Part 3 of Cheryl Johnson's Talk - This Is The Most Important Kind Of Theology, The Theology of Lived Life

Well, I had seen the mythical norm apply in Biblical interpretation,  I had seen it apply in my work in HIV and then there was the 2016 presidential election.  And I don't need to remind you of the overwhelming support that white evangelicals gave to the current president. About 81% of white evangelicals voted for him.  And what we tend to not recognize, As Darren said, I'm United Methodist so I'm a mainline Protestant, but even in mainline Protestant circles 50 to 60% of white mainline church members voted for him as well and nearly 60% of Roman Catholics so it really is predominantly associated with race more than anything else.

So, how did everybody else vote?  Right?  So if you're looking at the mythical norm, what about the groups on the other side.  And keep that 81% benchmark in mind as I give you these other statistics. And also notice how they track again those who are "other."  Only 42% of all Women, only 42 so that the other group you're talking about at least 50 to 60% up to 80.  So it's only 42% of all Women.  Only about 20, I'd say 19% to 30% of all Hispanic voters only 26% of Hispanic Roman Catholics compared to about 60% for white Roman Catholics.  Only 18% of LGBTQ+ vote, and only 12% of Black Protestants including those who identify as evangelicals, so it's not all evangelicals, it's primariliy white evangelicals who voted [for Trump].

I especially like this slide because it shows all of the other Americans who exist.

But my favorite, favorite statistic in all of this is the one for African American Women.   where it's only 6%.  This [slide] is from the Women's March the day after the inauguration and my favorite one is the Black holding up a placard that says, "Black Women tried to save y'all."


And we also know that it wasn't an issue of the economy or the working poor supporting the present [Trump] administration either, that it really was racial resentment and fear of cultural diversity that really cut across all economic lines.

Again, Cheryl Johnson expands ideas I had about the statistical claims made about who was to blame for voting for Trump.  At the time I was arguing against anti-religious atheist invective and I concentrated on the People Democrats would have to appeal to to do the super-win of an election that our corrupt political and legal framing forces Democrats to have to get to win.  Since I was arguing against the recreational Christian bashing of the secularist, I pointed out that given their numbers, the "white evangelicals" who voted for Hillary Clinton and against Trump were more numerous than the atheists were.  When you added in those not included in "evangelicals" the Catholics who voted for Hillary Clinton, even groups that are presented as uniformly Republican-fascist, Southern Baptists, Mormons, various other Protestant groups had not inconsiderable numbers who voted either for Hillary Clinton or against Trump by voting for her were not an inconsiderable number of voters.  If Democrats had been able to attract even a few percentages more of those then Trump would never have been elected.

I think when you make this kind of analysis, though, something far more influential than even those churches who get large percentages of their official membership to go to church every week, even among them is what they consume for media.  Hillary Clinton like Ted Kennedy before her were the focus of a concerted hate campaign by the media for decades.  Even by the general standards of vilification that the corporate and other media mount against Democrats who win office, such as the lower key one that Biden has had focused on him, the one mounted against Hillary Clinton was pervasive and was certainly not limited to those who claim an official religious identity, was decades in the making, from everything from the New York Times down to the most disreputable of Murdoch level gutter media and alleged comedy.  To focus on religion as a major factor putting the fascist-pagan self-worshiping Trump in the presidency might show you something but if you focus only on what gets said in Church while ignoring everyone from Maureen Dowd, alleged NYT reporters publishing demonstrable lies about her in the run-up to the election down to the overtly Republican fascist bottom feeders and the official, clearly not religiously but partisanly motivated sandbag job of James B. Comey as the head of the FBI right before the election is to present an incomplete picture.

But as an example of what's wrong with all of the institutions involved, in regard to the mythical norm of white, straight, affluent males and what a majority of them know will benefit them against all of those "others" is certainly a far larger part of why things are so seriously going wrong.  In terms of religion and Bible interpretation it's important to understand that this is probably the most pervasive general force in human culture over millennia that directly impacts on Christian and other readings of their religious scriptures.  It's certainly how most of the readings of the Jewish Bible, the Qur'an, the scriptures of Hinduism and Buddhism, etc. are imagined and presented, especially to the extent that those can be said to have an official interpretation that is influential or enforced on the general population.  But it's certainly nothing that has not, as well, driven science, allegedly the quintessentially "objective" entity which is the focus of cult devotion, even among those who understand next to nothing of it.  I think that's true of any of the sciences that focus theory on those things which cannot actually be observed and measured.  I used to think that was mostly true of the social-sciences, somewhat less true of the life sciences and least in physics.  But I now think it's pretty much true of all of them.  Including physics.  Perhaps most of all in cosmology which seems as driven by ideology as claims about evolution or psychology.  It's certainly true of anything to do with money and the law.