Welcome to the December 2024 edition of The Eclectic Web Journal. We’re so glad to have you join us on this eclectic intellectual and spiritual journey!
We hope you will have a joy-filled and peaceful Christmas even during these challenging times. You can start your holiday season off with an article about Mary’s husband Joseph from Matthew 1, and consider how the situation of the virgin birth created somewhat of a moral dilemma for him.
And we couldn’t help crunching numbers from the recent presidential election, and the results are pretty interesting. We will continue to discuss what the New Testament says about having multiple elders at a church, and we will highlight a book about religious feelings during the church upheaval of the sixteenth century.
Even in the business of the holiday season, we wanted to issue a quick reminder to give our Facebook page a “like” if you haven’t yet. We want more people to participate in this exchange of thoughts and ideas. If you have given our Facebook page a “like” already, then feel free to share any of our posts to others.
Also, feel free to leave your kind comments or responses to any of our articles on any of our posts. We would love to hear your feedback!
We appreciate your loyalty and patronage. We hope that you have a great holiday season, and that you continue to stay eclectic!
BIBLE HISTORY: Being A Saintly Man In Scandalous Times
This article is originally from the December 2020 edition of The Eclectic Kasper, and is presented here with minor modifications.
It seems like every month there are high-profile actors, politicians and pastors getting themselves into trouble with bad decisions and behavior.
In contrast, there is a neglected character in the Christmas story, a man who found himself in a potential scandal, and had some difficult decisions to make. His example can encourage believers to be godly and wise, especially in the strange and scandal-ridden times we live in today.
There are two Josephs in the Bible, and both are known for their godliness, obedience, and integrity. Both find themselves entangled in scandalous situations. We, too, are expected to respond to crises and scandals with godliness, selflessness, and with good decision making. These qualities can also pro-actively help us to avoid scandals and difficulties in the future, not just when they arrive.
The Joseph of the Christmas story plays a subtle but instructive role in Matthew 1:18-25. We see in verses 18-19 how Joseph honors Mary and puts her first. The couple was “pledged” or “betrothed” (v. 18). This is similar to the modern custom of an engagement, but back then, someone was far less inclined to break this betrothment. Also, “pledged” or “betrothed” signaled that their union was not consummated; this was “before they came together.”
Nevertheless, she is found to be with child. The author breezes over a heart-breaking conversation where she tells Joseph what happened. She mentions angels and Old Testament prophecies. How does Joseph respond? Joseph was a righteous and selfless man (v. 19), yet, he obviously doesn’t believe her; after all, who would? Initially, he elects to send her away so as not to embarrass or disgrace her (v. 19).
This alone points to his high character. He may have agonized that she had been unfaithful and then she tried to hide behind some “angel” story. Despite a range of justifiable emotions, like anger, embarrassment, and sorrow, Joseph wants to do right in the midst of this crisis. He puts her interests first despite the personal pain that he is going through.
Joseph also submitted to the bigger plan in vv. 20-23. Joseph needs so much convincing that the angel story was not a fairy-tale, that he received his own visit from an angel in v. 20. It is interesting that the angel doesn’t come to him until he settled on doing the kindest thing for Mary that he could. When we make good decisions, we tend to get a better sense of our role in God’s bigger plan. When we make bad decisions, we can expect to wallow in chaos and confusion, struggling to find our footing, wondering why God doesn’t provide better direction.
I think that there is another reason why the angel came to him in a dream: Have you ever tried to argue with someone while they are emotionally distraught? He had endured a miserable, heart-wrenching day. But in a dream, Joseph was in a state of complete passivity, unable to fight or argue with the angel. Here Joseph is assured that Mary’s story is true and that Joseph has a bigger role to play in this saga than to sit around and nurse his ego.
The angel addresses him as “son of David” (v. 20), reminding him that he is in the lineage of King David, and this is part of the critical role that Joseph plays in this drama. Joseph is informed that he needs to keep Mary as his wife, that she is carrying the promised Messiah, and that this is a miracle of the Holy Spirit. In v. 21, the angel instructs Joseph not merely to name the child “Jesus,” but to appreciate that this child is the promised Savior (v. 22). In fact, this child is so important that He will be called “God with us” (v. 23). God became man, He is as fully God as God the Father, and fully human, as well. No prophet could completely comprehend the extent of what it meant that God would be with us in this amazing way.
