I first saw Sarah McCammon on 60 Minutes on March 24, 2024. She was promoting her book, The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church. I was hoping for some insights into evangelicals. Sarah delivered.
My first finding: The Evangelicals are more of a cult than a religion. One of their primary missions is to ensure that their members do not learn the art of thinking, which takes years to develop and demands doubting, questioning, and developing opinions. Cults must brainwash their members, and the process starts from birth and continues through their college life. If their kind of school isn’t available, parents homeschool, all to shield their children from the realities of life. No independent thinking is allowed!
My second insight: Evangelicals are fundamentalists, which for many is a pejorative word insinuating ignorant, judgmental, exclusive, and narrow-minded. They misread the Jewish Bible, reject all science, believe the universe began six thousand years ago, and interpret the Bible to justify their disdain for anyone who is not one of them. Most of their energy is spent judging and negating the LGBTQIA+ community and those who support them. They want to control women and pretend they care about fetuses and children. They love to ban books and media that don’t support their bigotry.
(Some readers might say I’m being judgmental, but I’m only interpreting what Sarah, an exvangelical, says in her book.)
My third insight: Fundamentalists work very hard to make certain they marry and socialize only within their kind. Men are considered “the king” while women and children must be subservient. Any attempt at questioning the cult will result in reprisals, such as being shunned, ostracized, isolated, and cut off. Unfortunately, many of those who break away find out quickly that they are not prepared to live in the real world and feel isolated, abandoned, and alone. This often creates new problems such as mental breakdowns, addictions, and bad choices. They don’t know how to think for themselves.
Some conclusions:
- The fundamentalists take familiar words and put their spin on them. For example, according to them, I am no longer a Christian because I don’t read the Bible literally, believe God wrote it, or think Jesus died for our sins. There are many more words and phases they have commandeered, which I’ll share in a future blog post.
- So-called Christian fundamentalism (evangelicalism) is only a cult hiding behind its misinterpretation of the Bible and a Jesus who never existed.
- Its primary objective is to destroy our democracy and replace it with its theocracy.
- White men are “kings” while women and children are pawns. A limited few white men do all the thinking. Either obey or be excommunicated.
- Questioning or not fitting in its tiny limited box will result in being shunned, disinherited, isolated, and considered a heretic and the enemy.
- Cult leaders and members will stop at nothing, including murder, to reach their objective.
- The political, religious, and business world doesn’t seem aware of how dangerous they are.
My bottom line: I feel anyone who votes for Donald Trump or any of his groupies is a traitor to our democracy.
What think ye?
Peace Love Joy Hope Kindness
Bil