Americans and nostalgic, religious twaddle…

[KTJ]

from The Washington Post....

How nostalgia for white Christian America drove
so many Americans to vote for Trump

In Andy Griffith's rural North Carolina home town,
people wish life were more like the Mayberry of TV.

By SARAH PULLIAM BAILEY | 7:00AM EST - Thursday, January 05, 2017


People make their way down Main Street in Mount Airy. — Photograph: Logan Cyrus/The Washington Post.

MOUNT AIRY, NORTH CAROLINA — From a perch on Main Street, the home town of actor Andy Griffith looks this day like it was plucked right out of the television show that bears his name. And it was.

Residents and tourists from far-flung states mill along the thoroughfare, past the quaint low-slung shops made of Mount Airy's famous white granite and named, like Floyd's City Barber Shop, for references in “The Andy Griffith Show”, the folksy comedy set in the idyllic fictional small town of Mayberry that first aired in 1960.

And yet even as this city of about 10,000 nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains fills its coffers by selling nostalgia, many of its residents would agree with the now-popular saying “We're not in Mayberry anymore.”

If only the real Mount Airy, which has experienced decades of economic and social decline, were like the Mayberry facade, muses Mayor David Rowe. If only his city and the rest of America could return to the 1950s again.

“Now it's about secular progressivism, not the values you get out of this book,” like honesty and hard work, said Rowe, 72, jabbing his finger at the leather Bible on his office desk.


A Marine Corps corporal stands with an American flag after the Veterans Day parade in downtown Mount Airy.
— Photograph: Logan Cyrus/The Washington Post.

But as Donald Trump prepares to move into the White House, Rowe and many of his constituents are hoping for a return to the past.

“We're going to hold him to it,” said Brad Thomas, 42, who used to work as an engineer building turbine blades for power plants before his job was moved to Mexico.

A yearning for an earlier time, especially prevalent in rural American towns and cities like Mount Airy, helped spur white evangelical Christians to vote overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. For these voters, the desire for change also could be viewed as a desire to change back, to what they perceive as a more wholesome and prosperous time, when high-paying manufacturing jobs were plentiful, white Protestants were indisputably in charge and same-sex marriage and the Black Lives Matter movement were unthinkable.

Seventy-four percent of white evangelicals believe American culture has mostly changed for the worse since the 1950s — more than any other group of Americans — compared with 56 percent of all whites, according to a 2016 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute. In sharp contrast, 62 percent of African Americans and 57 percent of Hispanic Americans think the culture has changed for the better, the survey said.

With his promise to “Make America Great Again,” Trump appealed directly to this sense of dispossession, and 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for him, according to exit polls.

“You think back to the 1990s, and conservative Christians could throw around the phrase ‘moral majority’, and there was a kernel of truth to that,” said Robert P. Jones, CEO at PRRI and author of “The End of White Christian America”. “Even in 2008, they could say the country is on our side on [same-sex marriage], and that's changed so quickly in this last decade. The election hit on fundamental questions about what America is and should be.”

Tourism isn't enough

Scissors the size of gardening shears hang from a coat rack in the mayor's office. They are reserved for Rowe's primary job of cutting ribbons, he said, and have been used a lot downtown, where just a few empty storefronts remain on Main Street. An old-fashioned sheriff's squad car drives tourists for $35, stopping at local favorites and ending at Andy Griffith's childhood home.

Visitors to Surry County spent $116.62 million in 2015, compared with $66 million 12 years ago, according to Jessica Icenhour Roberts, who heads tourism partnerships for the county, whose largest city is Mount Airy.

But Mount Airy cannot live on tourism alone, the mayor said.

“We try to live the good old days, but it's hard,” Rowe said. Just down the street from a bronze statue of Griffith and a museum dedicated to his memory, out of sight of the boutiques selling Norman Rockwell and Thomas Kinkade artwork, sit many dilapidated textile mills that have closed in the past decade. From early 2000 to about 2010, about 9,000 private-sector jobs were lost when factories that made clothes went overseas.

