the drama of redemption

Ginger K. Hintz
Jul 27, 2017 · 5 min read
image found via a FAKE Tiffany Trump Facebook profile

Rewire, one of the best independent investigative reporting sites on issues of sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice, has been laying out in full view the Evangelical Christian Right’s strategies that have kept Trump in good Christian standing with his base. If you’re not currently following Rewire, I’d add them to your “how to stay informed” list of trustworthy news sources.

In Trump’s ‘Spiritual Biography’ Is Yet Another Whitewashing Tool for Evangelicals Dianna Anderson exposes Trump’s new-found faith as a siren call. It’s being used with precision by powerful forces to push an agenda designed to eliminate tolerance, multiculturalism, and strip bare minimum concepts of what we think of when we think of love, morality, and decency. Anderson is right that Evangelicals crave and use redemption narratives to exercise power — it is the climax and resolution of all Evangelical Christian storytelling. Redemption is a powerful opiate for the masses because it works. Lest you think this is only an Evangelical Christian project, myths of reclamation and conversion are hardwired into nearly all of our widely accepted cultural narratives. The over reliance of superhero stories as mass entertainment or the thrill of an underdog victory in sports fit into this dynamic narrative arc. Even queer narratives or stories of class mobility pull from these tropes.

Yet, even the basic principles of living a “Christian life” seem illogical when signified with Trump. How has someone who so clearly does not embody or practice Christian ethics be a champion of alleged Christian values? Push past the story that Trump is a “baby Christian,” who is still learning about his path toward eternal life, to find the dark history of the Evangelical Right’s relentless and strategic movement building.

Jean Hardisty’s seminal research in Mobilizing Resentment is an excellent resource to understand the strategies, tactics, and success of the Evangelical Right’s saturation into our political and cultural institutions. There are, and always have been, pockets of resistance, but largely we live in a society that has been designed to exploit, mislead, and distort reality to fit into narrow concepts of Evangelical Christian white supremacist patriarchal hegemonic power. Hardisty names these designers and architects, many of whom are now in or remain at the opportunistic edges of the Trump administration.

Hardisty lays out their modus operandi:

  1. Direct public attention to an issue [see today’s latest chaos of barring transgender people from joining the military]
  2. Define said issue by using misleading language and distorted statistics
  3. Add multi-year funding from an extensive network of coalitions and a strategic chorus of influence to support this newly redefined issue, i.e. normalize this fabricated reality
  4. Expand outreach and institutionalize Christianity as state practice by building internal movement cohesion through these campaigns of redefinition [follow the history of affirmative action or the false belief that we’re living in a “post-racial” world]

When we talk about this kind of large-scale manipulation of reality, it’s important to remember that the Evangelical Christian Right’s strategies, at their very core, have eternal timelines in scope and scale. It’s also important to understand that within the specifics of being an Evangelical Christian is a belief that they can talk directly to God. This omniscient belief and malleable faith is what drives their intentions and holds their remarkable patience for demanding domination.

The master plan? To speed up the future return of Jesus. #truestory

This mastery at conjuring false scarcities (for example the scarcity of civil rights) in order to maintain control, leaves most of us surviving within corrupt policies and constricted by laws that actively agitate fear-based thinking. The other truth is this advancement of bigotry has occurred well within legal dictums. We are led to believe that it’s natural for structural accumulations of power to benefit few and only the deserving. You haven’t earned it yet, someone took your finite share, or you were never worthy to begin with.

I was raised by the tenets of Southern Baptist ideology so this way of thinking and being are familiar as childhood memories. My earliest understanding of the world was through the lens of shame and practice of sin by way of policing the literal, an ironically evolving concept dependent on authorities who had power over you. I witnessed and participated in the violence of a religion that promised eternal life under a bargain that required giving your soul away. Beliefs built on such horcruxes are powerful methods of dissociation. Once your soul is in the grace of a god who allegedly controls the complex strings of human destiny, you can be more easily manipulated by those who claim religious authority.

Evangelicals can get away with and use such bold statements as “God told me to” because they claim to have that direct connection to an all powerful deity. Internalized, this story is also supported by a theory that says suffering is to be welcomed on Earth because your reward is waiting for you in death. You will win later, and win big! If there are complaints to be had, you’re likely outside the bounds of God’s mercy and need to come back to the flock for forgiveness. It’s your own damn fault your life is so terrible.

It’s taken me more than 20 years, and counting, to actively undo this damage. I am hypersensitive to the various ways in which Evangelical Christian ideology remains deeply rooted in American culture. For those still under this spell of a promised afterlife, I have empathy and compassion. I know intimately how that kind of fear and how those hooks of shame can hold you captive.

Jean Hardisty made it her life’s work to listen and understand the ways in which the contemporary Right offers seductive scapegoats that appeal to white working class people’s racist fears and economic frustrations. One reason Trump’s anti-elite messages have resonated and reverberated within white working class communities so deeply is because this strategy has been in effect for decades. Trump, as the anointed, is simply following this successful recipe.

Photo credit: Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images

Knowing this does not excuse rampant bigotry but rather can serve as an opportunity to thoughtfully organize within white working class Evangelical communities. Organizing within wealthy white communities is also desperately needed for they are the ones who benefit and either explicitly or are complicit in the maintenance of this status quo. My own conversion from that self-destruction affords a truth that it can be done and Hardisty’s work carried on by Political Research Associates guarantees the Right’s movement building strategies do not operate in secret.

I broke away by staying curious, asking questions, and actively challenging a binary worldview that cedes power to others. I stay on course by creating and maintaining interdependent solidarity in relationship to others. This eye towards honoring difference is a powerful antidote to isolation and surviving fear-based politics.

How we move from here is ours to decide, not god and certainly not Trump.

Ginger K. Hintz

Written by

poet / action philosopher / identical twin / independent scholar

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