Christians have been predicting Jesus’ return for two thousand years, and they haven’t given up yet. In fact, evangelicals today still insist that the glorious apocalypse is closer than ever.
Why haven’t they lost hope? Why haven’t they gotten discouraged by the number of accumulated prophetic failures? Why don’t they take a dose of humility from all these previous generations who lived, aged, grayed up and died out while continuously predicting that the Rapture would happen to them?
When optimism becomes toxic
The enduring appeal of religion is that it provides comfort in a chaotic world. It promises believers that they’ll triumph, no matter the circumstances. When a faith is downtrodden and oppressed, it promises its members that God will enact justice on the oppressors. When a faith is powerful and dominant, it reassures its members that they’ll be on top forever because God loves them best.
We all have an optimism bias. we all want to believe that things will work out for us. It’s a built-in part of human psychology. By itself, there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, I’d argue that optimism is essential. It’s what gives us the strength to persevere when times are hard.
READ: The revolutionary power of optimism
The harm comes when humble hope transforms into arrogant, dogmatic faith. When that happens, optimism becomes toxic and dangerous.
This can happen in one of two ways. One is the belief that God will make the world better, so there’s no need for us to do anything. There’s no reason to fight for justice or help the needy or fix problems when we see them. Just sit back and wait for God to come and fix everything.
The other, just as destructive, is the belief that if you’re doing what God wants, you can’t lose. No need to make realistic plans, to temper your expectations, or be willing to compromise. Just demand everything you want and nothing you don’t, plow blindly ahead without paying heed to obstacles, and victory is assured. Even if your goal is wildly improbable or flat-out impossible, God will miraculously come through to reward you for your faith.
The contrapositive of this mindset, of course, is that if you do lose, it’s because your faith wavered. This sets up an intense groupthink pressure in circles that hold this belief. Everyone has to make an elaborate public pledge of fealty to the cause. No one wants to be the lone skeptic. That’s a sure pathway to getting blamed and ostracized if things don’t go your way.
With this in mind, let’s talk about the 2020 election.
“God wins”… except when he doesn’t
Donald Trump’s shock victory in 2016 confounded pundits and forecasters (including me, if I’m being honest). Even though he lost the popular vote decisively, the Electoral College made it possible for him to squeak through with just a few thousand votes in key states.
To white evangelical Christians, who are predisposed to favor thuggish strongmen, Trump was the dream candidate. They loved his shamelessly aggressive misogyny, his embrace of white supremacy, his contempt for expertise, and his willingness to call for violence against groups they saw as their enemies. They saw his victory as divine providence.
Naturally, the Christians who worshipped Trump with golden-calf devotion were sure he’d pull it off again in 2020. They came up with one reason after another why he’d triumph. Imbalanced media coverage and skewed polls made it seem like he was ahead. One self-proclaimed prophet after another claimed to have certain knowledge from God that he’d win an overwhelming victory. On election night, they clung to the “red mirage” (in-person votes, which favor Republicans, are counted before mail-in votes, which favor Democrats), making it seem Trump was in the lead at first.
Of course, their predictions came to naught. Joe Biden won, and it wasn’t close. All those “prophets” wound up with egg on their faces.
The stark fact of their loss, clashing with the psychology of inevitability, sent right-wingers into a tailspin of cognitive dissonance. For months after Biden was inaugurated, QAnon-tinted evangelicals spouted increasingly deranged fantasies about how Trump was still the real president and would soon step forth. Others embraced the Big Lie that Trump had won and the election was stolen from him. The total lack of evidence for this theory mattered not at all.
Even now, the “prophets” struggle to cope with their defeat. Some, like Kat Kerr, are rewriting history and claiming they knew all along what would happen. Others, like Hank Kunneman and Robin Bullock, refuse to this day to admit that their predictions failed.
The one constant, as this article from Christianity Today points out, is that the (very) few who admitted their error and apologized “got more backlash for repenting than for getting it wrong.” As always, it’s the skeptics who get the blame.
We’ve heard this song before
With the 2024 election coming up, we should know just what to expect. The religious right and its soothsayers will confidently predict victory. They’ll say that this time, for sure, God has revealed to them what’s going to happen. They’ll ignore their past record of blunders, errors and losses, confident that you’ll overlook it too.
Just as we’d expect from this pattern, they’re already seizing on even the slenderest evidence as proof of forthcoming victory. You can expect to hear about Trump’s wins in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, for example, and how they show that the nation wants him as president again.
But you can already glimpse the holes in this tattered logic. The Iowa and New Hampshire results really show that the Republican party is conflicted and divided. Trump won both, but only by the slimmest majorities—not by overwhelming margins. He isn’t getting nearly the level of support that an incumbent-in-all-but-fact should receive. Even among Republican voters, a substantial minority appear to be tired of him and would prefer someone else. If Democrats can peel off some of these disgruntled conservatives, or if they just stay home, the effect on the general election could be enormous.
As election season approaches, keep this attitude in mind. In headlines and TV interviews, that Republican voters and pundits will confidently predict total victory yet again. When they do, don’t get nervous, don’t give in to premature feelings of pessimism. Don’t conclude that they know something you don’t. Think of the psychology of inevitability. Think of how they always have an extreme degree of overconfidence, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of the evidence. And think of all the times they’ve been beaten before, and all those reckless predictions have come to naught. We can do it again.