https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/evangelical-trump-christians-politics/620469/

Evangelical Christians have been held together more by political orientation and sociology than they have by a common theology. This has set them up for a schism which has been exacerbated by Donald J. Trump, COVID-19, and social changes.

Similar to Kurt's quote, "We go to church to see and be seen", too many churches are focused on entertainment and being an ongoing institution that they aren't focusing on their core mission. This is causing problems in their overall identity.

Time at church and in religious study is limited, but cable news, social media, and other distractions are always on and end up winning out.

People are more likely to change their church because of politics than to change their politics because of church.

The dichotomy of maleness and femaleness compound the cultural issues of the evangelical church.

Southernization of the Church

Pastors leaving the profession due to issues with a hostile work environment. Some leaving because parishioners are organizing and demanding they be fired.

Peter Wehner looks at the rifts that are appearing in the Christian evangelical movement in America, some are issues that have been building for a while, while others are exaggerated by Donald J. Trump, the coronavirus, the culture wars, political news, political beliefs, and and hypocrisy.

Gallacher, J., & Bright, J. (2021). Hate Contagion: Measuring the spread and trajectory of hate on social media. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/b9qhd

Overall, N. (2020). Sexist Attitudes and Family Aggression during COVID-19 Lockdown. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/p23bv

COVID-19 Crisis Fuels Hostility against Foreigners. COVID-19 and the Labor Market. (n.d.). IZA – Institute of Labor Economics. Retrieved August 4, 2020, from https://covid-19.iza.org/publications/dp13250/

Translation: they do not see the audience as a problem to be addressed, but an assumed set of factors. Now I will continue to talk about the problem for a few more pages and only respond with an answer at the very end.

What implications does this have for all the weeks we were worrying about a hostile audience? If you can't address that problem, then why go through such lengths? What has this all been about?

This seems like quite an understatement, given the last sentence of the next paragraph. Do we have any historical info regarding the ways the hostility of the audience manifested itself? I imagine it must have been fairly extreme to force her to leave the city. For example, was it heckling, attempts to speak over her, jeers and boos to drown out her words, perhaps even a dramatic attempt to pull her from the stage? It seems like the reactions of such hostile audiences offer important historical information, as it should be kept in mind when we consider how women and people of color first needed to shape a type of rhetoric that would quell a hostile audience.

As an example from a different historical moment, there are conflicting reports of Sojourner Truth's reception at the Seneca Falls Convention. Some reports imply that she was heckled, or at least that there were interjections from the audience, while other reports offer an opposing narrative that present Truth as largely supported by the audience and not decried at all. The hostility or receptivity of the audience (and the way such information is mentioned in accounts) shapes the way we can interpret Truth's oration and its effects.