In a recent episode, popular political commentator and podcast host Tim Pool suggested that “tolerant” Christian conservatives are responsible for America’s cultural decline.
On a Feb. 3 segment of his show, Timcast IRL, Pool and journalist Charlie Spiering sat down to discuss the Biden administration’s political strategy. During that episode, Pool said that the increasing public perception of Christians as “super hateful” has “brought America to this point in history.”
Christian tolerance, Pool said, has played a contributing role in the rapid sociocultural changes over the last few decades.
“It’s really funny how the Left says Christians are all super hateful and all that,” said Pool. “And I’m thinking this because I’m like, you know who I blame for all the stuff happening right now? Where we are in my generation? I blame Christian conservatives.”
“And it’s because they’re too good of people, and they were very tolerant and accepting of so many really bad people that they kept acting in good faith and allowed these far leftists and communists to infiltrate institutions.”
Pool, a 37-year-old millennial, has witnessed a massive shift of morality within the U.S. in his lifetime. He attributes this to the history of Christianity in American politics. Conservatism forged the path for Evangelicals to eventually compromise their values out of passivity or for political gain, he believes.
“And being good people, they’re like, ‘Well, you know, we should give these people a fair chance,’ and now you’ve got communists running over everything,” he said.
Pool cited the endless legal cases against former President Donald Trump as an example of his point. The Republican Party is “impotent” for failing to respond to Democrats in Trump’s defense, he said.
“I mean Donald Trump gets sued, criminally charged, abused mercilessly, in these jurisdictions. Not a single Republican jurisdiction is countering,” Pool said. “I mean, maybe there’s one or two small ones here, there, but where’s West Virginia or Texas?”
Last year, during a podcast with members including GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Pool associated the rise of both nonviolent and violent crime in America with the sharp decline in Christianity.
“If every single person in this country was a devout Christian … you’d need no laws and no police,” Pool said.
“Despite the talking point often espoused in mainstream media, academia and elsewhere that Christians lack empathy toward non-Christian groups, a 2019 study found political conservatives who are highly religious are as likely as political liberals to report similar levels of empathy,” The Christian Post pointed out in a recent article.
“Religious identification does not signal a static identity that individuals take on wholesale,” study researchers said. “Instead, religiosity is incorporated into the lives of individuals whose identities are already raced, classed, and gendered; it is intersectional, and as a result, religiosity has a variety of interpretations and uses in everyday life.”
“A June 2023 Gallup poll found double-digit increases in conservative social ideology among middle-aged adults between the ages of 30 and 64, along with a ‘modest increase in conservative social ideology among young adults,’” The Christian Post reported.
