Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Holly Berkley Fletcher's avatar

Fascinating. I keep coming back to Dave Verhaagen's book, How White Evangelicals Think, which demonstrates higher than gen pop levels of narcissism. He calls it a culture of "collective narcissism," which I think does follow from a theology that convinces adherents they are right, everyone is wrong, there is no nuance, God is on their side, it's the Saved vs. the Lost etc. As we've seen with MAGA, these beliefs easily slip into an "ends justify the means" mentality. And that is dangerous. It's the same dynamic that leads to the cover up of abuse, as you well know.

Expand full comment
Richard Wattenbarger's avatar

If strikes me, too, that white evangelicals will rush to identify culural roots of social ills and then dig in and fight, often ferociously, before they’ll admit the roles, often decisive, that material conditions play. It’s as if we’re not really embodied creatures. It’s as if the incarnation means … nothing.

Expand full comment
7 more comments...

No posts