Elizabeth Dias has a long booklet-like article “Christianity Will Have Power”, with photographs and video by Jenn Ackerman and Tim Gruber, in the New York Times. The subtitle is “Donald Trump made a promise to white evangelical Christians, whose support can seem mystifying to the outside observer” – as if from relativity theory.
Curiously the article doesn’t have a date in the
expected place, but at the end it mentions the fact that, around Sioux Falls SD
(even with the meat packing plants there) most white evangelicals have not seen
much experience with COVID. Oh, I see at
the bottom the fine print, that in the print version today’s Sunday Times, p.
A1, same title. It’s about group power when individual freedom has to be
circumscribed.
It does describe their “trust” in Trump as their belief that he is there (perhaps proto-fascist) bully to keep minorities in line who have threatened to erode their own social hegemony.
But the article hints at the importance that older “family
values” – where women submit to husbands who proved during courtship that the
men could protect them (and their children), and the belief literally that more
freedom for gays and lesbians and for other minorities means less freedom for
them – it’s a zero-sum game.
The article also presents some Hispanic families
(which tend to be larger with lower incomes) and the hardships they encounter which
white evangelicals don’t seem to grasp.
Embed picture is from Wikipedia, picture of the Falls (click for attribution). I was there in Nov. 1999. Also look at this (GNU license) picture of Falls.
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