The answer is that the people involved live in a bubble,
almost entirely surrounded by like-minded people and hence having little or no
contact with alternative views of the world. Republican voters who watched Fox
News were genuinely amazed by the recent election result - primarily because they
had accepted the Fox News opinion polls as accurate. On Election Night even
when it was clear to almost everybody else that their side had lost they
remained in denial.
It is pretty much the same with most, if not all, of the non-mainstream
Protestant splinter groups. Members find that their friendship groups, their
social life and even their political views have foundations in their particular
brand of religion. You might expect that
most Christians of all denominations would be politically to the left of centre
and heavily into the dignity of man and human rights. In practice many stalwarts of these smaller
fringe churches are almost unendurably pompous - appearing to outsiders as almost totally indifferent
to the bigger picture.
Nothing is too much trouble for them when it comes to
helping member of their own tiny clique but when it comes to the “Big Society” far
too many of them simply do not want to get involved. Or if they do want to get
involved they think that they should wield influence out of all proportion to
their tiny numbers. To them democracy isn’t about the counting of heads but the
weighing of heads - with their heads counting for vastly more than those “poor
unfortunates” existing outside their personal bubble.
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