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As with so many things, Donald Trump has exposed the flaws and schisms already present in US Christianity. In particular -- https://twitter.com/EOrthodoxy/status/1329882300000186370
I got kind of distracted mid-thought here by real-world events, but I'm going back to this concept, which is -- https://twitter.com/mcjulie/status/1325123425854054400
If we have an overt reason to think of a person as a "person like us" -- if you're a Christian, how you might think of other people in your church or other Christians more generally -- we tend to assume they're like us in ways that are unspoken as well.
Which ties back to the "Shirley Exception" -- a presumption that other people will act according to a principle of reasonableness that we understand. You know, "well surely they'd never go THAT far" or "surely they didn't mean it like THAT" or "surely there MUST be exceptions"
So you're toodling along living your life assuming that this group you think you're a part of -- Christians, your family, your country -- is like you in ways that have never actually come up. They haven't been put to the test, in a way.
Like -- at your church -- maybe you TALK about "ending abortion" "winning hearts and minds" "religious freedom" "being like Jesus" and you all kind of generally believe these are good things --
So you think you agree not only that these are good things, but that you also agree on what they mean, and also -- what is an acceptable path to GET there.
Abortion is a good example -- I have seen more social-justice type Christians move from "abortion bad" to a much more nuanced take when they realized they weren't willing to GET there by the path of, say, throwing women who seek abortions into jail.
Hillary Clinton's "safe, legal, and rare" reflects this view. They're maybe not 100% comfortable with abortion but realize any path OTHER than "legal & available" isn't morally acceptable either.
This is where Donald Trump comes in. He's a polarizing figure in part because he's flagrantly, extremely unreasonable. Any time anyone has ever said of Trump, "well, surely he'll never go THAT far," they were wrong.
So he becomes this powerful line in the sand. Maybe until Trump came along, you thought you agreed with other Christians about things where, it tuns out, you DON'T agree with them after all.