Three of the economic pillars symbolized on the city seal — tobacco leaves, a chair representing furniture makers, a spool of yarn for the textile mills — are largely relics of the past. Now, granite is really the only thing left, the mayor said. The city is home to the world's largest open-face granite quarry, which continues to provide a boost to the economy and has earned Mount Airy the moniker of “The Granite City.”


Mayor David Rowe poses for a portrait outside of his home in Mount Airy. — Photograph: Logan Cyrus/The Washington Post.


Just off Main Street in downtown Mount Airy are defunct mills left over from a once-thriving textile industry.
— Photograph: Logan Cyrus/The Washington Post.

Despite the steady stream of tourists, business owners are still struggling to create new jobs that will attract a younger generation, said Lizzie Morrison, 30, who runs an art studio and is the Main Street coordinator with Mount Airy Downtown.

Morrison said the city's younger residents tend to be socially liberal, while most in the older generations look to the past. That tension makes it harder for someone like her to push for new ideas, she said.

“You deal with a lot of white middle-aged men who might call you ‘Sweetie’ and belittle you a little bit,” she said. “It's interesting to navigate that in a small community in trying to create jobs and be taken seriously.”

A group of developers has been working on a project to redevelop an old mill, Morrison said, but the proposal has moved slowly because of resistance from residents. Similarly, Vann McCoy, who runs a whiskey shop called Mayberry Spirits, said that residents recently opposed a traffic roundabout because there is no traffic circle visible on “The Andy Griffith Show”.

Meanwhile, some residents said they are having a hard time finding the kind of skilled manufacturing jobs available in the past.

Thomas, who blames the loss of his $75,000-a-year factory job on Obama, now makes $18,000 working in his friend's gun store and pawnshop. He is hopeful Trump will bring jobs back.

His colleague, Dreama Staples, 53, said people are bringing in their prized possessions to sell so they can buy groceries and gas. At 4.8 percent, the unemployment rate in Surry County is similar to the national figure, but Staples said that finding full-time work with benefits is difficult. She said she has grown angry over what she considers government over-reach.

“We're losing control of our freedoms,” Staples said. “The government was taking away our rights. Taxes are higher, our jobs are gone, and it just feels less Christian.”

Memories at odds with facts

Many Mount Airy residents applauded the president-elect's promise to revoke the Johnson Amendment, which effectively bars pastors from endorsing a candidate from the pulpit, Rowe said. They were heartened by his suggestion that Christians will be able to once again see “Merry Christmas” signs in department stores.

But the mayor acknowledges that the 1950s and '60s were not idyllic for all Americans. He wouldn't, for example, want to go back to the days when there were separate water fountains at the local Sears for whites and blacks. At the same time, he said, African Americans often bring hardship on themselves. Asked to explain what he meant, he amended the statement to mean young blacks.

“When you're my age and you see an African American boy with pants at their knees, you can't appreciate them,” he said, noting that he would never employ someone who dressed that way. “I'm worried about when a person chooses to dresses like that, what kind of effect will that person have on society.” He noted that the Hispanics he has hired to work at his construction company are hard workers. He doesn't encounter people who aren't white in social settings much because folks tend to self-segregate, he said. Mount Airy is 84 percent white, 8.2 percent black and 6.7 percent Hispanic, according to 2010 Census data.


A Trump flag hangs inside The Gift Box off Main Street in Mount Airy. — Photograph: Logan Cyrus/The Washington Post.

Not everyone is nostalgic for the 1950s.

Ron Jessup, 68, who grew up in Mount Airy during that era, found the place generally friendly then, he said — as long as he and other blacks obeyed the racist laws and social mores of the time.

If African Americans went to the theater, they sat upstairs, he said. If they went to the restaurants, they avoided the counter. “We understood what was considered our place,” said Jessup, who is retired from his job as a high school principal in nearby Winston-Salem. Even now, all five Surry County commissioners are white.

Fictional Mayberry only represented part of the Mount Airy story because it only portrayed a white America, Jessup said.

White residents tend to view the city's history through rose-colored glasses, he said. Even Andy Griffith said the show wasn't based on his home town, Jessup noted. Indeed, in a 1998 television interview, Griffith said the idea of Mayberry came from the producers. “I've argued about this too long. I don't care,” he said of people in Mount Airy. “Let them think what they want to think.” Andy Griffith never returned to live in his home town either, dying in 2012 at his coastal home in Dare County.

