Ah, yes, those omnipresent American evangelical Protestants.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the media can't avoid ‘em. And in case anyone doubts media fascination, consider last Sunday's episode of NBC's influential, anachronistically-named gabfest "Meet the Press."
In the midst of a hyper-clogged October political agenda, the show devoted a major segment to what host Chuck Todd called "the debate among evangelicals about Donald Trump and whether he represents their values." Click here for the transcript. This was excerpted from a 30-minute piece that's streaming on Peacock.
The segment led off with a visit to the nondenominational, independent Patriot Church outside Knoxville, where the Ken Peters averred: "I think President Trump is a miracle. I think God picked Donald Trump, an imperfect vessel, to be the champion of His people." This is a congregation that has inspired almost as many headlines as it has members.
Yes, Pew Research tells us Trump scored 84% with white evangelical voters in 2020. But politicized preacher Peters is hardly representative of the sprawling and diverse network of evangelical clergy, churches, denominations, campuses and agencies.
An older-style evangelical pastor, the Rev. Phil Nordstrom of Knoxville's Life Church, told NBC that "we're trying to not fight the culture wars from the pulpit." Todd then interviewed the Rev. Russell Moore, former Southern Baptist social-issues spokesman turned "public theologian" at Christianity Today magazine, who fretted over Trump-era politicization of the evangelical image.
A prior Guy Memo weighed the possibility that a newsworthy evangelical crack-up is upon us, while another Memo focused on the related Donald Trump political angle. Now there are further developments.
In case journalists are gathering string for a broad state-of-the-evangelical-union article, The Guy looked for perspective in a real period piece from 1977, our Time magazine Christmas cover story, "That Old Time Religion: The Evangelical Empire."
Now this feature was written just before the advent of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, Ronald Reagan's presidency, Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition and presidential run, the rightward doctrinal lurch by the Southern Baptist Convention, the rise of anti-abortion militancy and all the rest that would gobble up headlines in succeeding decades.