In addition to putting Mary first and submitting to the bigger plan, Joseph showed his faithfulness in a potentially scandalous situation by fully obeying God’s commands (1:24-25). He did what the angel said to do and went back to Mary (v. 24). Can you imagine that conversation? After all, while he merely thought that she had been unfaithful to him, she was actually rejected by him when he didn’t believe her. By the way, when we are carrying the gospel, as she literally was, we shouldn’t be surprised when we are misunderstood and rejected.
Speaking of setting aside your rights and interests, Joseph is patient and understood his need to wait (v. 25), a shining example in a season that is often very self-oriented. Mary had to be a virgin not only when Jesus was conceived, but also when He was born. Also, shunning the privilege to name the child after himself, Joseph names the child Jesus (v. 25), reflecting his obedience to God’s commands through the angel. Matthew 13:55 indicates that the second son to Mary and Joseph is named “Joseph”; that is, Joseph eventually got his Lil’ Joe! Often when you are obedient and set aside your own interests and preferences and rights, you will get what you want, just not in the time frame you want it.
These are the kind of people that God chose to deliver the Gospel, Mary and Joseph, godly people in difficult times. They were patient people, who made righteous decisions even at personal expense. They understood the role they played in God’s bigger redemptive plan, and they were willing to be corrected and to wait on God’s timing and not trust in their own.
Like Mary’s husband Joseph, we can respond to crises and scandals with godliness, selflessness, and with good decision making. These can help us pro-actively avoid problems in the future, and it will help us to stand out in an increasingly dark age.
POLITICS: Subtle Stories in the Election Numbers, Part 1
The election numbers have some fascinating stories, one of which is that the Democrats either have a serious woman problem, or else they have to admit that Joe Biden’s 2020 victory was illegitimate.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
We here at The Eclectic Web Journal are number crunchers, if nothing else. Where people see elections, we see political movements, social trends, and cultural realities in the numbers and figures that most people miss or ignore. I want to share some of those numbers with you, and discuss the stories behind them.
So let’s get right to the numbers. Trump earned over three million more votes in 2024 than he did in 2020: 77 M (millions) to 74 M respectively. This election indicates that the GOP is becoming more of a coalition party, bringing together people from different races, religions, and backgrounds. For instance, Trump received 46% of Latino voting in 2024 relative to just 32% in 2020 (taken from CNN exit polling in 2024 vs. 2020). Interestingly, Trump received a five-point jump, from 41% to 46%, of voters in the eastern region of the country, which accounts for about 20% of the electorate.
Trump either wooed the Catholics or Harris chased them away by not being a Catholic like Biden; Trump’s percent of Catholic voters, accounting for about 20% of the electorate, rose from 47% to 58% between 2020 and 2024 (though, there is probably large overlap between easterners and Catholics). While this isn’t as big of a jump, the CNN exit polls showed that Trump picked up about 3% more of the “Protestant/ Other Christian” vote than he did last cycle, 60% to 63% of these voters which account for over 40% of voters. Regarding the specific category of “White born-again or evangelical Christian,” compromising about a quarter of voters, Trump went from 76% in 2020 to 82% in 2024. Apparently many evangelical never-Trumpers got over their reluctance and pulled the lever for him in 2024. But again, to combine a few categories, it was among Latino men where we saw a big jump, from 36% in 2020 to 55% in 2024. And despite all the talk about race and gender, Trump experienced only a two-percent drop in votes from Black women, from 9% down to 7%.
The gender situation is interesting, and probably needs to be explored more, as well. But by way of summary, the commercials about women bucking their husband’s influence and voting however they wanted didn’t really seem to work, as Trump earned 51% of votes from “married women” in both 2020 and 2024. But he gained votes among married men, 55% in 2020 to 60% in 2024. He also gained ground among singles, with a two percent jump among unmarried women (from 36% to 38%), and a four percent jump among unmarried men (45% to 49%).
The results regarding younger voters should be especially encouraging for conservatives; whereas 31% of 18- to 24-year-olds, accounting for about 10% of the electorate, voted for Trump in 2020, 42% of them did in 2024. This is especially noteworthy since here in 2024 Trump ran against a much younger and more diverse candidate than he did in 2020 (Biden as opposed to Harris). This confirms what I have been suggesting for about a year, specifically, that there is a large conservative upswing among our younger generations; many of them are not buying the nonsense they hear about CRT, DEI, gender confusion, and Marxist ideologies that they are force-fed in college or in the media.
We tend to consider that rural voters, compromising about 20% of the electorate, are very conservative; however, there was still some right-wise movement from this demographic, who jumped from 57% in 2020 to 63% in 2024 for Trump. Ditto military veterans, accounting for about 12% of the electorate; they leapt from 54% in 2020 to 65% in 2024 for Trump.
