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We need more attention to the 'Moral Commonsense' that White Evangelicalism creates and perpetuates. Critics of Evangelicals often focus on their doctrines (eg, biblical inerrancy), but these are less significant for society than its ethical commonsense. 1/
What do I mean by Moral Commonsense? @somejonhenry offers some examples in this thread about a RBL review: the idea that the bad of antisemitism or proselytizing violence pales in comparison with the good of someone 'faithfully preaching the Word.' 2/ https://twitter.com/somejonhenry/status/1296889188487442436?s=20
Moral Commonsense has to do with what issues just feel or seem to people like the really significant ones vs. which ones don't. This is where the magic for shaping society happens - much more so than debates over Inerrancy, Premillenialism, or Creationism. 3/
If a Moral Commonsense makes the everyday violence, exploitation, and suffering that certain kinds of people experience invisible or less important, it creates folks who think about their own society, leaders, and fellow people the same way. The structural becomes invisible. 4/
Examples from White Evangelical history: When professors and pastors downplay their favorite 18th through 21st century theologian's support of slavery or segregation “because when it comes to the Gospel and faithfulness to The Word, he got the most important things right." 5/
I heard this kind of trash countless times while a student @WestminsterTS from professors, classmates, and texts assigned approvingly. Eventually I disagreed, but felt awkward and had trouble imagining legitimate paths of critique...because of the moral commonsense I inhabited 6/
Or when pastors preach sermons on ethically monstrous passages (eg, God commanding genocide or the kidnap-rape of defeated enemies) and downplay the evil through victim blaming (the Canaanites deserved it) or saying it wasn't that bad, all to uphold Biblical moral authority. 7/
Or when Evangelical leaders reject #BLM now or 'Social Gospel' from the 19th-century-to-now because they focus on less important stuff (eg, racism, deadly inequality, people suffering) instead of what really matters (Inerrancy, Eternal Suffering in Hell, Heteronormativity). 8/
But try this on for size: If your theology results in saying that support of enslaving other humans (and peddling lies about slavery to downplay its violence) is less important when evaluating your team, something has gone horribly wrong! 9/
Sermons and role models create such moral commonsense. It results in, eg, White Evangelical instincts to police sexual purity and protect powerful men from the appearance of violating purity, but not to dismantle social norms that actually harm women. 10/ https://religiondispatches.org/metoo-and-the-problem-with-the-the-billy-graham-rule/
A moral commonsense shaped by sermons that overlook sexual violence in the Bible or blame women in it for their abuse prepares people to instinctively downplay or not see rape-culture. Might this matter for which leaders they elect?! See @DrMJCWarren 11/ https://www.shilohproject.blog/sexual-violence-and-rape-culture-in-the-new-testament/
In other words, the moral commonsense nurtured in White Evangelicalism matters, but in ways that seem invisible, so we don't talk about it. It harms society by shaping people to notice & be affectively activated by 'personal' morality, Family Values, and sensational things. 12/
Evangelical moral commonsense thus renders everyday, structural, or policy-driven evils not visible by comparison. This makes for folks who are fine with a society that inflicts such suffering and refuses to change it, because these things aren't the real or noticeable evils. 13/
Such moral commonsense prefers hysteria about the sensational that distracts from the exploitative ordinary. See @mpgPhD on how obsession w/ sexual transgressions in minority-religions facilitates, instead of counteracting, prevalent cultures of abuse. 14/ https://bookshop.org/books/abusing-religion-literary-persecution-sex-scandals-and-american-minority-religions/9781978807785
Or as @StephanieCoontz argues in her epic book: mythmaking about the decline of 'the traditional family' and "Stories about horrific but uncommon crimes can distract us from more widespread and preventable problems"... 15/ https://bookshop.org/books/the-way-we-never-were-american-families-and-the-nostalgia-trap/9780465098835
As @StephanieCoontz also demonstrates, the moral fixation on 'Traditional' family, sexuality, and gender roles does not "counteract ... political and economic inequities ... Instead, it justified abstention from social reform and toleration of economic injustice." 
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This is why moral panics based on realities that are evil (eg, child abuse) do more harm than good and are often made-up (google Satantic Ritual Abuse or ask @mpgPhD). They reinforce moral commonsense that masks more prevalent (and often, actually existing) cultures of abuse. 17/
It's not that White Evangelicalism is fully responsible for a world wherein a QAnon supporter can carry a GOP House district, but its moral commonsense can downplay her racism. Some voters can instead feel, "At least QAnon hates child sexual abuse!" 18/ https://www.npr.org/2020/08/12/901628541/qanon-supporter-who-made-bigoted-videos-wins-ga-primary-likely-heading-to-congre
Just for fun, let's articulate the basic problem in evangelical, Bible-quoting idiom: "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!" (Isa 5:20). 19/
Public commentators easily get distracted by the sensational, if you will, content of White Evangelical theology and overlook the societally devastating effects of its moral commonsense. But that's why power that operates invisibly is so effective. /Thread
