WORST OF ALL....:

While evangelical participation in and support for the Jan. 6 event profoundly saddens me, I'm not shocked by it either. Big-name preachers, ministry celebrities and political figures have stoked fear, resentment and affront among my fellow believers for nearly half a century.

Because giant fundraising operations routinely trade, rent and sell "cause-oriented" donor records, tens of millions of digital and paper appeals are sent to evangelical households repeating the same often manufactured outrage under different signatures. 

During my now regrettable 30 years as an activist on the religious right, I aided and abetted the poisoning of evangelical culture by engaging in alarmist rhetoric from the pulpit. I denounced the "abortionists," the "homosexual lobby," "godless atheists" in academia and "Demoncrats" in Congress and the White House. More than 50,000 financial contributors rewarded me for doing all that. [...]

Berating those outside our community is always easier than taking ourselves and our own to task. Fellow evangelicals, it's time we take a dose of our own medicine. This time it's not someone else's religion or culture that poses a real threat -- it's ours. 

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