The spiritual chokehold Donald Trump has on evangelicals is nothing new. Nor is it even surprising that they couldn't care less about his Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
But the Reverend Rob Schenck's insights on the why of it all are genuinely fascinating. Schenck is a former Christian nationalist, one of the country's most influential evangelical leaders, who has since disavowed his work lobbying lawmakers to adopt causes on behalf of the Christian right. Which is to say, he knows a thing or two about the political leanings of the evangelical crowd.
As he writes in Mother Jones today, white American evangelicals regard MAGA as ultimately a religious movement. But it goes a bit deeper:
Evangelicals have a long history of falling in line when presented with charlatans and manipulative, vainglorious narcissists masquerading as saviors. Consider Thomas Müntzer, the son of a wealthy burgher in the Harz Mountains, the land of the Grimms’ fairytales. A mystic and hypnotic speaker, he could also inspire hilarity in a crowd by calling his detractors "donkey-farting fools." His apocalyptic call for the rout of anti-Christian earthly governments and his insistence that God would use the common folk to overthrow the elites eventually led to his role in the Peasants’ War.
So is Trump the latest fraudster posing as a savior? You tell me.
—Inae Oh
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