I read an editorial a while ago from an Exvangelical about why Evangelical Christians in particular seem to believe the virus won’t hurt them. The editorial’s take was that the belief in the core miracle of the Resurrection made them think other miracles were possible.

Well...

I think they’re absolutely right in their observation that Evangelicals in particular are prone to magical thinking about this, but I think they’re pretty off the mark about the Resurrection and the general belief that miracles are theoretically possible sometimes.

And if you want to see proof of that, consider how many other people in the country have some form of belief system that admits the possibility of the supernatural or miraculous, who are distancing and wearing masks and taking this very seriously.

It’s about something else.

People can compartmentalize. We’re *built* to do that. We don’t always, but we’re perfectly capable of doing so.

The problem is far more Weberian than just “miracles are theoretically possible”.

It has to do with the notion that good things happen to people who are favored by God and bad things do not happen to them, and if you are Good and God likes you, you will be protected from bad things.

It’s basically Calvinist, which is very theologically Evangelical.

Why am I pointing this out? Because it’s the core of like a hundred gajillion other problems, especially the fact that we have essentially no welfare state and a laughable health care system.

If bad things happen to you, that’s how we know you’re bad and God doesn’t like you, and if you’re Good you are special and will be protected. It’s really that simple.

So it *is* magical thinking, but it’s a specific *type* of magical thinking with huge political consequences.

And—again, this is Weberian—it’s not just Evangelicals who maintain this kind of magical thinking. It has to a degree been secularized, and just as it’s very Evangelical, it’s also very capitalist.

Good things happen to deserving people, bad things do not.

So of course all these Republicans were in this bubble of magical thinking where they’d be protected and safe, because they’re Good People and something like this doesn’t happen to Good People.

So it’s absolutely Christian, but it’s a particular brand of toxic theology which has infected (pun intended) an entire political movement, and we need to understand that because it’s the key to understanding why a huge number of other things have gone so wrong.

“They think that way because they’re Christians and believe in miracles” isn’t *wrong*, precisely, but it’s diagnosing only about 30% of the problem.

And getting them to stop believing in miracles would not fix that problem.