imo the morons are the effect of a century of the worst sort of evangelical excess. The megapastors are a major source of the evil.
This will sound real harsh, & I’ve had ‘tone sensitivity’ on my mind today, so I *am* choosing my words carefully, but I need to speak plainly, too…so….
I agree. At the same time, the deliberate political manipulation (& subsequent weaponization) of the evangelical movement, and its ‘evolution’(?) into what it is today, and it’s digestion into the current ‘conservative’ base, for me dates from the birth of the 700 Club around the same time as the emergence of Falwell’s “ ‘moral’ majority” and the rise of cable & superstations. (I’m working from memory). For the moment, call it modern American fundamentalism (MAF).
As you note, it wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for the deeply-ingrained Bible-worship in rural communities; and without it, I believe we wouldn’t have megachurches.
The thing most people - Christian and not - don’t realize about MAF is that the rise of televangelism, Christian radio networks, ‘Christian universities’, the mega churches has converted Christianity from an actual following of Jesus in to a business. An industry, even.
This is what has truly weaponized Christianity: the emergence of a faith-based worldview (the german word ‘bewusstsein’ (sp?) captures it better) whose adherents (psychological captives) are kept dangling with promises of rapture, paradise, and revenge on those who escape. The get used as political fodder & muscle, carefully coached in what ordinary things
*really* mean, and continually fed a erroneous sense of threat and danger and wrongness in “*THEM*, Inc.” (those who were never sucked in, those who escaped, and those who had to claw their way out to survive) in order to keep them ready for immediate deployment.
Organized, owned and managed as a business: sheep for the endless fundraising shears.
The key point is that the ‘adherents’ do not realize that they’re being used, emotionally extorted for money, for political influence, for obedience, for social-engineering (culture-war) purposes, and ultimately for power, and a durable place among The People Who Run Things(tm); they do not realize that the pastors and ministers are overwhelmingly likely to not believe *anything* they say in their sales pitch to potential ‘adherents’); they do not realize they are manipulated intentionally, by people they’ve been trained to trust, to achieve financial goals and to achieve political and social ends.
And because they don’t realize these things, they have no idea at all how unfree - how misled - how manipulated - how misused they have been. If I know *anything* at all about Jesus, it’s that he would not want his people to walk such a path.
(I seem to suffer from typeorrhea)
!
