Tim Pool blames 'tolerant and accepting' conservative Christians for America's decline
Are Christian conservatives to blame for America’s cultural decline?
The answer, at least according to podcaster Tim Pool: sort of.
Pool, who hosts the popular show “Timcast IRL,” made the comments during his Feb. 3 episode in which he pointed to Christian tolerance as playing a role in the rapid societal changes over the last few decades.
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During a segment in which he and journalist Charlie Spiering were discussing the Biden administration’s political strategy, Pool said the perception that Christians are “super hateful” has brought America to this point in history.
“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, 37, pointed to the history of Christianity in American politics and how conservatism paved the way for Evangelicals to ultimately compromise their values for political gain.
“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 added.
As an example, he cited the ongoing legal cases against former President Donald Trump, calling the Republican Party “impotent” for failing to respond to Democrats in kind.
“I mean Donald Trump gets sued, criminally charged, abused mercilessly, in these jurisdictions. Not a single Republican jurisdiction is countering,” he said. “I mean, maybe there's one or two small ones here, there, but where's West Virginia or Texas?”
Last March, during a podcast with GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and others, Pool linked increasing lawlessness 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 at the time.
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.
“Religious identification does not signal a static identity that individuals take on wholesale,” 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.”