Ironically, when the show first aired in 1960, the intent was to hark back to an even earlier era — the 1930s, Griffith has said.

As for Trump, Jessup believes his “Make America Great Again” slogan was code for “take America back again,” and a reaction to President Obama's election.

“Sometimes we use Christianity when it's convenient for what we want,” Jessup said. “You can't allow someone to have racist remarks and then go to church and talk about Jesus as the center of your life.”

God and country

When she travels with her pastor husband, Thresa Tucker hands out an evangelistic tract that uses “The Andy Griffith Show” as an entry point for talking about Jesus. When they return home to Mount Airy, she said, she is reminded of how good they have it, pointing out the red barns that dot views of the Blue Ridge.

Tucker and her husband, David, said they voted for Trump because they want a more limited federal government. They mentioned social issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and school prayer.


White Plains Baptist Church Pastor David Tucker and his wife, Thresa, stand in the front of the sanctuary. A painting can be seen
above their baptismal pool. — Photograph: Logan Cyrus/The Washington Post.

The Tuckers were also dismayed when their health insurance bill skyrocketed. Before Obamacare, they had no health insurance and paid out of pocket. Their monthly bill will rise from $115 a month now to $435 next year, Thresa Tucker said.

Many of those who have lost jobs seek help at White Plains Baptist Church, where her husband is preacher. But not all who seek help are worthy of it, she said. The church has to be a good steward of its money, so there are criteria for assistance, and she asks whether people attend church regularly. African Americans who have voiced concerns over what Trump will do for the poor would have a different perspective if they tried harder to help themselves, she said.

“I think black people think they're owed something,” she said. “I think if they acted differently people would be apt to help them.” She later added that some white people expect handouts, too.

“I believe Trump will get people back to working,” she said.

David Tucker said people resent it when the government tries to supplant the role of local ministries in helping those in need. “Don't try to change us into something like New York,” he said. “All we really want is for the government to leave us alone and to worship the way we want to.”

Nostalgia for Christian America

After settling into a bright blue booth at Olympia Family Restaurant, Rowe said he has a lot to be thankful for. He has a good job, a wife, two kids, one grandchild and another on the way. He has a beautiful home near the country club with a view of the mountains.

But he notes that while his home town looks picturesque from the outside, it has faced some of the same issues as urban areas, including drugs and divorce. Things might have turned out differently if religion had maintained its role in the culture, he suggested.

People just aren't committed to church, anymore, he said. The church he attends used to attract up to 600 people on a Sunday in the 1960s, but is lucky to get a third of that now. Young people leave for college and come back with more progressive, secular values, he said.


John Eaton, from Flat Rock, North Carolina, holds up a sign on the corner of Pine and Main streets in downtown Mount Airy.
— Photograph: Logan Cyrus/The Washington Post.

Even so, as the man he voted for is about to take office, Rowe is a bit wary. For one thing, he said, he does not want to have to defend Trump for the next four years.

“If I've learned anything while being a mayor,” he said, “you have to think before you speak. I'm not sure Donald Trump has learned that.”

If Trump does manage to “make America great again,” Rowe said it will involve preventing the government from encroaching on religion.

Christianity has come under attack in America, he said. “It's subtle, not in your face, but that's the way Satan works,” he said.

• Sarah Pulliam Bailey is a religion reporter for The Washington Post, covering how faith intersects with politics, culture and … everything.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related media:

• VIDEO: How Trump appealed to white, evangelical voters

www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/how-nostalgia-for-white-christian-america-drove-so-many-americans-to-vote-for-trump/2017/01/04/4ef6d686-b033-11e6-be1c-8cec35b1ad25_story.html

[pim]

Interesting article. Your dismissive "twaddle" shows that you're so wrapped up in your own phony sense of left-liberalism - phony because you're not a leftist's bootlace and you ain't no liberal either - and arrogant faux superiority to these people that you just don't get it.

Now it doesn't matter a damn if a kiwi or an Australian doesn't understand why these people voted for Trump. But the Democrats in the US had better get a handle on this - and quick smart!

