David Brooks begins today’s column with a story sure to sound familiar to anybody who has spent time paying attention to church scandals.
Sarah Hemminger grew up in Indiana understanding the debilitating power of social isolation. When she was a girl, her father discovered that their pastor was dipping into church funds and reported it to the congregation. Instead of doing something about the pastor, the community shunned her family. Sarah and her siblings would sit at parties and neighborhood events and nobody would talk to them. She spent eight years of her childhood ostracized.
Once again, then: Most people have too much sense and decency to be good Christians; it’s the ones who don’t that you have to watch out for.
The only good thing about the election of Donald Trump, albeit at terrible cost to the country writ large, is that evangelicals’ unflagging support for him has made plain to everybody with two eyeballs how sickly hypocritical they actually are.