Probably one of the most interesting developments in the realignment going on. If my social media feeds tell me anything, protestant evangelicals have largely done a turnaround in their attitudes towards jews and Israel as the political winds have shifted. The Dems now host some of the more virulently anti-semitic elected officials in American politics. That whole issue is in the process of swapping parties.
Listening to Trump’s SOTU, it’s pretty clear there are some other issues shifting as well. How many issues Trump brought up in SOTU would have been Dem issues a decade ago? Family leave? Fair trade? Ending wars? I was told all these things were good and wholesome, but the orange man, he is bad!
Dude needs a proof reader. And it results in some ambiguities in the linked article
The Dems have gone full anti-western civilization. That means open borders so they can win every election. It also means embracing Islam – so sorry Jews, you are getting tossed overboard.
And of course, they’ll need you to turn in your guns to prevent unfortunate incidents on the way to the camps.
Bram is 100% right.
In my experience, charges of anti-semitism leveled against Evangelicals largely had to do with the Jewish attitude towards the Evangelicals, not the Evangelical attitude towards the Jews. Jews tend to be quiet about their religion and don’t really practice religious conversion. Evangelicals are loud about their religion and try to convert everyone. The Jews aren’t very comfortable with this.
Evangelicals typically like Jews. We grow up reading about Jewish heroes in the Bible every week.
Jews typically don’t like evangelicals. They like Muslims more than evangelicals, actually.
I don’t know that I buy that; I didn’t experience the kind of antisemitism that my father and his parents did, I have no doubt that it was orders of magnitude worse than what I experienced. At the same time, I didn’t experience much of any anti-Irish sentiment, yet I know that my mother’s ancestors had to deal with things like “No Irish need apply”.
That being said, it’s my understanding that Judaism does take a dim view of conversion — From talking with some people, the gist seems to be that Judaism isn’t necessarily for everyone and we shouldn’t try to force it on people, but at the same time that being Jewish is better than the alternative.
I’ve been around evangelicals all of my life and I’ve never seen anything but support for Israel. Not sure why you think their attitude has “changed”?
That’s largely a product of the political transformation that happened in the 1970s and 1980s. You would have had a hard time getting into certain WASPy organizations, like country clubs, around here if you were Jewish prior to that.
I don’t know if it is true or not, but I read anti-antisemitism in the South practically vanished overnight- when the Isrealis beat the tar out of Arab armies attacking them.
Southerners respect bravery.
Hmmm. OK, I get what you’re saying. I just never lumped WASP’s with evangelicals. All evangelicals are protestants (and a few are Catholic believe it or not), but not all protestants are evangelicals.
I’m about your age, Sebastian. I’m from the buckle of the Bible Belt, where the local town of about 200 has 5 churches (Christian, Baptist, church of Christ, and two non-denominational). Methodists have to go to the next little town to the east. The Catholic church is in the town to the south. I have never, ever heard anything but support for Israel (like the other evangelical commenters) among evangelicals. Perhaps your statement isn’t as broadly true as you think it is.
I don’t know what you mean by WASPs. Even though I fit all three categories (despite some German mixed in with the Anglo-Saxon), I’ve never tried (or wanted) to get into a country club. Around here, the only organization with memberships is the farmer’s cooperative, and we eat at the local joints along with everyone else.
I’m also not sure about “flipping attitudes” in the parties. I’ve never really seen Democrats in general as friends towards Israel (although I’m sure there were some major exceptions to the rule) — and I’m also aware of decades of anti-Semite remarks from Sharpton and Farrakan which, while not necessarily embraced, have at least been tolerated.
Considering that Oliver Cromwell’s chaplain was what is known as a Christian Zionist, this is not exactly a new attitude for evangelicals. The first manifestation of this attitude in America was by John Winthrop c1640.
Jeff the Baptist above has probably got the reason right. Evangelicals try to and often succeed in converting Jews and everyone else which Jews regard as a threat. Discrimination against Jews in America has largely been a product of Catholics and “mainstream” Protestants and, of late, leftists. It wasn’t evangelicals who kept the Jews out of the universities and country clubs because the evangelicals weren’t there either.
