The Republican party has long been home to many religious people. Some of them are good, but the evangelicals can get a little crazy. Some of their televangelists preach such odd things. Now, they have alienated so many people that they are claiming to have been “abandoned” by their party. Trump and his followers have abandoned some fundamentalist ideas.
They have alienated many groups with hateful rhetoric and actions. For instance, a church that the Duggars are involved in tried to build a “retreat” to marry off their young daughters. The “Quiverfull” movement is all about women having lots of babies. Naturally, this is going to turn many people off.
Ted Cruz was spewing the religious rhetoric. He threw himself behind the current trend of Republicans going after transgender people. Many of us do not agree with these laws and do not care that much about who is in the bathroom with us. A CNN poll found that six in ten Americans oppose bathroom restrictions.
The fundamentalists spout many unpopular opinions. That may be why they are losing members.
A couple of weeks ago, I discovered a rant from this pastor, James David Manning. He spent ten minutes ranting about gay men having flames coming out of their buttholes and needing to wear asbestos “diapers.”
Another pastor from Arizona, Steven Anderson, said that kids should not be reciting the Pledge of Allegiance because it would be celebrating sodomy. He had this particularly ranty opinion about sodomy, and he somehow was conflating it with abortions:
“I don’t want anything to do with sodomy. It’s wicked. I don’t want anything to do with abortion. I don’t want anything to do with the things that our country is starting to stand for. I don’t want anything to do with trying to take over and occupy the whole world with military bases. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want any part of that. That’s the New World Order. That’s a one world government. It doesn’t stand for anything that I stand for.”
These kinds of wacky ideas are what turn many people away from the fundamentalists. These just are not logical opinions they are making, and they insult many people that have different views from them.
For more on the declining membership in the evangelical churches, see below:
Featured image by Donkey Hotey via Flickr, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.
