Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Poll: Majority of White Evangelicals Admit to Being Racists


I have long argued that there is a very large overlap between white supremacists and white evangelical Christians.  In the case of Southern Baptists, one need only look at the denomination's history - i.e., it was formed because of its member churches' support for the continuation of slavery - to grasp that this is a racist denomination.  As for the pretend "family values" organizations like Family Research Council, Traditional Values Coalition, Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America and The Family Foundation here in Virginia - they are mostly lily white organizations that support anti-minority Republican policies. Now, we have a Public Religion Research Institute survey - the 9th annual American Values Survey - that confirms that white evangelical Christians are anti-immigrant, support horrible family separations for immigrants and are anti-racial diversity.  They have turned Christ into a "White Jesus" and pretty much have a "fuck everyone else" attitude towards anyone who is different be they poor, elderly, refugees or children.  Indeed, they are exhibit 1 as to why one would not want to be considered a "Christian."  Here are highlights from Christian Post:

White evangelical protestants are the only religious demographic in the United States in which the majority views immigrants as a "threat" to American values and sees the country's increasing racial diversity as a bad thing, a new survey has found.
A little over a week before the 2018 midterm elections, the Public Religion Research Institute on Monday released its 9th annual American Values Survey.
The research shows that white evangelical Protestants are at odds with all other identified religious groups on many questions relating to immigration, race, the #MeToo movement and President Donald Trump.
The survey featured responses from 2,509 adults (338 self-identified white evangelical Protestants) across 50 states and contained a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points.
While a majority of all other religious demographics have unfavorable views of President Donald Trump, 68 percent of white evangelicals hold a favorable view of the Republican president. Meanwhile, 80 percent of black Protestants, 75 percent of religiously unaffiliated, 74 percent of Hispanic Catholics, 73 percent of non-Christian religious Americans, 52 percent of white mainline Protestants and white Catholics hold a negative opinion of Trump.
As data shows that the U.S. will become a minority white nation by the year 2045, the survey asked respondents whether or not the nation's ethnic and racial "realignment" is positive or a negative thing.
The majority of all major religious demographics surveyed said they see the realignment as positive thing except for white evangelicals. Fifty-four percent of white evangelicals surveyed said they see the U.S. becoming majority non-white as a mostly negative trend.
By comparison, 81 percent of Hispanic Catholics, 80 percent of black Protestants, 51 percent of white Catholics and white mainline Protestants see the trend as mostly positive.
When asked about the growing number of "newcomers" to the United States, white evangelicals (57 percent) were the only major religious group to have a majority say that immigrants "threaten traditional American customs and values." PRRI also found that although most Americans oppose a hypothetical law to ban refugees around the world from being able to come to the United States, about half of white evangelicals (51 percent) would support such a law. The data also finds that white evangelicals were the group least likely to oppose a policy of separating immigrant children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border. "When you look at the [PRRI] report, [marriage and abortion] are a very low priority for Republicans and for white evangelicals. The real key to understanding white evangelicals is through their anti-immigrant attitudes and fear of demographic change," Wong explained. "They are the group that is most conservative on the travel ban. They are also the most conservative of family separation, which to many people is a moral issue."
"They are also the only religious group to contend that immigrants threaten American values," she added. "It is really this potent mix of nativism and racial anxiety and white Christian nationalism that underlines many of the other policy attitudes that you see presented in this report."
While 69 percent of Americans feel that Trump has "damaged the dignity of the presidency," White evangelicals are the only religious group to have a majority (53 percent) that says that Trump has not "damaged the dignity of the presidency."
"Why do they stick with Trump?" Wong asked during the panel. "Because Trump's immigration agenda is the white evangelical immigration agenda. I think that has become very clear."


I have long viewed evangelical Christians as total hypocrites and this survey adds basis for view these modern day Pharisees negatively.  They simply are NOT nice or decent people. They are as morally bankrupt as Trump himself.

2 comments:

Sixpence Notthewiser said...

Oh, and the sky is blue and water is wet. White evangelicals are kind of the worst kind of people I've known.

EdA said...

You're being unfair to Southern Baptists by not including Southern Methodists, like Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, named after the second worst "president" in American history (Jefferson Davis) and the traitor general, P.T. Beauregard, who fired the shots at Fort Sumter that started the Civil War.

Just this past Monday, at a talk to the anti-Federalists society promoting attacks on religious freedom that he and his ilk are launching, this leading light of darkness among Christianist fundamentalists shut down reference by (United) Methodist ministers, to conflict between Jesus' explicit teachings in Matthew 25 and the actions of Sessions and other Republiscum. Sessions also claimed "Biblical" justification -- an inherently anti-American rationale -- for kidnapping of children from their families, although the most apparent "Biblical" justification is the story of Herod and the massacre of the innocents.

But this notwithstanding, we certainly should not forget Southern Baptists like Lindsey Graham, who is now proposing legislation to attack the Constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, further implementing of an American version of the Nuremberg laws.