The numbers from the “swing” states or the “contested” states tell some interesting stories, as well. In 2020, Trump lost six of these seven swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona, winning only North Carolina. Yet, he won all seven of these states in 2024. That’s quite a swing, and many of these states have indeed drifted forth and back between the GOP and the Dems for decades. But some of these swings seem a bit suspect. Georgia, for instance, consistently supported the Republican presidential candidate since 1984, with the exception of 1992 and 2020. Similarly, Arizona supported the GOP candidate since 1952 with the exceptions of 1996 and, again, 2020. North Carolina, the one swing state that voted for Trump in 2020, has voted GOP since 1980 with the exception of 2008. This begins to undermine any narrative of swing states.
Also, many of these contested states were much less close in the 2024 election than we had been led to believe by polling and pundits; Trump won Georgia by about 115,000 votes, Michigan by over 80,000, Pennsylvania by over 120,000, and North Carolina by over 180,000. He won Nevada by over three percentage points and over 45,000 votes, and Arizona by over five percentage points and over 185,000 votes. Of these seven, only Wisconsin was close, Trump winning by just under 30,000 votes. It was, of course, the media which promoted these narratives about how close these contested states were in an effort to make us all more nervous and presumably also, to get more viewers at a time when the legitimacy of news agencies and networks is waning.
This is a common tactic of the media even if they know that a race isn’t as close as they are portraying. For instance, we were told in 2022 that the gubernatorial race in Georgia would be incredibly close; again, the apparently made-up narrative was that Georgia was a state that was going purple. Yet, Brian Kemp beat Stacey Abrams by 7.5% representing almost 300,000 votes. Similarly, we were told here in 2024 that the Texas US senate race between Ted Cruz and Colin Allred was close, and yet Cruz won by over 8.5% and by a 970,000-vote margin (almost a million votes!). Perhaps we’re so accustomed to the hype and drama from these media outlets that we rarely question how inaccurate the networks and their polling really are.
While we’re looking at the numbers, it is interesting to note a few other factors from the CNN exit polls. Apparently, 79% of voters had their minds made up before September regarding who they would vote for, and only about 7% made up their minds in the last week. Interestingly enough, many of those voters who were undecided close to the end broke for Trump; of the 3% of voters who made up their minds about a week before the election, 54% of those went for Trump and only 42% went for Harris.
The education of voters is also an interesting metric, and initially doesn’t look great: the more educated the individual, the more likely they were to vote for Harris. The 15% of voters who had never attended college voted for Trump 63% to 35%. The numbers then crisscross as one works up the education scale; for the 24% of voters with a Bachelor’s degree, Harris received 53% and Trump 45%, and that trend continues with those having earned advanced degrees (59% for Harris to 38% for Trump). But it is worth asking if this metric is linked to the intelligence of the voter or if it the result of the amount of indoctrination they have received from secular, state-run education.
We want to talk more about the conundrum of the Biden spike and also the potential woman problem that this draws attention to. But this article has already become longer than we intended, so we’ll pick it up with part 2 below.
CHURCH: An Argument for Multiple Elders, Part 2
We have written several articles about the church recently in editions of The Eclectic Web Journal, including an article in the September edition about having multiple elders at a church, which was “Part 1” of this series.
Many churches only have deacons and a pastor or two, or they believe that there should only be one elder in a church. This can create a President or CEO mentality for those who shepherd a church; that may work for some pastors, but for many people, that kind of prestige or authority will go to a person’s head.
In that previous article, we mentioned the many instances in Scripture that refer to elders in the plural, or that mention that there were multiple elders at a single church. Individual congregations are supposed to have multiple individuals overseeing the church perhaps in different ways and different capacities, but with equal authority. There should not be one person who is making all the important unilateral decisions, and there shouldn’t be a lone the-buck-stops-here person in a church.
In addition to the evidence for this presented in that previous article, we can continue by noting other examples of seeing multiple elders at a church. First, it is important to remember that the office of elders/ overseers/ pastors is seen as synonymous in several places, such as Acts 20:28: “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.” This statement from Paul is directed to the “elders” of the church (v. 17), and an exhortation for them to “oversee” the church and to be its “shepherds,” this last word being the same root word used for “pastor” in Eph 4:11.
