I’ve been fascinated with how the religious right has stood behind someone so obviously out of line with their ‘principles’. There actually have been people doing interesting work on that front, if you know who/where to look. I’d definitely recommend the book “Jesus and John Wayne” by Kristin Kobes du Mez, which chronicles the growing power of conservative Christianity in government starting back in the 40s through the election of Trump, and how electing Trump really was an expression of their values, not a departure from it. Podcasts like “Conspirituality” and “Straight White American Jesus” also try to take an honest look at the cultishness and where it’s coming from. What’s hard is that deradicalization is hard and often has to be done one person at a time. When we have one percent of the country needing to be deradicalized, maybe we can find people to go talk and make connections with each person. When it’s 30% of the country, that’s a much different proposition. Maybe society can figure out how to do that better–Conspirituality sometimes talks about how cults differ as leaderless, online only groups. Maybe social media can also reach people… But it won’t if kids can’t find information online that challenges the worldviews their parents want to program into them.

And recently, that Amazon Duggar documentary “Shiny Happy People” came out, and it’s not a bad entry point to understand the issues I’m talking about either. I think it does a good job to show how these ‘throwback’ values play on nostalgia too act as an on ramp for people to raise their children in–children who are then encouraged to be literal warriors for Christ.