Evaluating Michael Rea’s Salon Article on Trump’s Evangelical “B****es”

Recently, I was made aware of an article on Salon from an evangelical philosopher named Michael Rea that is provocatively titled, “How the evangelical movement became Trump’s “bitch” — and yes, I know what that word signifies.” Many Christians may be shocked by the terminology, but it’s not like Salon would likely publish something nice about either Trump or Christians. Anyway, the article is interesting, and I am aware of Rea’s work. He’s a good philosopher, and I’ve benefited from reading several of his articles (I’d recommend reading his stuff on divine hiddenness as well as original sin). I am also not one of those Christians that is easily offended by cuss words, so I found the title amusing more than anything. Since I generally respect Rea as a thinker and also warned evangelicals that they should think twice about voting for Donald Trump, I gave the article a read. I’ll say this: While I am sometimes sympathetic to him, he lost me at several places because he often came off as bitter while painting with a really broad brush. I’m going to offer some critiques for what I think to be a problematic article that is full of unsupported assertions and generalized attacks.