Blind loyalty doesn't exist on the left either?
Not to the degree that it exists on the right.
If this were a charge that could only be laid at the feet of Evangelicals I might agree, but it isn't and your average leftist is blindly committed to voting Democrat as the Evangelicals are supposedly committed to voting Republican.
IME, that just isn't true. And unlike evangelical Republican voters, most Dem voters aren't sacrificing a bunch of other self-claimed values for the sake of voting for the Democrats.
Trump's policy on immigration, particularly as it relates to refugees and asylum seekers is blatantly anti-Christian, yet it merited little more than a shrug from most evangelicals, and hearty approval from some.
Trump's constant lying and antagonism are blatantly anti-Christian, yet Christians cheer his fighting spirit.
Trump's stoking of racism is blatantly anti-Christian, yet many Christians try to explain it away.
Trump's dysfunctional, disinterested management style is horrible stewardship, yet Christians for some reason cheer his business acumen.
Republican policies on things like protections for workers, customers, the environment, and a host of other categories of oppressed, abused, or marginalized people almost always skew in favor of the powerful - a value entirely at odds with Christian doctrine, yet Christians at best overlook this, and often adopt it as correct and proper.
I don't see the same thing happen on the left. No, not everybody is on the same page, but I struggle to think of any bloc of Dem voters who claims to hold one set of values, while in reality adopting a Democratic party platform that violates the majority of those values.
If Evangelicals want to blindly vote for Republicans, who are you or I to tell them otherwise?
The issue we're discussing is how the politicization of Christianity has undermined evangelism. As fellow Christians, it is
entirely appropriate for us to look at our own community and judge and correct its behavior - doing so is a core part of the faith. We would be remiss in our responsibilities as Christians if we
didn't engage in that sort of self-reflection and self-correction.
It's fine if Christians look at the electoral options and decide that the Republican is better. But that isn't what's happened. What's happened is that large blocs of American evangelicals have supplanted religious doctrine with Republican political positions and subsumed Republican political figures into quasi-leadership religious roles.
For example:
Throughout his facebook page, Franklin Graham talks out of both sides of his mouth, praising calls for unity, while browbeating Dems and completely overlooking Trump's contributions to disunity and the covid spikes that his organization is working to fight:
Franklin Graham
Actually, maybe Graham's problem is straight up idolatry of Trump rather than mere Republicanism. This post is just moronic:
Franklin Graham
In another thread, we were discussing this large church in Texas, which has become little more than a mouthpiece for right-wing conspiracy theorists, hosting both Sidney Powell and Allen West.
KingdomLife
In a more personal example, when I moved to the Baltimore area a few years ago, I started googling around for churches and found one that listed in its statement of faith its position on taxation and small government.
It's not hard to find other cases of famous evangelical leaders publicly aligning themselves with right-wing ideology or massaging Christian doctrine to fit that ideology - contemporary evangelicalism is practically rife with it. The recent statement from the SBC seminary presidents regarding critical race theory is but one example.