Minorities do not consider the Republican party more religious (22 min)
Most white people don’t identify strongly as Italian. They identified as Methodist or Baptists, but now that religion is less important, political partisanship matters more.
Minorities aren’t looking to political identity for their identity.
Ep 333: Drew Dyck Disciplines Himself
If you become disciplined to pursue a self-interested, bad goal, what does that gain you.
If you think the right things, truth, it will transform their character. But why is it some of the most theologically smart people are A-holes.
Things that Deplete your Willpower:
Decision making, Conflict, Sleep
Flee temptation. If you are always relying on willpower, you will fail.
This is where habits are important
- Pick one thing. Don’t try to do 5 New Year’s Resolutions at once
- You can’t delete Bad Habits, only replace them
- Cue, Routine, Payoff
- Replace social media with Bible reading
- Jesus take the wheel
- Someone says that they will not brush their teeth unless they felt called by the spirit
- Grace is not opposed to effort. Grace is opposed to earning.
- Sanctification is often a slow transformation process.
- I am what’s wrong with the world: G.K. Chesterton
- In the long run, self-discipline is about delayed-gratification. It is easier in the long run.
Evangelicals and the 5 Stages of Grief: (30 min)
We are between anger and bargaining and this Trump Faustian bargain was out of desperation over demographic change.
Sociologists refer to the Driver’s license -> Marriage License Gap
Fewer people are coming back to the church because the gap is longer and people figure out how to live without it.
Reinforce Republican identity and threat, not from Satan or poverty, or oppression, but an enemy of Democrats
- Us vs them, mitigating our fears in the amygdala
- If fear is a big part of your life, you are not living as a Christian
- I am not a fearvangelica
- A lot of people believe that being afraid makes them Godly
- It is very hard to convince someone who is marinating in fear that they don’t need to fear.
- Phil’s Idea: inside out with fearful evangelicals
How Donald Trump Redefined ‘the West’
In Warsaw, Mr. Trump boldly stated, “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.” In saying that, he demonstrated his administration’s born-again commitment to preserve America’s post-Cold War Western alliances, though at the price of redefining the very meaning of “the West.”
.. In the heady days of the Cold War, “the West” referred to the so-called free world — a liberal democratic order. Today it has been replaced by a cultural, rather than political, notion. But unlike in the 19th century, when a “white man’s burden” took pride of place, today what dominates are the “white man’s fears.”
.. In this imagined scenario, Mr. Bannon urges the president to challenge the European willingness to live under the emasculating malady of political correctness: “Make clear to them that the West is under siege, threatened by radical Islam, and for it to survive it must cling ever more closely to its Christian identity. Tell Europeans that we need God, if they even still remember what God is.”
Mr. Bannon goes on: “Force them to understand that the liberal nonsense that prevailed in the Cold War is now making us weak and vulnerable in the face of a world saturated with terrorists and immigrants. Neither a free press nor any quaint separation of powers will protect us in today’s world.
.. What stands out most in Mr. Trump’s speech is not its oft-quoted illiberalism but its stark pessimism about the future of the West. He was elected on a promise of restoring American triumphalism, but he appears preoccupied by the fear of defeat. What he promised his listeners was not the West’s “victory” but that the West shall never be broken.