What’s really behind Republicans wanting a swift reopening? … Gary Abernathy asks in the Washington Post, and then answers Evangelicals.

I should have stopped when he promised to remind readers “what, exactly, makes an evangelical” — a vexed question that remains no less vexed after his column. The secret, you see, is that Evangelicals have (you’d better sit down if prone to fainting) a “literal belief in eternal salvation — eternal life.”

You see (God help me, but I don’t), Evangelicals are twice as likely to be Republicans as Democrats, likelier than Catholics to think that the Bible is the word of God, likelier than Catholics to think the Bible should be taken literally, which is a proxy for believing in eternal life, which is a proxy for fatalism, which is a proxy for wanting the title’s “swift reopening.”

Q. Freakin’ E. D. Lord knows I’ve “got issues” with my former co-religionists, the Evangelicals, but this is nonsense on stilts.

Abernathy preemptively excuses his own nonsense:

[O]ur reluctance to discuss religion beyond its basic political impact often results in skirting honest evaluations. Let’s try anyway.

He should have stayed reluctant. Take it from a non-Evangelical who somehow manages nonetheless to believe in eternal life.

My stance on “swift reopening,” by the way, is “For once, I’m going to stay out of other people’s fights. I’m retired and this is just a nuisance to me, not an existential threat.”