Valeria Tarico notices that the evangelical brand has gone bad with the ascent of Donald Trump, and that some of the leadership think it’s time to remake the image.
Laid out like this — sex-obsessed, arrogant, bigoted, lying, greedy, ignorant, predatory and mean — one understands why a commentator like Croft might say that Trump is Evangelicalism. But reading closer, it becomes clear that Trump and Cruz and Rubio are not the problem.
The Evangelical brand is toxic because of the stagnant priorities and behaviors of Evangelicals themselves. Desperate to safeguard an archaic set of social priorities and theological agreements, Evangelical leaders bet that if they could secure political power they could force a halt to moral and spiritual evolution. They themselves wouldn’t have to grow and change.
Right. Trump is not evangelicalism. But Trump is what they always wanted.
And it would be a big mistake to let Moore, Mohler, et. al., off the hook, to let them go around calling themselves something else and disavowing all knowledge and responsibility for the ugliness that completes their ambitions.