A lot of people are scratching their heads at the recent efforts of the GOP to "rekindle" their relationship with Evangelicals. After all, Evangelicals are about as solid a Republican voting bloc as there is. Some have been speculating about answers (see here for one example), but I suspect that it's because Evangelicalism has a persecution complex. It's written into its history and culture. (I've written on this several times before.) Case in point, Mike Huckabee said,
...[T]he Republican Party has tried to tell those of us who are evangelicals that maybe we need to dial it back a little bit...and maybe just ease off.Tony Perkins, too, weighed in, saying,
Until the RNC and the other national Republican organizations grow a backbone and start defending core principles, don't send them a dime of your hard-earned money,adding that the GOP was "marginalizing social conservatives" [emphasis added]. It's all about a perception of persecution, a narrative that parallels (one interpretation of) the Gospel(s) and an (historically inaccurate) understanding of the first four centuries of (what would become) Christianity.
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