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Donald Trump, White Evangelicals, and 2020: a Challenge for American Pluralism

  • Symposium: The 2020 U.S. Elections
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Abstract

The strong allegiance of white evangelicals to President Trump is one of the defining – and confounding – characteristics of this era of American politics. We propose that the orthodoxy of evangelicals is more concerned with preserving its identity and power than it is with adhering to a doctrine, and therefore will not be satisfied regardless of the outcome of the 2020 election.

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Notes

  1. Frank Bruni, “Trump-Ward, Christian Soldiers?” New York Times, August 25, 2015 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/26/opinion/frank-bruni-trump-ward-christian-soldiers.html, accessed 3 March 2017.

  2. Cindy Jung, “The Trump Exception: Christian Morals and the Presidency,” Harvard International Review 37 (2016): 7–9.

  3. Alan I. Abramowitz, The Great Alignment: Race, Party Transformation, and the Rise of Donald Trump (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 143–159.

  4. Jacques Berlinerblau, “Donald J. Trump, the White Evangelicals, and Martin Luther: A Hypothesis,” Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 73 (2019): 18–30. Berlinerblau admits that even he does not fully believe his analysis (29).

  5. Christopher Craig Brittain, “Racketeering in Religion: Adorno and Evangelical Support for Donald Trump,” Critical Research on Religion 6 (2018): 269–288.

  6. In April 2018, the Public Religion Research Institute noted that white evangelical support for President Trump was at an all-time high. See Robert P. Jones, https://www.prri.org/spotlight/white-evangelical-support-for-donald-trump-at-all-time-high/, accessed 3 August 2020.

  7. The definition of “evangelical” is always difficult and the present moment has made it more so. The classic definition of evangelicals comes from David W. Bebbington’s Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 2–17. The four characteristics were a concentration on the authority of the Bible, frequently read literally; a concentration on the salvific work of Jesus Christ; a concentration on conversion, frequently with a call for a dated moment of “accepting Jesus”; and the belief that the entire world should be brought to Christ. These are termed biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism. This definition has been widely used, but is frequently called into question by sociologists, scholars of religion, theologians, and political analysts. It is a religious description that does not consider the phenomenon of evangelicalism from other points of view.

  8. Sarah Pulliam Bailey, “White evangelicals voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, exit polls show,” Washington Post, November 9, 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/11/09/exit-polls-show-white-evangelicals-voted-overwhelmingly-for-donald-trump/, accessed 2 March 2017. Kate Shellnutt, “Trump Elected President, Thanks to 4 in 5 White Evangelicals,” Christianity Today, November 9, 2016. http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2016/november/trump-elected-president-thanks-to-4-in-5-white-evangelicals.html, accessed 2 March 2016. Myriam Renaud weighed in with “Myths Debunked: Why Did White Evangelical Christians Vote for Trump?”, https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/myths-debunked-why-did-white-evangelical-christians-vote-trump, accessed 2 April 2017; Joe Carter argued that the majority did not vote for Trump, when one counts the non-voters, “No, the Majority of American Evangelicals Did Not Vote for Trump,” https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/no-the-majority-of-american-evangelicals-did-not-vote-for-trump, accessed 2 April 2017.

  9. Damon T. Berry, Blood and Faith: “Epilogue” – 204. Quoting Gregory A. Smith and Jessica Martinez, “How the Faithful Voted: A Preliminary 2016 Analysis,” Pew Research Center, Nov. 9, 2016, at http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/1l/09/how-the-faithful-voted-a-preliminary-2016-analysis/

  10. Here, we include William R. Myers, “Following Trump: Are Evangelicals Willing Participants in a ‘New’ Religion?” Theology Today 76 (2019): 103–113; Robert P. Ericksen, “Devotion, Protestant Voters, and Religious Prejudice: 1930’s Germany and Today’s America,” Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 31 (2018): 427–440; David P. Gushee, “In the Ruins of White Evangelicalism: Interpreting a Compromised Christian Tradition through the Witness of African American Literature,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 87 (2019): 1–17; Jessica Joustra, “What is an Evangelical? Examining the Politics, History, and Theology of a Contested Label,” The Review of Faith & International Affairs, 17:3, (2019): 7–19; Kate Bowler, “Forum: Studying Religion in the Age of Trump,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 27 (1) (2017): 7–12.

  11. Thomas S. Kidd, Who is an Evangelical?: The History of a Movement in Crisis (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2019), 151.