[KTJ]

Christianity has come under attack in America, he said. “It's subtle, not in your face, but that's the way Satan works,” he said.

And as well as a god delusion, they also believe the satan delusion inside their heads.

No wonder they are dumb enough to elect somebody like Trump to be their Prez.

America is “the laughing stock of the entire world” alright!

[pim]

Jan 7, 2017 9:07:02 GMT 10 KTJ said:

Christianity has come under attack in America, he said. “It's subtle, not in your face, but that's the way Satan works,” he said.

And as well as a god delusion, they also believe the satan delusion inside their heads.

If you believe in the first, then it follows that you'll believe in the second. Mind you not all Christians embrace the absolutist position on Satan that Western biblical literalists do. The Nestorians are an ancient form of Christianity that first arose in Constantinople in ancient times and fled persecution by heading beyond the borders of the Roman Empire to the Zoroastrian East in Central Asia where they flourished - even under Islam which supplanted Zoroastrianism. It was in ancient pre-Islamic Afghanistan that Nestorian Christianity encountered Buddhism. By all accounts it was a peaceful and harmonious encounter. From Chinese sources we learn that Nestorianism had reached China which explains why, when Marco Polo reached China centuries later the Chinese had heard of Christianity. Nestorian Christianity still exists today although, sadly, because of Islamic persecution in its Central Asian homeland many of them have gone as refugees to the United States. There are Nestorians in Australia too. Probably in NZ as well. Mind you under Dutton they probably get short shrift here.

So what do Nestorians believe regarding Satan that sets them apart from Western biblical literalists? Mainly that Hell isn’t eternal and that Judgement Day will really be Reconciliation Day where God and Satan kiss & make up.

Nice. I like that one!

No wonder they are dumb enough to elect somebody like Trump to be their Prez.

More hubris from the Donald Trump of the board. You'll never get it. But it doesn't matter whether you get it or not. Ask the average American: "do you care what the average kiwi or australian thinks about the US elections?" Listen carefully to the one-word answer. Accept the insight. Move on.

America is “the laughing stock of the entire world” alright!

No it isn't. But you don't get it. You never will.

[pim]

Care factor? Zero! Buzz didn't "invent" Zoroastrianism and neither does he "own" it. Sadly there are few of them left in their ancient Iranian homeland. They exist either as Parsis in India or as refugees in Western countries - mainly the US. There are Zoroastrian communities in Australia www.aza.org.au

[KTJ]

Jan 7, 2017 11:37:33 GMT 10 Gort said:

Just another branch of the god delusion.

....and the satan delusion.

....and the heaven & hell delusion.

[pim]

So the only motivation for either of you here is trolling. But we knew that already.

[pim]

That's from Troll One ...

I didn't hear the minute squeaking "me too! me too!" from Troll Two until I saw how he'd "liked" it. But then that's the way Troll One and Troll Two operate.

[KTJ]

Jan 7, 2017 10:22:38 GMT 10 pim said:

America is “the laughing stock of the entire world” alright!

No it isn't. But you don't get it. You never will.

Yes it is.

I'm currently reading the latest stories at The Washington Post. Apart from the hilariously funny stories about Trump suddenly facing reality as he attends an intelligence briefing about Russian hacking & spying, it's full of stories about The Wall. Specifically how Mexico has told Trump to “go fuck yourself” over paying for the wall, so Trump is going to go ahead and build the wall anyway and force the American taxpayers to pay for it, then ask Mexico nicely to pay the USA back at a later date (hilarious, that bit of it). Except that Trump is on the verge of facing a revolt from those Republicans in Congress and the Senate who see “balancing the books” as being more important than anything else and who are even threatening to starve the Federal Governent of funds if they don't get their way (their votes, combined with Democrat votes could see the same government funding stalemate as happened to Obama). Watching Trump explode if members of his own government indulge in that sort of brinkmanship will definitely be the “best entertainment show in the entire world” and will graphically display that America is “the laughing stock of the entire world” alright!

[KTJ]

Yep....the Andy Griffith Show was definitely happier times for white, bible-bashing America.

Those days, however, are gone forever. Tough shit, white-trash Americans....wake up to the fact you are a declining superpower and your imaginary god isn't going to change a thing.

