The Bad Faith of the White Working Class
The most significant evangelical contribution to fiction in the past 20 years was the apocalyptic “Left Behind” series. The books are riveting, but their core message is that corrupt, evil elites have gone to war against Christians. Some version of this idea — whether delivered in church or on TV — finds its way into many topics in a modern evangelical sermon: Evolution is a lie that secular science tells to counter the biblical creation story, the gay rights movement usurps God’s law. Recently, a friend sent me the online musings of a televangelist who advised his thousands of followers that the Federal Reserve achieved satanic ends by manipulating the world’s money supply.
.. A younger teacher, listening intently, sighed: “They want us to be shepherds to these kids, but so many of them are raised by wolves.”
.. In the white working class, there are far too many wolves: heroin, broken families, joblessness and, more often than we’d like to believe, abusive and neglectful parents.
.. Confronted with those forces, we need, most of all, a faith that provides the things my faith gave to me: introspection, moral guidance and social support. Yet the most important institution in our lives, if it exists at all, encourages us to point a finger at faceless elites in Washington. It encourages us to further withdraw from our communities and country, even as we need to do the opposite.
.. It’s hardly surprising that into that vacuum has stepped Donald J. Trump. For many, he is the only thing left that offers camaraderie, community and a sense of purpose.
.. Mr. Trump, like too much of the church, offers little more than an excuse to project complex problems onto simple villains.