption when an older generation betrays civilizing values in full sight of its children. Many evangelical leaders now lie drunk, naked and exposed. [an allusion to Noah]
The Evangelical Right squandered its moral credibility a long time ago, and I don’t mind admitting that I get a lot of pleasure from watching the rest of the country awakening to its moral squalor, its mean-spiritedness, its incandescent hypocrisy. As I said as they were high-fiveing the election of the most corrupt and wildly incompetent president in our history, they are done.