White evangelicals uniformly sided with Clarence Thomas against Anita Hill

Evidence

In 1991, President Bush’s nomination of Clarence Thomas to the United States Supreme Court provided occasion for evangelicals to reflect further on questions of harassment and abuse. Upon Thomas’s nomination, Anita Hill—herself a devout Christian who had served on the law faculty of Oral Roberts University—reluctantly came forward with her account of Thomas’s persistent sexual harassment. According to Hill, Thomas liked to detail various scenes he’d viewed in pornographic films and boast of his “sexual prowess.” Both Hill and Thomas were black, and the contentious hearings split the African American community. Among white evangelicals there was little dissent; they saw Hill as representative of the corrupt and conniving influence of modern feminism, and they stood behind Thomas. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 336

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Du Mez’s broader pattern of white evangelical alignment with male authority figures against feminist claimants, anticipating later Trump support.