  12. Randall Balmer has argued that racism was foundational for the rise of the political Christian Right, studying the work of Paul Weyrich and the original evangelical response to Roe v. Wade that was cautiously positive. He maintains that evangelicals were far more motivated by the IRS decision about Bob Jones University, and what that portended for the tax advantages for white Christian schools. See n. 22.

  13. Marcia Pally, “Evangelical Christians: Support for Trump and American Populism,” Theologische Literaturzeitung 144 (2019): 1085–1103.

  14. Gary Dorrien, “The Backlash This Time: Obama, Trump, and the American Trauma,” Crosscurrents 68 (March 2018): 54–72.

  15. Rory McVeigh and Kevin Estep, The Politics of Losing: Trump, the Klan, and the Mainstreaming of Resentment (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020), 97–124. McVeigh and Estep write, “Much like the Klan of the 1920s, Trump intertwined his appeals to economic grievances with appeals to privileged identities based on race, gender, and religion” (123).

  16. Leo P. Ribuffo, “Donald Trump and the ‘Paranoid Style’ in American (Intellectual) Politics,” in The Trump Presidency and International Politics in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Robert Jervis, Francis P. Gavin, Joshua Rovner, and Diane N. Labrosse (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 343–362.

  17. Katherine J. Cramer, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 51, 85–87, 158–166; Peter B. Josephson and R. Ward Holder, Reinhold Niebuhr in Theory and Practice, (Lanham: MD, Lexington Books, 2018), 149–52).

  18. Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (New York: The New Press, 2016).

  19. Matthew Avery Sutton, “Forum: Studying Religion in the Age of Trump,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 27 (1) (2017): 43–49.

  20. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/#:~:text=From%201983%20to%202016%2C%20the,down%20from%207%25%20in%201,983.

  21. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/ben-bernanke/2016/10/19/are-americans-better-off-than-they-were-a-decade-or-two-ago/ Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out that in the thirty years before the French Revolution measures of income and advancement were actually improving, but with the effect that the improvement produced greater impatience and hostility. “The inevitable evil that one bears patiently seems unbearable as soon as one conceives the idea of removing it. Every abuse that is then eliminated seems to highlight those that remain” (The Old Regime and the Revolution, Alan S. Kahan trans. [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998] pt. 3, chptr. 4, p. 222).

    It was Aristotle who pointed out the political implications of a shrinking middle class: “[W]here the middling element is numerous, factional conflicts and splits over the nature of the regimes occur least of all.” When the middle class – or “middling element” – is small, on the other hand, it is almost impossible to strike a political balance between the rich and the poor (Politics, IV.111296a6–28, Carnes Lord trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

  22. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2019/03/21/views-of-demographic-changes-in-america/

  23. Randall Balmer, “Forum: Studying Religion in the Age of Trump,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 27 (1) (2017): 3–7. See also his Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts Faith and Threatens America (New York: Basic Books, 2007), esp. chapter 1.

  24. Jennifer Harvey, “A World on Fire and Whiteness at the Core,” Crosscurrents 68 (March 2018): 93–111. Though it preceded it by several years, her work is supported by Carolyn Renée Dupont’s Mississippi Praying: Southern White Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement, 1945–1975 (New York: New York University Press, 2013).

  25. Stacy M. Floyd-Thomas, “‘O Say Can You See?’: Womanist Ethics, Sub-rosa Morality, and the Normative Gaze in a Trumped Era,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 39 (2019): 3–20.

  26. This is an important issue. Bryan N. Massingale has pointed out the significant body of literature produced by evangelicals on racial reconciliation. But in every case, evangelical writers neglect the systemic aspects of racism, defining it instead as a moral problem. See Massingale, Racial Justice and the Catholic Church (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2010), 91–96.

  27. Sorcha A. Brophy, “Orthodoxy as Project: Temporality and Action in an American Protestant Denomination,” Sociology of Religion 77.2 (2016): 123–125.

  28. Brophy, 138.

  29. Brophy, 140.

  30. Gerardo Martí, “The Unexpected Orthodoxy of Donald J. Trump: White Evangelical Support for the 45th President of the United States,” Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review 80 (2019): 1–8.

