"Over the course of the 2016 presidential election, I've come to find that Melody is not the only conservative woman in my community who's secretly voting Democrat. While nodding along with their husbands' politics and passing as Trump supporters in their neighborhoods, there's a group of women making fervent plans for what happens when they're finally alone in the voting booth...
When I meet with Jennifer at our favorite local coffee shop, she immediately expresses concern that I'll "out" her. If Jennifer's presidential choice goes get beyond our café table, she says, it could cost her career: She works at a faith-based non-profit with a lot of Evangelicals, which makes it very hard for her to publicly support a Democratic candidate...
Susan suspects there are other women like her, but that part of the reason conservative female Christian voters won't openly support Clinton is because of the culture of submission in Evangelical churches. Wives are supposed to follow their husbands' lead in every matter, including politics. Speaking out against those traditional teachings can come with a risk—a social penalty of alienation from a very tight-knit community, to which spouses, extended family, children, and support systems are all intricately linked. Still, she knows of pockets of women who are defecting from Trump. "I hope all those people who are saying no to Trump are also, secretly, saying yes to Hillary," she says...
Recently, popular Evangelical author and speaker Beth Moore came out against Donald Trump. She tweeted: "I'm one among many women sexually abused, misused, stared down, heckled, talked naughty to. Like we liked it. We didn't. We're tired of it." In an article for the Daily Beast, Dr. Russell Moore, head of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, noted that he's seeing a groundswell of conservative Christian women who are privately opposed to Trump. "I have heard from many, many Evangelical women who are horrified by Christian leaders ignoring this as an issue," he said.
Katherine Francis, a political science professor at Western Governor's University, believes this dissatisfaction among women who traditionally vote Republican is indicative of a wider split between religious groups and the Republican Party. "There is deep unrest in the base, which since the 1970s has been associated with the Religious Right," explains Francis, who was raised in a conservative home. "There is a growing number of people questioning whether issues like gay marriage and abortion should even be the primary issues for people of faith.""
Also - I was not aware that the "culture of submission" was still really a thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment