Comment by giraffe_lady | Hacker News Reader

Comment by giraffe_lady | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> In real life, approximately zero evangelicals want some kind of Gilead. If you talk to them, the most ideological want some sort of idealized, non-racist high-tech version of the 1950-80s.

I talk to a lot of american evangelicals and this isn't true either. A fair portion of them do want the racism back in the form of segregation, they just know not to use either term to describe their ideal.

They also do want moderate-to-heavy restrictions on or punishment for abortion, birth control, homosexuality, miscegenation, divorce, women owning property. It's not quite gilead but it's a lot closer to that than to "the 80s without racism."

You'll probably rarely run into people who are actively and openly pursuing a government that would implement all of those policies. But framed individually and neutrally for example "should no-fault divorce be removed" these are mainstream positions.

I didn't get my opinion here from fiction or the internet. I've lived a lot of my life among american evangelicals and am a practicing christian even now. I have a lot of ties to this world still for complex reasons. Walking back and cracking down on a lot of the social freedoms gained in the last few generations are unfortunately popular ideas that you can't dismiss as "just some cranks."

Weird. Your circle and my circles must have zero overlap. Your description is entirely alien to me.

Yeah seems likely. I don't want to get too much into the details but I know a lot of "George W." type christians; converted under hardship, their core belief is likely sincere but they aren't necessarily invested in nuanced understanding of its role in a broader public life. They look to their church leadership for that, locally but also in the vast mainstream of evangelical bookstores, podcasts, radio stations.

A domain that is becoming more narrow in its understanding of scripture and extreme about applying it. Look at someone like Beth Moore, a highly prominent figure in this world and by no means a liberal or progressive, viciously chased out for openly holding a view on marriage¹ that would have been easily accepted by evangelicals even a generation ago, and that many probably do privately hold still.

So yes it's entirely possible our evangelical acquaintances have little overlap. But still, these are mainstream views right now and growing more so. You can find dominionist books by prominent christian authors in the window displays of christian bookstores. It may not be the majority of evangelicals, but it is a significant portion and making it the majority is explicitly one of their goals. Dismissing this movement as fringe is irresponsible imo.

¹: The view is "egalitarianism" the idea that both genders have equal privileges and responsibilities within marriage. This is not "wokeism" my southern baptist grandparents believed this.

Between your footnote and https://religionnews.com/2021/03/09/bible-teacher-beth-moore... I am left speechless.

> viciously chased out

Now that you mention it, I recall the Dixie Chicks getting cancelled for openly suggesting that maybe the Iraq adventure wasn't such a good idea.

If you are from the commonwealth(?) yank religion might be strange. I don't know how your country does things; my adopted country requires preachers of whatever religion to have accredited degrees (DTh? I don't know how strict). But as mentioned elsewhere, there is (in light of this year's news, ought to be?) an arm's length relationship between church and state in the States, and so anyone is free to hang out their shingle as a Pastor, eg https://www.ulc.org/minister-store/doctor-of-divinity-degree

Reply on news.ycombinator.com