Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers

by John W. Dean

HOW IMPORTANT IS THEIR RELIGION TO EVANGELICALS? Evangelicals believe the Bible is the revealed word of God, the supernatural being who created the vast universe and who is going to decide one day whether they will henceforth have an eternity of happiness or the joylessness of the dark side. And the Bible is the place where God has written down what you need to know to go to heaven, so you could know how to get there. It follows that evangelicals would read the Bible. In fact, they would read it over and over, looking for things they might have missed and reminding themselves of things they had forgotten. You can see why they might never read anything else, but instead always be cramming for “the final” that could come at any time, if they believe the Bible is what they tell everybody it is. But consider what happened when a large sample of Canadian parents was given a list of the 66 Books in the King James Bible and asked how many of them they had read from beginning to end. Only one out of five high RWA parents said they had read them all. (We tip our hats in awe to anyone who plowed his way through the first nine chapters of Chronicles I.) Just as many had not read any of the Books. On average, evangelicals had only read about a third of them.