Other verses imply that the office of elder, overseer and pastor are the same, and some of these are juxtaposed with the office of deacon (Phil 1:1; 1 Tim 3:1-13; Titus 1:7). Some of those holding the office of elder or overseer can be professional ministers, and may include an associate pastor or a youth minister; but just because they are a paid minister doesn’t mean that they have more authority than a lay elder. Perhaps the paid staff member has more responsibility or more involvement relative to a lay elder, but they should not have more authority.
Churches should be governed by multiple elders/ overseers/ pastors who are primarily concerned with the spiritual concerns of the congregation (Phil 1:1). Churches should also have multiple deacons, who attend to the material needs of the congregation, like benevolence, buildings and grounds, and finances. Like we have demonstrated, especially in the “part 1” article, as there should be multiple elders overseeing a single church, so also, the NT consistently pictures multiple deacons at individual churches.
It is helpful to appreciate the different responsibilities between these two offices. The office of elder/ overseer tends to speak to someone who manages the spiritual and teaching responsibilities of the church, while, from the inception of the office in Acts 6:1-6, deacons mainly helped with the physical and material needs of a church and congregation. Many people don’t think about all the material responsibilities and duties that exist at a local church. These include addressing benevolence needs by members, but also reviewing benevolence needs of visitors and those outside the church. Material needs of a church are as mundane as mowing the grass and changing light bulbs, ordering communion supplies and children’s curriculum, putting together budgets and the collection and management of donations.
Even with the NT pattern of having multiple elders and deacons at a church, a church can still have a pastor or elder who primary shoulders the preaching and teaching ministry, and serves as a part-time or full-time employee of the church. As we will discuss below, churches should avoid calling that individual “senior” or “head” pastor. He should just be the teaching elder or teaching pastor. Churches should avoid treating him like a CEO, president, or a king. This person isn’t untouchable, and should not be seen as “the Lord’s anointed,” a phrase that is usually used of kings in the Old Testament. No matter what this person’s title is, churches should avoid assigning too much administrative and executive power to this one individual. Again, multiple elders means that a lead pastor just has more responsibilities at a church than other elders, but they are all still equal in authority and rank.
But again, we want to get to the problem with the CEO model in many churches and the problem with calling someone a “senior pastor.” We’ll pick that up in part 3 of this series below.
ROMANS: Who’s In Charge Around Here? Romans 7:1-3
We have been doing this verse-by-verse study through Romans for several years now, even in previous articles of The Eclectic Kasper. We have now arrived at Romans 7, a controversial chapter in terms of interpretation and application. Having noted that believers are dead to sin and alive to God in Romans 6, Romans 7 takes the next step, especially for the Jewish believers in the audience, and answers what role the Law has in our growth in Christ and our identity with Him.
A constant tension in this chapter is Who’s in charge around here!? Are we under the Law, giving into the flesh, allowing sin to control us, or are we striving to live out the freedom that we now have as servants of Christ?
Paul will here in chapter 7 employ illustrations for the concept that was discussed in the last half of Romans 6, namely, every individual is ruled by law from birth until they are liberated from the law and they become servants to God. That is, people are never as free as they think they are.
He begins in Romans 7:1 noting that we run the risk of being “ignorant,” the verb agnoeo, from which we derive the word “agnostic.” Paul had used this exact form back in 6:3, asking rhetorically not simply if someone knew, as in, was intellectually aware of something. Rather, the use of the word here suggests that the audience has not fully explored and applied the implications of a truth. In this case, Paul expresses his doubt that they really understand all of the implications that people are bound by law from birth, but freed from the wages and condemnation of the law when they trust in Christ as their Savior.
Paul says that the law “rules over” or “has authority over” people, which is the verb kurieuo. The noun form of this word is kurios, meaning “sir” or “lord.” In fact, the previous chapter ends with the reference to Christ as “our Lord” (6:23). Thus 7:1 implicitly contrasts the lordship of law and sin with that of Christ and God. The rule of the law extends to the duration of the individual’s life. But as Paul mentioned in 6:23, death is not a release from mortality and sin, but rather, temporal and eternal death is the punishment for those who sin and have rejected the free gift of eternal life that comes exclusively through Christ.
Starting in v. 2, Paul appeals to marriage as an analogy of this principle; it is an illustration so common that even unmarried people can relate to it and appreciate the point Paul is trying to make. Upon marriage, the woman is bound to her husband. Mentioning the woman’s obligation here may bump up against some of our politically-correct sensibilities, but that shouldn’t obscure Paul’s point. In the ancient world the wife was seen as inferior to the man in terms of social standing and in many ancient contexts, in legal terms, also. That is, for Paul’s audience, the way a wife was bound to her husband was different from how a husband was bound to his wife. The former – the way a wife is bound to her husband – is a better analogy for the way that believers are under law or subservient to God.