[pim]

Jan 7, 2017 13:28:30 GMT 10 KTJ said:

Jan 7, 2017 10:22:38 GMT 10 pim said:

No it isn't. But you don't get it. You never will.

Yes it is.

I'm currently reading the latest stories at The Washington Post. Apart from the hilariously funny stories about Trump suddenly facing reality as he attends an intelligence briefing about Russian hacking & spying, it's full of stories about The Wall. Specifically how Mexico has told Trump to “go fuck yourself” over paying for the wall, so Trump is going to go ahead and build the wall anyway and force the American taxpayers to pay for it, then ask Mexico nicely to pay the USA back at a later date (hilarious, that bit of it). Except that Trump is on the verge of facing a revolt from those Republicans in Congress and the Senate who see “balancing the books” as being more important than anything else and who are even threatening to starve the Federal Governent of funds if they don't get their way (their votes, combined with Democrat votes could see the same government funding stalemate as happened to Obama). Watching Trump explode if members of his own government indulge in that sort of brinkmanship will definitely be the “best entertainment show in the entire world” and will graphically display that America is “the laughing stock of the entire world” alright!

You know, it doesn't matter in the broader scheme of things if Troll Two in NZ or Troll One on this side of the ditch fall off your chairs screaming in helpless hysterical laughter, or just indulge in the soft knowing ho ho ho of the cognoscenti chuckling into their single malts over an in-joke. The fact that you find it funny at all says more about you than about Trump. Don't worry, the man will get his comeuppance and when that happens there'll be plenty of schadenfreude to go around. Mind you when/if Trump does get his comeuppance the reaction from the oh-so-superior east coast/west coast "liberals" is a supercilious "I-told-you-so-we-knew-this-was-going-to-happen" moral vanity it'll just be an indication that Trump isn't a passing phase. Unless the Democrats learn the lesson about how to connect with the Homer Simpsons and the Joe Sixpacks then there's no shortage of Trump clones to step up to the plate.

The lessons for Australia are twofold:

1. Anyone who thinks that the Trump phenomenon is going to miss Down Under is ... to use your phrase but not as a sneer the way you use it to characterise destructively people of religious faith, but as an objective descriptor ... deluded. Don't believe me? Keep your eye on the next Queensland State elections due to be held this year or early in 2018 at the latest. Expect a big swag of seats to go to the Pauline Hanson party and an offer by the LNP to form a coalition government in order to defeat Labor. A Queensland State Government with One Nation (Pauline Hanson) ministers. You want to dismiss that as of no consequence and to make one of your hopeless generalisations about Queenslanders? How little you understand federal/state relations in Australia. You probably don't even know what COAG means. Queensland will be followed by WA. Two Australian state governments with substantial Pauline Hanson input. COAG will be ... interesting. What will probably keep the Hanson influence at bay in SA is the Nick Xenophon factor and thank goodness for that. As for Victoria, I could be wrong but somehow my brain refuses to countenance a big One Nation push in Victoria. I won't go on. Make no mistake, the Trump Factor is heading Down Under. We have no entitlement to laughter at the Americans' expense because the joke is going to be on us too - real soon.

2. A smart Australian government could turn a Trump presidency to our advantage in the Asia/Pacific by seizing the opportunity it provides us to reconfigure our relationships and alliances. But I'm not optimistic.

[pim]

Troll One with a little "me too!" from Troll Two.


And so it goes on ...

[pim]

Troll One.

Where's the Troll Two pipsqueak? Bit slow with his "like" sycophancy. Discpline slipping there, Troll One!

[pim]

Oh no point invoking him! Discipline is non-existent there!

[pim]

Troll One! He can't help himself. Where's the pipsqueak?

[KTJ]

Might have to repost the original message so it stays on the current page of the thread.

[KTJ]

from The Washington Post....

How nostalgia for white Christian America drove
so many Americans to vote for Trump

In Andy Griffith's rural North Carolina home town,
people wish life were more like the Mayberry of TV.

By SARAH PULLIAM BAILEY | 7:00AM EST - Thursday, January 05, 2017


People make their way down Main Street in Mount Airy. — Photograph: Logan Cyrus/The Washington Post.

