Is Christian paranoia concerning their own victimization a clue as to why they support Bush?

Question

Jesus said that the world wouldn't love him and wouldn't love his followers, so basically he's saying he and his followers will be victims. Christians are taught that the world will hate them.

They believe that figures such as Satan and the Anti-Christ will be popular because their thoughts of moral freedom will appeal to the masses.

So my question is, do Christians like Bush so much because he says he is a Christian and he is unpopular?

Answer 1

They vote for Bush because he says he is a Christian and says all the appropriate catch phrases. To them he is the protector of their "values" and their beliefs. They seem to forget about the very un-Christian like actions that he takes (supporting/spreading hatred, killing innocents, etc.)

Answer 2

I wouldn't say that -- I think it happens in reverse.

Bush says the right things (i.e., he has the right "theology"), so the Religious Right has selected him as their representative over those who they believe have "bad" theology/philosophies of life (i.e., support pro-choice, would allow homosexual marriage, etc.)

Then, when Bush is criticized by someone, instead of evaluating the criticism for what it is, the RR finds it very easy to instead say, "Bush is being criticized because of his religious views, which we support -- just like Jesus said Christians would be oppressed -- so our job is to support and defend him even harder against these evil-motivated attacks!"

[I think journalist Jonathan Alter pointed this out himself in a Newsweek article a month or two back, when writing about the Evangelical movement.]

We saw hints of this in Rumsfield's recent comments where he criticized those who have issues with the Iraq war. Instead of viewing criticism impartially, to reconsider his actions, he simply painted Bush and his team as the good guys who were being oppressed by evil antagonists, in almost those terms.

I wish things weren't that way. Sometimes criticism occurs because something is NOT right, not because someone's got a negative attitude to begin with, and we need to evaluate criticism fairly rather than viewing it as an attack.