The analogy is clear, and helpful; she is under her husband in a variety of ways until he dies. Once he is dead, her relationship with him is nullified. While memories persist, the legal and functional relationship is over on account of the husband’s death. The word katargeo, means “to render ineffective, nullify, cancel,” but in the passive, it means “to be released from, or cut off from.” Though used previously in Romans of nullifying something (3:3, 31; 4:14; 6:6), the word is used here in v. 2 and also in 6 in the passive voice for “being released” or “separated” from something. The passive also emphasizes how this has happened to the woman apart from her action or volition.
The analogy describes how the change of the husband’s status affects her status, as well. Whereas she previously had a close relationship with him, on account of his death, that relationship no longer exists, again, either legally or functionally. Who, then, is in charge? Who, then, is she under as a widow in ancient times?
Paul’s point in v. 3, then, is that when a woman joins to a different man than her original husband, her status as either an adulteress or as legitimately married is based on the living or death of her husband. If he is living still, then she becomes an adulterous through the act of joining with another. If he is dead, then, on account of the fact that she is released from the bond to him that the law places on her, she is free to pursue a different husband.
The value of this analogy is summed up by Joyce A. Little: “First, Paul is concerned with demonstrating that the law played a necessary role prior to the coming of Christ (hence the validity of the law governing the first marriage). Second, Paul wishes to use vv. 2-3 as an analogy demonstrating that death can change one’s relationship to the law” (Joyce A. Little, quoted in Leon Morris, Romans, 270). In light of Romans 6, the death here includes Christ’s death, but then also how we die to Christ, that is, how we appropriate the power and status of Christ’s death through faith, and come to appreciate our own new life in Christ (see, for instance, 6:4).
As with many of Jesus’ parables, it is wrong to make a one-to-one correspondence between a believer and each element of the analogy. Better to suggest that the believer’s experience is reflected in the totality of the analogy: 1) The initial husband’s relationship with the wife was severed by death, just as a believer’s relationship to the law was severed by death, either by Christ’s death, or by the death the believer dies in Christ, or both. 2) After the severing of this relationship through death, the believer now has freedom to be joined to a new and different spouse, whereas, to have done so previously, would be like adultery. That is, the believer is not now bound to and under the authority of both the law and Christ, but only to Christ; the law has no authority over the believer, and the believer need not grant any allegiance to the law.
Commentator Leon Morris notes the similarity of the relationships both between the believer and sin, which was more significant to the argument in chapter 6, and the believer and the law which is the point of the first half of ch. 7: “Paul has just argued that the believer is not under the rule of sin. Now he goes on to the further point that he is not under the rule of law. It is interesting that there are so many points of resemblance in the two treatments. Thus the believer has died to sin (6:2) and to law (7:4). He is free from sin (6:18) and from the law (7:3). He is ‘justified from sin’ (6:7) and discharged ‘from law’ (7:6). He walks in newness of life (6:4) and serves in newness of Spirit (7:6)” (Leon Morris, Romans, 270).
We will keep exploring this question as we work through Romans 7, but the point is Who is in charge of your life? If it is Law, then we don’t understand freedom we can have in Christ and the new Law of the church age. If flesh or sin is in charge, then we have to be aware of that, repent and forsake that tyranny, and allow Christ to be Lord of our lives. It is only by making Christ our Master that we can really experience the freedom to enjoy God’s grace and the salvation that Christ provides.
POLITICS: Subtle Stories in the Election Numbers, Part 2
In the part 1 of this article above, we discussed some of the numbers from the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, including some of the exit polling. We are suggesting that there are many interesting stories in these numbers for those who would honestly observe them and consider some of their implications. The problem that I raised in the previous article is what the 2024 election suggests about the 2020 election, and a big problem that the Dems may have as a result.
The 2024 election highlighted one of the biggest election stories in modern American history, which, ironically, came out of the 2020 cycle. That story that people are only now talking about is how Joe Biden allegedly won over 81 million votes in the November 2020 presidential election. As we pointed out at the time, this is an unprecedented turnout that demonstrated the presence of a huge story, or of a variety of noteworthy stories. But it didn’t seem like anyone took the time to present those stories or investigate these numbers.
