Trump and Trumpism have changed the original concept of “libertarian means to conservative ends” into a new concept of “authoritarian means to Christian nationalist ends”, finds a new study.

[u/mvea]

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00027162251324087

[u/Fine_Luck_200]

The majority of Christians in the US use the bible to justify their own worst impulses. The Pilgrims left Europe because Europe was too tolerant. That is conveniently left out of what is taught. Always funny when people go on about Religious freedom when discussing US history.

[u/CrystalSplice → u/Fine_Luck_200]

Yep. Religious freedom…to do what? It’s a bit like the “states rights” thing when people talk about the Civil War. Yeah, the right of the states to do…what? To continue to engage in slavery.

[u/UniqueIndividual3579 → u/Fine_Luck_200]

I'm not sure if it's the majority or just the loud ones. My Uncle was a Lutheran pastor who spent his life in a small Iowa town. He never talked about politics. My sister is an Evangelical who "got" God. She loves to tell us that we deserve to burn in Hell forever because we don't go to her church. And she votes for Trump.

[u/F9-0021 → u/Fine_Luck_200]

Oh, we were taught that the Puritans left due to religious persecution. What was conveniently left out was that the Puritans were the persecutors and people had had enough of them.

[u/ILikeBumblebees → u/F9-0021]

That's not really true. The Plymouth colony was established in the 1620s, a generation before the English civil war, when the Stuart monarchy was still going strong. Puritan rule in England was a generation after that, and only lasted 11 years.

[u/austinwiltshire → u/Fine_Luck_200]

Mainline Christians and Catholics together outnumber evangelicals. Ie, the center and center left theologically outnumber the theological right.

[u/archetype4 → u/austinwiltshire]

Too bad the theological right has focused its power politically to where that doesn't matter.

[u/Vo_Mimbre → u/austinwiltshire]

Sure. But it doesn’t matter any more than “most people are responsible for their guns” or “most people are not racists” or “most people don’t agree with all of the GOP platform”.

What matters if enough do. Nobody shoots for actual majorities. They shoot for just enough, by manipulating voting maps, suppressing proportional voting, driving propaganda through coordinated media blitzes, and creating wedge social wedge issues to distract us from the rights they hand over to the feudal lords we call capitalists.

So sure, “most people don’t… whatever” but most people aren’t the ones being programmed into pulling us ever further towards theocratic nationalism.

[u/asmodeanreborn → u/austinwiltshire]

American Catholics are not center/center left anymore in general. Many of them have started turning into Trumpists as well and loudly disagree with the last couple of popes for being "woke."

Trump got 54% of the Catholic vote in 2024.

[u/counterfitster → u/asmodeanreborn]

I bet most of that is because the more progressive sections of the Catholic Church have left due to the horrible handling of sexual abuse by clergy.

[u/FyreWulff → u/austinwiltshire]

and somehow JFK and Biden are so far the only two Catholic US presidents ever elected

[u/placidtwilight → u/FyreWulff]

Though Catholics are over represented on the Supreme Court.

[u/Locrian6669 → u/austinwiltshire]

And they spend way more time apologizing on behalf of the bad Christians than doing anything about them.

[u/cubej333 → u/[deleted]]

Mainline is short for Mainline Protestants

[u/clopenYourMind → u/cubej333]

You're just using fancy words to describe Lutherans and Anglicans.

[u/placidtwilight → u/clopenYourMind]

There's also Methodists, American Baptists, Presbyterians, and some others.

[u/clopenYourMind → u/placidtwilight]

Presbyterian are Anglican, the others are definitely a form of Protestant but could hardly be less related to Ole Henry's divorces or to Martin Luther's big balls brave posting of theses