PREDATOR AND PRAY
Why Poor White People Can’t Quit Donald Trump (Pt. 3)
Blind faith: the religion of Trumpism
At the end of the 2010s, I shared an office with a life-long Republican. Despite our stark ideological differences, we got along quite well. Well enough, in fact, that she confided that she was on the verge of losing her home. Like so many at the time, she had fallen prey to a predatory adjustable rate mortgage that had inflated exponentially with the burst of the housing bubble.
A devout Christian, she sought counsel from the pastor at her mega-church, explaining that the only way she would be able to continue covering her mortgage payments would be to forego her usual 10% tithe to the church for the coming year.
The pastor urged her to tithe, assuring her that if she did, God would find a way to save her home. I suggested, as deferentially as possible, that maybe God HAD provided her a way to keep her house — using her tithe money to address earthly concerns rather than heavenly ones. God, after all, presumably paid off his mortgage centuries ago.
She followed the advice of the pastor, all the while steeling herself for foreclosure. Mere weeks later, intervention arrived, but it wasn’t divine. It was federal. The Obama administration’s mortgage relief program…
