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'Tool of God': Expert sounds alarm on the religious right's growing grip on Republicans
(or maybe just a "tool".)
Ideological differences within Christianity can be enormous. Members of the Episcopal Church had a booth at Philadelphia's gay pride festival on Sunday, June 1, as did a Lutheran group — and both made it clear that they welcome LGBTQ Christians in their denominations. Many far-right Christian nationalists, in contrast, think that Pridefest events should be illegal.
The Religious Right gained a great deal of influence in the Republican Party during Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign, much to the chagrin of the late Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona). Goldwater was a scathing critic of the Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr.'s Moral Majority and the Rev. Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, and he believed the Religious Right was terrible for the GOP and terrible for the conservative movement. But far-right evangelicals maintained a stranglehold on Goldwater's party, and they became even more militant with the rise of Donald Trump's MAGA movement in 2016.
Robert P. Jones, president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and author of the book "White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity," discussed the alliance between Christian nationalists and the second Trump Administration during an early June interview with Salon's Chauncey DeVega. And he warned that "evangelical" Christian nationalists and MAGA aren't growing any less "authoritarian."
Jones told DeVega, "I was prepared for Trump's return to the presidency to be ugly and disastrous. But seeing the reality of it — especially up close here in Washington, DC, where so many patriotic public servants' lives have been decimated by Trump's attacks on our government institutions — has been very upsetting. I love my country, and it is painful to watch it being dismantled and destroyed by Trump and his MAGA forces."
The Religious Right gained a great deal of influence in the Republican Party during Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign, much to the chagrin of the late Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona). Goldwater was a scathing critic of the Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr.'s Moral Majority and the Rev. Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, and he believed the Religious Right was terrible for the GOP and terrible for the conservative movement. But far-right evangelicals maintained a stranglehold on Goldwater's party, and they became even more militant with the rise of Donald Trump's MAGA movement in 2016.
Robert P. Jones, president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and author of the book "White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity," discussed the alliance between Christian nationalists and the second Trump Administration during an early June interview with Salon's Chauncey DeVega. And he warned that "evangelical" Christian nationalists and MAGA aren't growing any less "authoritarian."
Jones told DeVega, "I was prepared for Trump's return to the presidency to be ugly and disastrous. But seeing the reality of it — especially up close here in Washington, DC, where so many patriotic public servants' lives have been decimated by Trump's attacks on our government institutions — has been very upsetting. I love my country, and it is painful to watch it being dismantled and destroyed by Trump and his MAGA forces."
https://www.alternet.org/robert-p-jones-trump-ppri/