Trump’s dominance matched an established patriarchal evangelical leadership template

Evidence

In 2016, Driscoll’s good friend Darrin Patrick, author of The Dude’s Guide to Manhood, member of The Gospel Coalition, and vice president of the Acts 29 network, was fired from his St. Louis megachurch for his domineering and manipulative leadership style. In 2018, evangelical megachurch pastor and champion of complementarianism John MacArthur ran into trouble when accreditors placed his Master’s University and Seminary on probation for operating under a “pervasive climate of fear, intimidation, bullying, and uncertainty.” Accreditors also flagged his institution’s failure to comply with requirements of the Violence Against Women Act. In 2019, SBC megachurch pastor James MacDonald, author of Act Like Men, took an “indefinite sabbatical” after a World magazine investigation uncovered patterns of bullying, angry outbursts, abusive speech, intimidation, and financial mismanagement. Then, audio clips were released in which MacDonald lashed out at Christianity Today for its coverage of the evolving scandal. His choice of words is revealing: “CT is Anglican, pseudo-dignity, high church, symphony-adoring, pipe organ-protecting, musty, mild smell of urine, blue-haired Methodist-loving, mainline-dying, women preacher-championing, emerging church-adoring, almost good with all gays and closet Palestine-promoting Christianity, so of course they attacked me.” … DRISCOLL, MAHANEY, PATRICK, MacArthur, and MacDonald had all risen to prominence through their aggressive promotion of patriarchal power. To those who cared to notice, it was clear that Trump wasn’t the first domineering leader to win over evangelicals. Yet what most puzzled observers when it came to evangelical devotion to the president wasn’t their eagerness to embrace a brash, aggressive, even authoritarian leader. Rather, it was the apparent willingness of “family values” voters to support a man who seemed to make a mockery of those values, the willingness of the self-proclaimed “moral majority” to back such a blatantly immoral candidate. The release of the Access Hollywood tape just weeks before the election had done little to shake evangelicals’ loyalty, nor had allegations leveled by at least sixteen women who had accused Trump of sexual misconduct that included harassment and assault. In the months after Trump took office, the puzzle of evangelical support for morally challenged men persisted. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 622

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports the reader’s stated need: this is the continuity-not-hypocrisy evidence showing Trump fit a pre-existing domineering-pastor pattern, connecting to the crisis-of-masculinity framing earlier developed in the book. — connects to: Leading evangelical figures framed Trump’s presidency as divinely ordained kingship — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 212