"Why does it have to go this far before our media and ecclesial class acknowledges what it has allowed into its midst?"
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but support for values like racial and gender equality has always been a mile wide and an inch deep. Joe Sixpack never was on board; he's just as racist, misogynistic, and Archie Bunkeresque as he's always been. For fifty years he was cowed into silence by social constraints on freely saying so, but Trump's biggest accomplishment (if that's the right word) is that those constraints are no longer in place. Trump made overt racism publicly acceptable again. So all these racists have simply crawled back out from under the rocks where they've been hidden.
This really is your country; those really are your friends, neighbors and relatives.
It's almost as if he who is the restrainer of evil has been taken out of the world.
When I show the average Reformed church member something like Holden's statement they're legitimately appalled. The problem is not as bad as left-wingers say it is and worse than what right-wingers say it is. The issue isn't that the average evangelical is racist, it's that the average evangelical doesn't want to give a win to the left by admitting that a small minority of racists are still allowed to skirt by in their circles.
All right, you're more in touch with the reformed church than I am as I haven't attended a reformed church in 10 years, so you may be right. If you are, though, that puts the reformed church in the position of considering overt racism a lower priority than not giving a win to what they perceive as left wingers, even if it's an issue on which the left is correct and ought to win. In other words, it's basically tribal.
"Why does it have to go this far before our media and ecclesial class acknowledges what it has allowed into its midst?"
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but support for values like racial and gender equality has always been a mile wide and an inch deep. Joe Sixpack never was on board; he's just as racist, misogynistic, and Archie Bunkeresque as he's always been. For fifty years he was cowed into silence by social constraints on freely saying so, but Trump's biggest accomplishment (if that's the right word) is that those constraints are no longer in place. Trump made overt racism publicly acceptable again. So all these racists have simply crawled back out from under the rocks where they've been hidden.
This really is your country; those really are your friends, neighbors and relatives.
It's almost as if he who is the restrainer of evil has been taken out of the world.
When I show the average Reformed church member something like Holden's statement they're legitimately appalled. The problem is not as bad as left-wingers say it is and worse than what right-wingers say it is. The issue isn't that the average evangelical is racist, it's that the average evangelical doesn't want to give a win to the left by admitting that a small minority of racists are still allowed to skirt by in their circles.
All right, you're more in touch with the reformed church than I am as I haven't attended a reformed church in 10 years, so you may be right. If you are, though, that puts the reformed church in the position of considering overt racism a lower priority than not giving a win to what they perceive as left wingers, even if it's an issue on which the left is correct and ought to win. In other words, it's basically tribal.