by Sandy » Sun Jun 26, 2016 8:25 am
That is a pretty good article from the Post. It contains no support whatsoever for Stephen's name dropping rabbit trails that associate the rise of the conservative resurgence in the SBC to any hot button issue that he happens to be fixated on at the moment. However, it does a good job of documenting many of the quirks of the alignment of conservative Evangelicals with the Republican party, despite the latter's inconsistency in policy and practice with most of what Evangelicals believe. But I think what is happening, visible in the SBC of late, is that many of the current generation of leaders weren't as connected to the conservative, activist type politics of the 70's and 80's, and are seeing the inconsistency between a conservative approach to interpretation of the Bible, and the outcomes of conservative, tea-party type politics, and are coming down on the side of their Biblical perspective.
It's interesting to see the perspective and characterization of support. Evangelicals turned out at the polls in record numbers in 2012, despite the moaning about all of them staying home. The percentages look high, 89% supported Romney, for example, but those figures generally put African American evangelicals in a different statistical category of "historically black" denominations. Trump appears to be getting between 35% and 45% of Evangelical support, maybe a shade higher which, while strange, is nowhere near the levels that any Republican before him, back to Reagan, had.