I found this Michael Gerson editorial inadvertently hilarious. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/prominent-evangelicals-are-directing-trumps-sinking-ship-that-feeds-doubts-about-religion/2020/12/07/5ad8eb0c-38c3-11eb-9276-ae0ca72729be_story.html

"When prominent Christians affirm absurd political lies with religious fervor, nonbelievers have every reason to think: “Maybe Christians are prone to swallowing absurd religious lies as well. Maybe they are simply credulous about everything.” -- gosh, ya think?

"If we should encounter someone who believes — honestly and adamantly believes — in both the existence of the Easter Bunny and in the resurrection of Christ, it would naturally raise questions about the quality of his or her believing faculties." -- stop it Mike, yer killing me

"It would call into question the standard of evidence being applied and muddy the meaning of faith itself."

MY FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD SELF FROM THE 1980s SAYS HELLO MICHAEL SHE WOULD LIKE AN INTERVIEW PLEASE

Gerson is one of those "woe to you, oh my people" evangelical writers, I think? (does a search) oh, yep, he's been down this road before. https://twitter.com/mcjulie/status/1167824347781726213

Another zinger from the article, "People like this — people like Metaxas — make the critical intelligence of Christians seem limited."

It's like... dude, you are so close to getting it.

I just wonder how you could be ANY kind of evangelical, even the "respectable" kind, and not have noticed the evangelical predilection for wacked-out conspiracy theories & magical thinking.

Evangelicals are the sub-culture that believes in "spiritual warfare" where even something like a croissant can be infused with demonic intent, the "maybe they'll think we're nutters" ship has *sailed* m'boy.

Which reminds me, I cannot think of a worse timing for this Douthat tweet: https://twitter.com/DouthatNYT/status/1347290561343057926

The religious conservatives who stormed the Capitol building in order to raise a Confederate flag and take a dump on Nancy Pelosi's desk, THOSE religious conservatives, Ross?

The religious conservatives who believe their hope in the restoration of the faith is Donald J Trump, a belligerent assemblage of nothing but the most egregious human moral failings?

The religious conservatives who told us that same-sex marriage would ruin the country but attempting to overthrow the constitution was okey-dokey?

It's not even remotely credible to attempt to tie the hard evidence of our decline as a country to the decline of religiosity -- religious conservatives are the ones who drove us into this ditch

The people who were right about everything weren't religious conservatives, it was political liberals & leftists, that's what drives the religious conservatives crazy.

The purest expression of religious conservatism today is the cult of Donald Trump, and they adore him because he embodies their drive toward nihilism and revenge. They love him *because* he's the closest thing you'll get on this earth to a literal Devil.

The analogy I go to sometimes, to explain American's relationship with Donald Trump, is that of an alcoholic spiraling downward. DJT isn't rehab. DJT is Nicolas Cage going to Las Vegas to literally drink himself to death.

Both editorials seem to reflect a similar idea, that Christianity -- properly understood & practiced of course -- *ought* to make people better, therefore, when it objectively makes people worse, something else must be going on.

The evangelical church, in my experience, leans heavily into the idea that Christianity is the ultimate self-help plan. They make a big deal about "healing broken people" and whatnot.

As a church survivor, I find this grotesque.

Do people as individuals have anecdotal experience where the church helped them? Sure! But as many, if not more, people have anecdotal experiences where the church ruined them and they had to flee it.

So not only do I think the church obviously harms as much as it helps, I think "church exists to make people better" is the wrong way to look at it anyway.

If you look at the history of the Christian church, you can see the way it reinvents itself for each new era, and the "church is the ultimate self-help plan" is very much a post 1970s notion.

But each reinvention holds onto one core idea: it is necessary for everyone to be Christian.

WHY is it necessary? That changes. HOW is universal Christianity to be accomplished? Also changes.

But "every knee shall bow, every tongue confess" right?

And Christians think this is normal! They just take it for granted! Of COURSE the natural end point of their faith is for literally everyone on the planet to be Christian!

So you have Gerson, lamenting the fact that Trumpianity might keep people away from other forms of Christianity -- which is biased, but reality-based.

And you have Douthat lamenting an invented cause-effect relationship between a decline in Christian religiosity and a decline in the social health of our nation.

But both are informed by the unspoken assumption that it is bad if there are people who are not Christians, that people not being Christians is a problem to be solved.