Is American foreign policy always a cool rational neoliberal calculation or do the delusions of the general public have meaningful impact?

  • Bobson_Dugnutt [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    I can’t speak to the Baptist situation, but I grew up in an Evangelical church and this is a common view. The “Left Behind” books were basically novelizations of the Evangelical conception of the end times, and they were enormously popular.

    If you want to know more about how the Evangelical church got involved with right wing politics, I’d suggest the book “Jesus and John Wayne.”

        • Tachanka [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          11 months ago

          Had to brush up on this stuff again, to make sure not to talk out of my ass: Evangelicalism is an interdenominational movement within Protestantism, while Baptism is more of a specific Protestant denomination (with its own sectarian flavors).

          So not all protestants are evangelicals, but all evangelicals are protestants, and different denominations within protestantism may or may not have a strong evangelical constituency.

          • invalidusernamelol [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            11 months ago

            Baptists (frequently ABA) and Presbyterians (frequently PCA) tend to be the biggest evangelicals.

            The ABA has always been super racist and the PCA is so heavily Calvinist conservative that they’re one step away from calling for blood sacrifice to maintain the economy.

            The evangelical movement tends to exist more within churches themselves though. The organizations just care about trying to not split again, so it’s really the individual pastor’s decision if they’re gonna go full evangelical or just phone it in.

            There are also evangelical cult churches that are totally divorced from the sects and basically just cherry pick the worst aspects of all of them and call themselves something old testament. These are the ones that usually harass college campuses (see Antioch)