Most Jews are political liberals, devoted to the Democratic Party and liberal causes generally. By contrast, evangelicals tend to be conservatives to whom politics seems less important than their dispensationalist beliefs.
That liberal politics trumps other considerations—including worries about anti-Semitism—for many American Jews becomes clearer in light of other data. The most anti-Semitic group in America is African-Americans. Many early black leaders, including W. But by the time of the war, much of that leadership had left the scene. Stokely Carmichael, H.
Du Bois were critical of Israel. And it has been African-American leaders, not white evangelicals, who have made anti-Semitic remarks most conspicuously. Yet African-American voters are liberals, and so often get a pass from their Jewish allies.
To Jews, blacks are friends and evangelicals enemies, whatever their respective dispositions toward Jews and Israel. B ut another reason, deeper than Jewish and evangelical differences over abortion, school prayer, and gay marriage, may underlie Jewish dislike of Christian fundamentalists. Though evangelical Protestants are supportive of Israel and tolerant of Jews, in the eyes of their liberal critics they are hostile to the essential elements of a democratic regime.
Christian Smith, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina, analyzed four surveys of self-identified evangelicals and found that, while they do think that America was founded as a Christian nation and fear that the country has lost its moral bearings, these views are almost exactly the same as those held by non-evangelical Americans.
Evangelicals, like other Americans, oppose having public schools teach Christian values, oppose having public school teachers lead students in vocal prayers, and oppose a constitutional amendment declaring the country a Christian nation. Evangelicals deny that there is one correct Christian view on most political issues, deny that Jews must answer for allegedly killing Christ, deny that laws protecting free speech go too far, and reject the idea that whites should be able to keep blacks out of their neighborhoods.
They overwhelmingly agree that Jews and Christians share the same values and can live together in harmony. Evangelicals strongly oppose abortion and gay marriage, but in almost every other respect are like other Americans.
Half of all Protestants in the country describe themselves as evangelical, or born-again, Christians, making up about one-quarter of all Americans though they constitute only 16 percent of white Christian voters in the Northeast. Jews, by contrast, make up less than 2 percent of the U. No good can come from repeating the assertion of H. James Q. His article is adapted from a Manhattan Institute lecture.
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City Journal search. City Journal is a publication of Manhattan Institute. Search search. Although nominally Christian, it owes little to even the most conservative of American Protestants. Identity has created for itself a unique antisemitic and racist theology, but notwithstanding its curious beliefs, it rose in the s to a position of commanding influence on the racist right. Only a prolonged period of aggressive efforts by law enforcement; impactful civil litigation efforts like SPLCs successful judgment against Aryan Nations in ; multi-racial grassroots organizing campaigns marginalizing such groups in areas where they were most active, such as the Pacific Northwest; together with the demise of influential leaders who were not replaced, brought about its present decline.
View all groups by state and by ideology. Search splcenter. During the civil rights movement, many white evangelicals either outright opposed Martin Luther King Jr. Decades later, the Rev. And when Barack Obama was elected president, they regrouped, bought guns and became Tea Partiers who promoted fiscal responsibility and indulged in birtherism, promoted by no less than the son of Billy Graham, Franklin.
Still, evangelicals have worked to make a good show of repenting for racism. From the racial reconciliation meetings of the s to today, they have dutifully declared racism a sin, and Southern Baptists have apologized again for their role in American slavery — most recently in via a document outlining their role. But statements are not enough. Proving how disconnected they are from their statements about atoning for the sin of racism, the Annual Convention of the Southern Baptists was opened with a gavel owned by John A.
Broadus, a slaveholder, white supremacist and the founder of their seminary. So it's not surprising that white evangelicals supported the Muslim ban, are the least likely to accept refugees into the country according to the Pew Foundation and, though a slim majority oppose it, are the denomination most likely to support Trump's child separation policy.
White evangelicals certainly are not concerned with white supremacy, because they are often white supremacists. And Trump appeals to these evangelicals because of his focus on declension, decline and destruction, which fits into evangelical beliefs about the end times. Their imagined powerlessness, and the need for a strong authoritarian leader to protect them, is at the root of their racial and social animus.
Their feelings of fragility, despite positions of power, make them vote for people like Donald Trump — and morally suspect candidates like Roy Moore.
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