Andrew Sullivan is out with a new column today that mistakenly conflates religion and philosophy, and fails utterly to understand how ignorant and literal the Southern Baptists hereabouts actually are. But he at least gets this much right:
They are indifferent to the destruction of the creation they say they believe God made. And because their faith is unmoored but their religious impulse is strong, they seek a replacement for religion. This is why they could suddenly rally to a cult called Trump. He may be the least Christian person in America, but his persona met the religious need their own faiths had ceased to provide. The terrible truth of the last three years is that the fresh appeal of a leader-cult has overwhelmed the fading truths of Christianity.
This is why they are so hard to reach or to persuade and why nothing that Trump does or could do changes their minds.
As I have said many times over the past two years, the Evangelical Right simply transferred their loyalties and personal sense of identity from church to Trump; it’s the same relationship, held just as uncritically and irrationally.