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Saturday, April 15th, 2017

The Evangelical Roots of Our Post-Truth Society

Author:     Molly Worthen
Source:     The New York Times
Publication Date:     APRIL 13, 2017
 Link: The Evangelical Roots of Our Post-Truth Society
Stephan:   The Republican Party is essentially White and Christian, but Christian means something quite different than it did 50 years ago. For much of the last five centuries Christian thinkers led the way in compassionate social policies and science. But, beginning with radio in the 20th century when fundamentalist radio preachers embraced the new technology as early adapters, something happened to Christianity. Today it represents a worldview in which facts are not only not dispositive, they are viewed as heretical and anti-Christian, and to be avoided. The growing linkage of church and state within the Republican worldview means that the anti-fact postures of the "Christian" fundamentalist movement are now reflected in the views and postures of the Republican Party. Here is a good assessment of the process, and where it has left us.

Credit: Alex Webb/Magnum Photos

The arrival of the “post-truth” political climate came as a shock to many Americans. But to the Christian writer Rachel Held Evans, charges of “fake news” are nothing new. “The deep distrust of the media, of scientific consensus — those were prevalent narratives growing up,” she told me.

Although Ms. Evans, 35, no longer calls herself an evangelical, she attended Bryan College, an evangelical school in Dayton, Tenn. She was taught to distrust information coming from the scientific or media elite because these sources did not hold a “biblical worldview.”

“It was presented as a cohesive worldview that you could maintain if you studied the Bible,” she told me. “Part of that was that climate change isn’t real, that evolution is a myth made up by scientists who hate God, and capitalism is God’s ideal for society.”

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