Also, I wouldn’t describe calls for conversion “anti-Jew” — if you believe that Jews were Christian even before Christ was born, and that conversion would bring them to the updated belief they are supposed to have, it would seem to me more of “wanting to bring individuals to the truth” than “I want to destroy all Jewish religion”.
It’s merely “anti-Jew” if you add “If you don’t convert, then you should just die”, and I’m not aware of Evangelicals in general calling for that….
Agree. It is not just Jews that evangelicals try to convert. Jews are especially sensitive to it, however.
The realignment was revealed during the 2016 election. Many working class whites were devastated by economic changes and NATO treaties that reduced our manufacturing base.
Democrats had as their base Catholics, Jews Blacks and the white working class.
The progressive identity ideology has been divorcing many of the groups. Obama and his war against police , done during Ferguson,pushed police into Trump’s camp.
Starving coal workers in Ohio WVA, Pa also decided that Trump was better. Manufacturing workers in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pa, WVA, Ohio decided Trump was better and Democrats no longer championed them and their families.
Now the attacks against Catholics in Senate hearings and to teenagers are pushing Democrat Catholics into the arms of the GOP.
Now we have the overt anti antisemitism that is scaring Jews. I do not think Jews are deserting Democrats yet, but they are getting concerned.
As many here indicated the evangelicals have been supportive of Israel. The WASPS were not . But WASP influence over the universities , Wall Street and American and political business is waning.
American Blacks have been a solid voting block for decades Trump is actively courting blacks His Prison reform bill was aimed at them. His economic policies helps blacks. Trump has been keeping promises Recognizes Jerusalem as the capital. Increasing working class wages and his tax cur is hurting higher salary workers
The main group Trump has been alienating is suburban women and their families . That is a large part of the upper middle class.
Trump needs to get on the legalize MJ bandwagon NOW. That should be a hit with African Americans.
Already started with Industrial Hemp, something that big Agri-Corp Lobbyists in California (Ironically), have opposed.
The Dems are now the anti-white party. To many of the tribes that includes, Jews are white – so they are rapidly falling out of favor even though the bankroll many DNC campaigns.
In another election cycle or 2 the Republicans will realize they are the anti-anti-white party by default. A few years after that, they’ll give up the coy act and just be the White party – not because they want to, just by default.
Working Class minority voters will also start migrating to the GOP. On economic issues, The Democrat Party is almost complete in its rapid transformation into the Party of the Super-Utra-Coastal-Wealthy-Elites, and the run-down impoverished.
Despite progressive claims that due to demographics the white Americans will not be a majority It is still 65 % That large group are not monolithic The worst thing progressives did was to instill identity ideology, because whites being the largest group can vote as a group and overwhelm other voters groups
That’s a political shift that could be very bad for us politically.
In the late Naughties, the Dems pushed out the “blue dog” wing of their party (i.e. blue-collar union members who seem to largely favor things like gun rights). Those voters are a big chunk of Trump’s base.
Now, the Dems are working to push out a significant portion of their heavily-engaged donor block (e.g. Jews). For the most part, this segment of the population is virulently opposed to the RKBA, and pushes that position hard.
So, in short, the Dems have lost their only moderating force on the issue of gun rights, and the opposition party is likely to get infiltrated with a new cadre of politically active donors who are virulently opposed to gun rights.
I see this going very badly for us if the current political apathy from gun owners persists.
I suspect part of it is that the Jewish vote is considered to be either (1) baked into Team D and thus irrelevant except perhaps during some primaries and/or (2) geographically concentrated in a few blue states and districts that will be blue regardless of how they vote.
Just like gun owners and the GOP in recent years.
Also, Israel had been absolutely hated and despised in academia for about 20 years now, which is long enough for a generation of college going millenials and gen x/yrs to pick up some anti semitic undertones.
Mystified by this. I grew up in an evangelical family. I have attended evangelical churches my entire adult life. I have never heard anyone in those churches speak disparagingly of Jews.