MOUNT AIRY, NORTH CAROLINA — From a perch on Main Street, the home town of actor Andy Griffith looks this day like it was plucked right out of the television show that bears his name. And it was.

Residents and tourists from far-flung states mill along the thoroughfare, past the quaint low-slung shops made of Mount Airy's famous white granite and named, like Floyd's City Barber Shop, for references in “The Andy Griffith Show”, the folksy comedy set in the idyllic fictional small town of Mayberry that first aired in 1960.

And yet even as this city of about 10,000 nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains fills its coffers by selling nostalgia, many of its residents would agree with the now-popular saying “We're not in Mayberry anymore.”

If only the real Mount Airy, which has experienced decades of economic and social decline, were like the Mayberry facade, muses Mayor David Rowe. If only his city and the rest of America could return to the 1950s again.

“Now it's about secular progressivism, not the values you get out of this book,” like honesty and hard work, said Rowe, 72, jabbing his finger at the leather Bible on his office desk.


A Marine Corps corporal stands with an American flag after the Veterans Day parade in downtown Mount Airy.
— Photograph: Logan Cyrus/The Washington Post.

But as Donald Trump prepares to move into the White House, Rowe and many of his constituents are hoping for a return to the past.

“We're going to hold him to it,” said Brad Thomas, 42, who used to work as an engineer building turbine blades for power plants before his job was moved to Mexico.

A yearning for an earlier time, especially prevalent in rural American towns and cities like Mount Airy, helped spur white evangelical Christians to vote overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. For these voters, the desire for change also could be viewed as a desire to change back, to what they perceive as a more wholesome and prosperous time, when high-paying manufacturing jobs were plentiful, white Protestants were indisputably in charge and same-sex marriage and the Black Lives Matter movement were unthinkable.

Seventy-four percent of white evangelicals believe American culture has mostly changed for the worse since the 1950s — more than any other group of Americans — compared with 56 percent of all whites, according to a 2016 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute. In sharp contrast, 62 percent of African Americans and 57 percent of Hispanic Americans think the culture has changed for the better, the survey said.

With his promise to “Make America Great Again,” Trump appealed directly to this sense of dispossession, and 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for him, according to exit polls.

“You think back to the 1990s, and conservative Christians could throw around the phrase ‘moral majority’, and there was a kernel of truth to that,” said Robert P. Jones, CEO at PRRI and author of “The End of White Christian America”. “Even in 2008, they could say the country is on our side on [same-sex marriage], and that's changed so quickly in this last decade. The election hit on fundamental questions about what America is and should be.”

Tourism isn't enough

Scissors the size of gardening shears hang from a coat rack in the mayor's office. They are reserved for Rowe's primary job of cutting ribbons, he said, and have been used a lot downtown, where just a few empty storefronts remain on Main Street. An old-fashioned sheriff's squad car drives tourists for $35, stopping at local favorites and ending at Andy Griffith's childhood home.

Visitors to Surry County spent $116.62 million in 2015, compared with $66 million 12 years ago, according to Jessica Icenhour Roberts, who heads tourism partnerships for the county, whose largest city is Mount Airy.

But Mount Airy cannot live on tourism alone, the mayor said.

“We try to live the good old days, but it's hard,” Rowe said. Just down the street from a bronze statue of Griffith and a museum dedicated to his memory, out of sight of the boutiques selling Norman Rockwell and Thomas Kinkade artwork, sit many dilapidated textile mills that have closed in the past decade. From early 2000 to about 2010, about 9,000 private-sector jobs were lost when factories that made clothes went overseas.

Three of the economic pillars symbolized on the city seal — tobacco leaves, a chair representing furniture makers, a spool of yarn for the textile mills — are largely relics of the past. Now, granite is really the only thing left, the mayor said. The city is home to the world's largest open-face granite quarry, which continues to provide a boost to the economy and has earned Mount Airy the moniker of “The Granite City.”


Mayor David Rowe poses for a portrait outside of his home in Mount Airy. — Photograph: Logan Cyrus/The Washington Post.


Just off Main Street in downtown Mount Airy are defunct mills left over from a once-thriving textile industry.
— Photograph: Logan Cyrus/The Washington Post.

