Now, thanks to a rising swell of secularism, Evangelicals feel threatened. No longer are they given special treatment. No longer are their blatant assaults on the First Amendment ignored. The more Evangelicals are marginalized, the greater their outrage.
Evangelicals must accept the fact that progress has brought us to place of inclusion and acceptance of those who are different from us. Evangelical preachers are certainly free to keep preaching against what they believe are sinful behaviors. But they might want to notice that many Americans — particularly millennials — are no longer listening.
Long-time readers will recognize Gerencser’s remarks as a familiar theme hereabouts; evangelicals are, indeed, frantic to re-assert themselves and maddened by their declining influence.
That is doubtless a factor in the evangelical enthusiasm for Donald Trump.
There is something else to think about, too. As Christianity slips and slides toward insignificance, and there is a corresponding decline in church attendance, the loonies become concentrated — and the preacher who wants to stay in business has to give them what they want. This means that the church can no longer be a mediating influence in civic life; it becomes, necessarily, unavoidably, the voice and face of faction and divisiveness.
One more reason, then, to end their public subsidy via tax privileges.