when someone prods you

 I was reading a chat board on line. The post was: "Evangelical" appears to be a synonym for "hypocrite." I replied, "no shit! i could elaborate on this, but people will be upset...".  Someone replied to me, "Please elaborate".  It took a while to organise some thoughts:

"John Calvin was the virtual founder of America." -- Leopold von Ranke

There are five main doctrines of Calvinism. Three of them (Unconditional Election, Irresistible Grace, Perseverance of the Saints) allow for total depravity (which is the first of the five). The three together say God alone chooses you, and gives you grace which cannot be undone. You are special, and can do anything without consequences. You have absolute license, shame and hypocrisy do not apply, ethics and morality are moot. As applied to the United States this becomes Manifest Destiny, and American exceptionalism. Being Protestants, they base this on 'sola scriptura', it is bible based fully and alone. The big problem with this is selective interpretation. An isolated quote is paired with other isolated quotes, and by illogic of unrelated premises any squirrelly conclusion is made. Someone not in the sect/cult looks at this and is astonished by the nonsense.

Calvinists are not alone in this sort of magical thinking. There is no one Calvinistic church, many of these call themselves 'Reformed', and they are individual by nation. The Scottish Reformed churches are the various Presbyterians, additionally many of the Baptist sects are calvinistic.

Now, the Pentecostal churches, some calling themselves 'Charismatic', are prone to private revelation to create new doctrines. One movement within them is having recent political influence, New Apostolic Reformation. Their beliefs are restorationist, dominionist, and Christofascist. Some of the latter overlaps with Seven Mountains Dominionism, which takes a sentence from Revelation, and another from the Prophets, and creates a political fantasy. Some within the Evangelicals (Baptists), and Pentecostalists follow this. What names are associated with this?, Rafael Cruz, and his son Rafael (Ted) Junior, Lauren Bobert, Paula White (Trump's spiritual advisor [guffaw, cough, guffaw] Paula White, and other wacko Trumpster preachers (including: Lance Wallnau, Julie Green). The new House Speaker [currently Mike Johnson] is rumoured to be in this group. They all talk of prophecy, anointing, and being ordained, and spiritual warfare.

That last paragraph was full of insanity. Restorationists (e.g. Joseph Smith who invented Mormonism and was running for US President, John Nelson Darby who invented 'the Rapture') believe all other churches are false from the beginning, they create their religion and say this was the original religion under Jesus and his first apostles. Dominionists believe their ideology ought to rule the country/world; that is a short hop to Christofascism. Many of these have self proclaimed prophets, and these prophets expect to be obeyed. Trumpsterism, Qanon fantasies, blend or duplicate these inanities and insanities. Of course, some of these are just charlatans, scoundrels, conmen, and grifters.