Despite the steady stream of tourists, business owners are still struggling to create new jobs that will attract a younger generation, said Lizzie Morrison, 30, who runs an art studio and is the Main Street coordinator with Mount Airy Downtown.

Morrison said the city's younger residents tend to be socially liberal, while most in the older generations look to the past. That tension makes it harder for someone like her to push for new ideas, she said.

“You deal with a lot of white middle-aged men who might call you ‘Sweetie’ and belittle you a little bit,” she said. “It's interesting to navigate that in a small community in trying to create jobs and be taken seriously.”

A group of developers has been working on a project to redevelop an old mill, Morrison said, but the proposal has moved slowly because of resistance from residents. Similarly, Vann McCoy, who runs a whiskey shop called Mayberry Spirits, said that residents recently opposed a traffic roundabout because there is no traffic circle visible on “The Andy Griffith Show”.

Meanwhile, some residents said they are having a hard time finding the kind of skilled manufacturing jobs available in the past.

Thomas, who blames the loss of his $75,000-a-year factory job on Obama, now makes $18,000 working in his friend's gun store and pawnshop. He is hopeful Trump will bring jobs back.

His colleague, Dreama Staples, 53, said people are bringing in their prized possessions to sell so they can buy groceries and gas. At 4.8 percent, the unemployment rate in Surry County is similar to the national figure, but Staples said that finding full-time work with benefits is difficult. She said she has grown angry over what she considers government over-reach.

“We're losing control of our freedoms,” Staples said. “The government was taking away our rights. Taxes are higher, our jobs are gone, and it just feels less Christian.”

Memories at odds with facts

Many Mount Airy residents applauded the president-elect's promise to revoke the Johnson Amendment, which effectively bars pastors from endorsing a candidate from the pulpit, Rowe said. They were heartened by his suggestion that Christians will be able to once again see “Merry Christmas” signs in department stores.

But the mayor acknowledges that the 1950s and '60s were not idyllic for all Americans. He wouldn't, for example, want to go back to the days when there were separate water fountains at the local Sears for whites and blacks. At the same time, he said, African Americans often bring hardship on themselves. Asked to explain what he meant, he amended the statement to mean young blacks.

“When you're my age and you see an African American boy with pants at their knees, you can't appreciate them,” he said, noting that he would never employ someone who dressed that way. “I'm worried about when a person chooses to dresses like that, what kind of effect will that person have on society.” He noted that the Hispanics he has hired to work at his construction company are hard workers. He doesn't encounter people who aren't white in social settings much because folks tend to self-segregate, he said. Mount Airy is 84 percent white, 8.2 percent black and 6.7 percent Hispanic, according to 2010 Census data.


A Trump flag hangs inside The Gift Box off Main Street in Mount Airy. — Photograph: Logan Cyrus/The Washington Post.

Not everyone is nostalgic for the 1950s.

Ron Jessup, 68, who grew up in Mount Airy during that era, found the place generally friendly then, he said — as long as he and other blacks obeyed the racist laws and social mores of the time.

If African Americans went to the theater, they sat upstairs, he said. If they went to the restaurants, they avoided the counter. “We understood what was considered our place,” said Jessup, who is retired from his job as a high school principal in nearby Winston-Salem. Even now, all five Surry County commissioners are white.

Fictional Mayberry only represented part of the Mount Airy story because it only portrayed a white America, Jessup said.

White residents tend to view the city's history through rose-colored glasses, he said. Even Andy Griffith said the show wasn't based on his home town, Jessup noted. Indeed, in a 1998 television interview, Griffith said the idea of Mayberry came from the producers. “I've argued about this too long. I don't care,” he said of people in Mount Airy. “Let them think what they want to think.” Andy Griffith never returned to live in his home town either, dying in 2012 at his coastal home in Dare County.

Ironically, when the show first aired in 1960, the intent was to hark back to an even earlier era — the 1930s, Griffith has said.

As for Trump, Jessup believes his “Make America Great Again” slogan was code for “take America back again,” and a reaction to President Obama's election.

