anyone got a non paywall link to this?

[prodigitalson]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by Yonnie3 (a host of the Editorials & Other Articles group).

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/12/donald-trump-and-the-implosion-of-the-american-evangelical-movement

[littlemissmartypants]

1. Here...❤️

https://archive.is/rhmml

[Demovictory9]

2. No but here are a few paragraphs

(Jim) Jordan continued, “Cal Thomas had a great line. He said, ‘Every morning, I read the Bible and the -New York Times, so I can see what each side is up to.’ ”
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What Jordan didn’t mention is that five years after giving that C-SPAN interview, Thomas wrote another book. It was a contrition-laden confessional called Blinded by Might, coauthored by Pastor Ed Dobson, the onetime Liberty University dean and Falwell confidant who had been present at the founding of the Moral Majority. The authors provided a damning window into the rise of the religious right: Given how the Scopes Trial had humiliated fundamentalists in the 1920s, and how progressives had hijacked both Church and culture in the 1960s, Thomas and Dobson recalled believing that Ronald Reagan’s presidency represented “the greatest moment of opportunity for conservative Christians” since the dawn of the twentieth century. “We were on our way to changing America,” the authors wrote. “We had the power to right every wrong and cure every ill.”

But they didn’t change America—at least, not in the manner they had hoped.

Thomas and Dobson acknowledged, in the pages of their book, that they had not ushered in the sort of kingdom-on-earth spiritual utopia about which they and so many American evangelicals fantasized. In fact, there was evidence to suggest that the country was angrier, more antagonistic, more fearful, more divided—less Christlike—because of the Moral Majority. If Jesus was known for hating sin and loving sinners, American evangelicals were known for hating both. The movement’s short-term electoral gains had come at a steep cost. Not only had the culture moved further away from them; the Church had sacrificed its distinctiveness in the process. “We think it is time to admit that because we are using the wrong weapons, we are losing the battle,” Thomas and Dobson wrote.

[Yonnie3]

3. Locking

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