AOF Activities & Events

Sarah Posner: UNHOLY: Why White Evangelicals Worship Donald Trump

Submitted to you: a conundrum. Why do devout evangelicals support a politician who has had three wives, cheated on all of them, punched his children to the floor, ripped off hundreds of businesses (including banks), is racist without apology, and has cozied up to the world's worst dictators?

The loyalty to Trump is deep, vast and strong, and baffling to most liberals, who gaze agog at the parade of scandals, corruption and palpable lies. But Trump partisans see it differently. The investigations, the news stories, the fact-checks are not evidence of evil, but rather of the venality of the Democratic Party, the mainstream media, or other of Trump’s supposed enemies. He is never wrong, never fibs; data to the contrary are fake news.

In fact, it is really God’s plan.

That's the view of our speaker, Sarah Posner, American journalist and author. In her book Unholy, she suggests that the ambitions of the President and his base are nothing less than a white Christian grab at power, and they are using every available tool, including the nation's election infrastructure, Congress, federal agencies, and the courts. (Dynamite book, btw.)

Posner argues that Trump won over white evangelical voters by claiming to be an anointed figure sent by God to rescue them from the excesses of liberalism. His supporters insist that sometimes God sends a morally flawed leader, and that is just part of the plan. Further, that what motivated evangelical activists in the early to mid-1970s, and led to the mobilization of the modern religious right, was opposition to the federal government’s attempts to revoke the tax-exempt status of private schools that had discriminatory policies. The government did not want to give these private schools—many of which were Christian private schools, like Bob Jones University—a tax exemption if they were using their private school status to evade school desegregation that was required in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

Join us for this provocative, well researched presentation, another event of the AOF Speaker Series. AOF remains infuriatingly politically neutral, and would never tell you how to vote. Never.

How to attend:

Reason Center will probably still be closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so this meeting will be online only.

• Any time before the event: Go to https://zoom.us/download. Download & install the "Zoom videoconference tool" if you haven't already. (Do it just once; it will be good for all future online Zoom meetings.)
• Moments before the meeting: Go to https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86012575670?pwd=M1VmRjkrb3NIVU1rcFJBdnZ0cjYvZz09. It will take you to a Zoom Page. 
• If it asks you to sign in: If you have a Facebook or Google account, or even an SSO account, just click one of the buttons for those, then sign in with your Facebook or Google info. Or create your own free Zoom account, but this is not necessary.
• If it wants a Meeting ID (it probably won't), the ID is 860 1257 5670.
• If it wants a passcode (it probably won't), the passcode is 262666.
• The videoconference should begin. Speakers on, please! Sit back and enjoy.

Or listen in by phone at 1-669-900-6833. Same meeting ID (860 1257 5670) and same passcode (262666). This is for the Sacramento area.

Dial by your location
+1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
+1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
+1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown, MD)
Meeting ID: 860 1257 5670
Passcode: 262666