Well said, Stephen, and having had the same experience you describe, I understand what you mean. My birth family in the Deep South have almost all passed, but to a person, they would have continued to follow the racist and xenophobic religion that right-wing evangelical “Christianity” has become. They were raised to believe in “American Exceptionalism”, which, to them, actually meant “White American Exceptionalism”, and they simply could not accept the very concept of true equality.

Even if Trump were to win (which would be a disaster for the nation and the world), the power and influence of racist white evangelicals is slowly, irresistibly diminishing in the face of demographic change. By the time our children are our age, those same racists will be a fringe group. The only question is whether they’ll have been able to complete their quest for an American gotterdammerung, their seeming demand for the immolation of the American society that no longer exists to serve them.