Is there a double standard between criticizing Evangelicals and other religions?

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

The silly thing is the notion that evangelicals are anything resembling a homogeneous group.

A group that includes both me and Mike Pence and a hell of a lot in between is obviously one where broad brush generalizations are almost always going to be nonsensical.

This.  There's also a big rift within the Southern Baptist Convention - the biggest Evangelical organization in the USA - on Trump and related issues (immigration, racial reconciliation, etc.) with folks like Russell Moore and Albert Mohler on one side vs. Robert Jeffress and Richard Land, among others.  Nuance tends to be lost when discussing these groups.

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

I think that, sadly, the Albert Mohlers and Franklin Grahams of the world are far more accurate representatives of American Evangelical Christianity, at this time, than people like BRTD or Jimmy Carter.

But that probably will change when the former group starts dying off.

And, obviously, it's not just Evangelicalism that's dominated by lunatics.  Islam has plenty of toxic elements, but that's why we should be paying attention to the reformers within that faith and dismiss the Wahhabi/authoritarian/regressive sects.

Albert Mohler is against Trump though.  You can criticize him on theological grounds, but for the purposes of this discussion he is no Franklin Graham.

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

The silly thing is the notion that evangelicals are anything resembling a homogeneous group.

A group that includes both me and Mike Pence and a hell of a lot in between is obviously one where broad brush generalizations are almost always going to be nonsensical.

This.  There's also a big rift within the Southern Baptist Convention - the biggest Evangelical organization in the USA - on Trump and related issues (immigration, racial reconciliation, etc.) with folks like Russell Moore and Albert Mohler on one side vs. Robert Jeffress and Richard Land, among others.  Nuance tends to be lost when discussing these groups.

It could just be that I’ve coincidentally met an unusual number of moderate/more independent-minded evangelicals, but from my (obviously limited) experience there do seem to be some real divides in the community.  Another one is over how to handle the fact that many evangelical churches are losing their younger members pretty rapidly.

As an insider so to speak, I think there are multiple factors at play.  It's not purely an age issue - for instance, the staff at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the SBC's Ethical and Religious Liberty Commission, along with The Gospel Coalition are all pretty strongly anti-Trump, many of whom are older.   These are 3 pretty major Evangelical institutions, so I think it's definitely an important part of the picture. Most prominent Evangelical pastors within the Reformed community were against him - such as Kevin DeYoung, John Piper, Albert Mohler, James White, Matt Chandler, Tim Keller, etc., with the notable exception of John MacArthur - it seems the non-Calvinist contingent of Evangelicalism was warmer to Trump on average, but perhaps that's biased by the prominence of Falwell Jr and Jeffress.  Also, the polling I've seen shows that pastors of Evangelical churches were significantly less likely to have voted for Trump than laypeople. 

So it's a much more complicated dynamic than seen in the media - I'm sure in other religious communities there is a similar story where simple narratives don't capture the full picture.