“Sometimes we use Christianity when it's convenient for what we want,” Jessup said. “You can't allow someone to have racist remarks and then go to church and talk about Jesus as the center of your life.”

God and country

When she travels with her pastor husband, Thresa Tucker hands out an evangelistic tract that uses “The Andy Griffith Show” as an entry point for talking about Jesus. When they return home to Mount Airy, she said, she is reminded of how good they have it, pointing out the red barns that dot views of the Blue Ridge.

Tucker and her husband, David, said they voted for Trump because they want a more limited federal government. They mentioned social issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and school prayer.


White Plains Baptist Church Pastor David Tucker and his wife, Thresa, stand in the front of the sanctuary. A painting can be seen
above their baptismal pool. — Photograph: Logan Cyrus/The Washington Post.

The Tuckers were also dismayed when their health insurance bill skyrocketed. Before Obamacare, they had no health insurance and paid out of pocket. Their monthly bill will rise from $115 a month now to $435 next year, Thresa Tucker said.

Many of those who have lost jobs seek help at White Plains Baptist Church, where her husband is preacher. But not all who seek help are worthy of it, she said. The church has to be a good steward of its money, so there are criteria for assistance, and she asks whether people attend church regularly. African Americans who have voiced concerns over what Trump will do for the poor would have a different perspective if they tried harder to help themselves, she said.

“I think black people think they're owed something,” she said. “I think if they acted differently people would be apt to help them.” She later added that some white people expect handouts, too.

“I believe Trump will get people back to working,” she said.

David Tucker said people resent it when the government tries to supplant the role of local ministries in helping those in need. “Don't try to change us into something like New York,” he said. “All we really want is for the government to leave us alone and to worship the way we want to.”

Nostalgia for Christian America

After settling into a bright blue booth at Olympia Family Restaurant, Rowe said he has a lot to be thankful for. He has a good job, a wife, two kids, one grandchild and another on the way. He has a beautiful home near the country club with a view of the mountains.

But he notes that while his home town looks picturesque from the outside, it has faced some of the same issues as urban areas, including drugs and divorce. Things might have turned out differently if religion had maintained its role in the culture, he suggested.

People just aren't committed to church, anymore, he said. The church he attends used to attract up to 600 people on a Sunday in the 1960s, but is lucky to get a third of that now. Young people leave for college and come back with more progressive, secular values, he said.


John Eaton, from Flat Rock, North Carolina, holds up a sign on the corner of Pine and Main streets in downtown Mount Airy.
— Photograph: Logan Cyrus/The Washington Post.

Even so, as the man he voted for is about to take office, Rowe is a bit wary. For one thing, he said, he does not want to have to defend Trump for the next four years.

“If I've learned anything while being a mayor,” he said, “you have to think before you speak. I'm not sure Donald Trump has learned that.”

If Trump does manage to “make America great again,” Rowe said it will involve preventing the government from encroaching on religion.

Christianity has come under attack in America, he said. “It's subtle, not in your face, but that's the way Satan works,” he said.

• Sarah Pulliam Bailey is a religion reporter for The Washington Post, covering how faith intersects with politics, culture and … everything.

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Related media:

• VIDEO: How Trump appealed to white, evangelical voters

www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/how-nostalgia-for-white-christian-america-drove-so-many-americans-to-vote-for-trump/2017/01/04/4ef6d686-b033-11e6-be1c-8cec35b1ad25_story.html

[pim]

Seems I set the pipsqueak's pips into squeak overdrive! Carry on Troll Two!

[KTJ]

Go and have a few gin & tonics to calm your nerves (and dementia symptoms) down.

[pim]

A Trumplike comment from Troll Two. Be careful with the slurs and sneers about dementia. You obviously don't understand what you're talking about.

[pim]

You worry about your own problems, Troll One. You've got plenty of them.

[KTJ]

Fondle your rosary beads and say one-hundred-and-fourteen “hail mary”s.

If that doesn't work, pour another gin & tonic. Make it a large one.

[pim]

Troll Two's pips are squeaking again.

[pim]

Troll One, I can't claim to know Barack Obama personally or to have met him. But I know enough about Barack Obama to state with complete confidence that you, Hubris Man, are most definitely not Barack Obama.