To be clear, I am not taking this data and leaping to what some would consider a conspiracy theory. That is one of the problems with journalism today: it confuses the what with the why, or the observable data with an assumed conclusion.
The reality is that Biden’s 81 M (million) votes in 2020 represents an unprecedented and under-investigated spike relative to previous election cycles, or what I will henceforward refer to as the “Biden spike.” Again, that is not to say that it was or was not legitimate, again jumping to an assumed conclusion, but simply to note how amazing that result was relative to what had happened before. That 81 M represented not just a victory, but a shocking result relative to previous election cycles and including the most recent one in 2024.
The Biden spike broke a clear trend line from Hillary Clinton’s 65 M votes that she earned in 2016, Barack Obama’s 65 M votes in 2012, and his 69 M votes in 2008. And then we consider that Kamala Harris received 74 M votes in 2024, which is still a good performance, but closer to an expected trend line of Obama’s 69 million votes nor Hillary Clinton’s 65 million votes. How did Biden receive such a response from the electorate in 2020 when other candidates who generated far more enthusiasm from Democratic voters, like Obama and Hillary Clinton, garnered far fewer votes, in fact about 20% fewer?
There is a big story here that few are discussing. That said, I have recently heard others draw attention to the Biden spike. Some pundits only sheepishly mention it. The only exception is that I heard Clay Travis boldly discuss the Biden Spike in this level of detail on The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show on November 25. I finished this article before then, so it almost sounded like Clay was steeling my notes! However, I am grateful that others are independently noticing the same things that I am, and asking the same questions.
It must be admitted that Trump received a bump, too; in 2016, Trump earned almost 63M votes, and in 2020, he earned over 74M; that’s a delta of 11 million more votes. However, that is not necessarily a big surprise for a celebrity president who had veered into the populist lane. But we would expect some reasonable trend lines, wouldn’t we? After Trump’s jump up to 74 million votes in 2020, he received over 77 M in 2024; a reasonable three-million vote bump that could be accounted for by many things, including population increase, 2020 voter regret, and greater voter enthusiasm in a non-Covid year.
But again, the numbers from 2024 tell us an interesting story about 2020. As with Trump’s performance between 2020 and 2024, Harris’ 74M in 2024 represents a predictable trend from the votes in the high-60 millions received by Obama and Hillary in 2008, 2012, and 2016. Harris’ 74M in 2024 demonstrates that Biden’s 81 million-vote spike in 2020 was indeed unusual, unprecedented, and far off any expected, historical trends. What accounts for the Biden spike?
In historical studies, we often use the word “monocausal,” which just means that many events, wars, elections, conflicts, movements, etc., don’t owe their existence to only one reason. The German Protestant Reformation of the early sixteenth century, for instance, was not merely caused by antagonism against the pope. It was spurred by a renewed interest in ancient cultures from the Renaissance, one of the products of which was Erasmus’ Critical Greek New Testament published in 1516. Erasmus’ Greek New Testament was devoured by the early Reformers, and it is no coincidence that the Reformation’s formal beginning occurred a year later, in 1517, with Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses. Another reason why the Reformation took off when it did is the social unrest during this time, which fed the anti-clericalism, and there was also an apocalyptic anxiety that some of the Reformers leveraged. The Reformation was not monocausal, but many factors led to this critical church movement occurring when it did.
We could apply that same logic to the Biden spike; we don’t have to cater to a monocausal explanation for why Biden earned 16 M more votes than Hillary Clinton did just four years earlier, and 7 M more votes than what Harris earned four years later. I can completely accept that part of this delta is three or four or five million people who were brain-washed to hate Trump his four-year term. It is hard to calculate the role that Covid and Covid-anxiety played for the nation in November 2020. And of course, we can’t completely eliminate voter fraud as a possibility for this unusual spike; while many accusations of voter fraud have been debunked, many other attempts to categorically deny that there was any voter fraud have been met with appropriate investigative push-back.
Trump’s win in 2024 and Biden’s spike in 2020 hide interesting stories that don’t seem to have been thoroughly investigated by the media. If Biden legitimately earned sixteen-million more votes than in the previous election, we should all be investigating how that is possible, what campaign strategies, commercials, and grass-root efforts contributed to such a surge. Wouldn’t everybody on this planet want to know that?
But what about the “woman problem” that the Democrats seem to have? I know that the popular conception is that republicans are misogynistic. In fact, this sentiment was most recently voiced by Mark Cuban saying that around Trump there is a lack of “strong, intelligent women,” a statement for which he later apologized for in light of all the strong, intelligent women around Trump.
