NBC News Op-Ed Mocks White Christians, Accuses Them of Being Scared of Losing 'Dominance'
Are you a “white Christian?” Do you have issues with the cultural landscape as it is today? Well, NBC would like you to know you’re not alone.
In fact, if you’re like so many of us who are scared, you don’t realize that Christianity in America is coming to an end. At least for white people. And no, none of this is racist.
That’s the takeaway from a bizarre Op-Ed from NBC News which declared that declining interest in said white Christianity — as opposed to the other forms, which are apparently separate — had “created a nostalgia for the past that has fueled support for Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ agenda.”
Which, um, managed to get a president elected? I’m not sure how this all works, so bear with me as I bear with Robert P. Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute as he tries to bear with us white Christians.
White Christians — who are apparently different than other Christians, something that doesn’t seem to be spelled out by the Apostolic Creed either here or elsewhere — are apparently losing power. And that has us all really upset.
We probably should have seen this diagnosis coming from Jones, author of “The End of White Christian America,” but there you go. White Christian America is ending. You have been duly warned or noted or whatever.
In that book, Jones “noted that the percentage of white Christians in the general population had dropped from 53 percent to 47 percent between 2010 and 2014 alone. Now, at the end of the decade, only 42 percent of Americans identify as white and Christian, representing a drop of 11 percentage points,” as he recounted in his Op-Ed.
“In the world of demographic measurement, where changes typically occur at a glacial pace, this drop in self-identified white Christians, averaging 1.1 percentage points a year, is remarkable. Changes of this magnitude are large enough to see and feel at the local level, as church rolls shrink and white Christian institutions hold less sway in public space.”
This has little to do with who isn’t a Christian and who is, no matter the color of their skin, mind you.
It could potentially have to do with those who identify with public Christianity — as in, those who identify with the idea that there’s a God because it’s publicly advantageous. Is that really Christian?
And what does that have to do with white Christians becoming heathens and/or leaving the church?
“In addition to white American Christianity crossing the majority-minority threshold, the last decade also saw a particularly significant decline within one subgroup: white evangelicals. While the ranks of white mainline Protestants and white Catholics have been shrinking for decades, white evangelical Protestants had seemed immune to the forces eroding membership among other white Christian groups,” Jones wrote.
By the way, for those of you still with me and not running around the living room pulling your hair out from the sides, none of this makes any of the Bible any less true.
“The white Christian population’s anxieties about the future as they lose traction in the present have created a nostalgia for the past that has fueled support for Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ agenda, and not just among white evangelicals,” Jones wrote.
“Solid majorities of each white Christian subgroup voted for Trump in 2016 and, in the Public Religion Research Institute’s most recent American Values Survey, nearly 9 in 10 (88 percent) white evangelicals and approximately two-thirds of both white mainline Protestants (68 percent) and white Catholics (65 percent) oppose impeaching and removing him from office,” he added.
Aaaand we’ve hit the nugget.
This isn’t about religion at all. In fact, if you’re talking about white Christians, please stop. That was never really the issue here.
The issue was theism itself — and, in particular, the fact that Christians’ interests may dovetail with those of Trump’s.
“White Christian America’s attraction to Trump has little to do with his personality or character — a slim majority (52 percent) of white evangelicals, for example, say they wish his speech and behavior were more like previous presidents — and everything to do with something more important: their belief that ‘making America great again’ necessarily entails restoring white Christian demographic and political dominance,” the article reads.
Read this next paragraph, and if it doesn’t make you groan in 1.3 seconds, you’re reading too slowly:
“From the perspective of a healthy democratic society, one of the most alarming developments is that these trends have been compounding the political polarization in the country. Despite the demographic changes of the last decade, Republicans remain 72 percent white and Christian, three times the percentage of Democrats. And only 9 percent of Republicans are religiously unaffiliated, compared to 29 percent of Democrats,” Jones wrote.
“This demographic and cultural sorting means that our partisan conflicts are increasingly driven not just by political disagreement but by entire worldviews that are rooted in religious, racial and generational values and identities. This arrangement leaves us ill-equipped to deal with a past that cannot be resurrected and to build a new, pluralistic future together.”
First off: Christians, you having issues? Anyone feeling sort of shaky in their faith seeing all of that? Any problems yet? No?
At some point, Jones confused Christianity with Amway or Melaleuca. We’re apparently some sort of belief system that needs to validate itself through membership for it to be true and/or viable.
And of course, we know where this is all going: “Psychologists sometimes talk about the teen years as a period of’ ‘temporary insanity.’ Adolescents, hurtling forward toward an unknown destination at unaccustomed speed, often assume high risks for short-term rewards and double-down on ill-conceived decisions,” Jones wrote.
“The teen years of the 21st century, with their massive demographic and religious changes, have produced much in our culture and politics that fit that description. Here’s hoping that the upcoming decade may find us able to accept and even embrace a future that — while different from our past — is already and inevitably well on its way,” Jones wrote in conclusion.
At first, you kind of just rub your eyes and wonder how this got past editors. Then, you just go with it.
The entire point of Christianity isn’t some sort of great popularity contest.
If you like us, super. I’d prefer you do. If not, remember our holy book has verses like this: “Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to cast some of you into prison, so that you will be tested, and you will have tribulation for ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.”
There’s some sort of weird contest here: If white Christians aren’t in the majority, we aren’t the winners.
And yet, the Bible tells us: “For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”
Yes, that even applies to the white people. And the black people and everyone else on Earth. Amazing how that works.
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