  31. Martí, 5.

  32. Robert Jeffress, pastor of 1st Baptist Church in Dallas, wrote, “…seven years of Barack Obama have drastically lowered the threshold of spiritual expectations Evangelicals have of their president. No longer do they require their president to be one of them. Evangelicals will settle for someone who doesn’t HATE them like the current occupant of the Oval Office appears to.” Robert Jeffress, “Why Trump is triumphant with Evangelicals … for now,” FoxNews.Com, September 8, 2015. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/09/08/why-trump-is-triumphant-with-evangelicals-for-now.html, accessed 6 March 2017. Emma Green in The Atlantic reported PRRI’s survey that showed 57% of white evangelicals believed that Christians are persecuted in America. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/perceptions-discrimination-muslims-christians/519135/, accessed 3 August 2020.

  33. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/white-working-class-trump-cultural-anxiety/525771/ In Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Richard Hofstadter observes that the sentiment of resentment reaches its peak on those occasions when “social engineering” seems ascendant (Hofstadter, New York: Vintage Books, 1962), 6.

  34. Elaina Plott, “The Fall of Jeff Sessions and What Came After,” The New York Times Magazine, June 30, 2020.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/magazine/jeff-sessions.html

    In a 2016 interview with NPR’s Michael Martin, Reverend Dr. Robert Jeffress said, “When I’m looking for a leader who’s going to fight ISIS and keep this nation secure, I don’t want some meek and mild leader or somebody who’s going to turn the other cheek.. .. I want the meanest, toughest SOB I can find.” https://www.npr.org/2016/10/16/498171498/pastor-robert-jeffress-explains-his-support-for-trump

  35. George Lakoff, “Metaphor, Morality, and Politics, Or, Why Conservatives Have Left Liberals in the Dust,” Social Research 62(2) (1995), 184–9.

  36. For a brief popular account of this research, see Tom Jacobs, “Inside the Minds of Hardcore Trump Supporters,” PSMag, February 15, 2018 https://psmag.com/news/inside-the-minds-of-hardcore-trump-supporters

  37. Stephen G. Ludeke, Camilla N. Klitgaard, and Joseph Vitriol, “Comprehensively-measured authoritarianism does predict vote choice: The importance of authoritarianism’s facets, ideological sorting, and the particular candidate,” Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 123, March 2018, pp. 209–16 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886917306761

  38. David Norman Smith and Eric Henly, “The Anger Games: Who Voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Election, and Why?” Critical Sociology Volume 44 No. 2, March 1, 2018.

  39. https://www.pewforum.org/2020/03/12/white-evangelicals-see-trump-as-fighting-for-their-beliefs-though-many-have-mixed-feelings-about-his-personal-conduct/

  40. Dan P. MacAdams, “The Appeal of the Primal Leader: Human Evolution and Donald Trump,” Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture 1 (2017): 1–13.

  41. French concludes that this “distinction between religious power and religious liberty is the key to understanding the incredible angst felt by so many white American Christians.” (https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/the-case-for-religious-liberty-is).

  42. Leviathan, Edwin Curley, ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1994) chapter 13, pp. 75–6.

  43. One of the intellectual founders of religious liberty, John Locke, noted the obscure and even conflated relationship between the desire for liberty and the appetite for dominion. Locke observes that the love of dominion typically comes to supplant the love of liberty (Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Jean W. and John S. Yolton, eds. [New York: Oxford University Press, 1989] 103–106).

  44. Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1944) 130, 143, 151; Christopher Beem, Democratic Humility: Reinhold Niebuhr, Neuroscience, and America’s Political Crisis (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015), 109–11.

  45. Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932. Reprinted Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001) 16, 96–7; Beem 18–19. Such sentiments exist in the religious left as well. Beem, 115–17; see also Kevin Carnahan, “The Irony of American Evangelical Politics,” in Reinhold Niebuhr and Contemporary Politics: God and Power, edited by Richard Harries and Stephen Platten (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 204.

  46. Hofstadter, 118, 131–5.

  47. We acknowledge that there is a version of fundamentalism on the left as well, where demands for purity and perfectionism lead to cancel culture (reaching even to John Muir and Alexander Hamilton), to a theory of intersectionalism that rejects the possibility of mutual understanding, and to a principled claim that has unmoored itself from its foundations and that is blind to the ethical dilemma of its own developing power. The intersectionalist thesis, for all its power in describing the phenomenologies of minority life in America, reaches its limit when human beings have to communicate and live together, or when one must understand the point at which the intersection occurs. In their fervor to purge tainted monuments, texts, and personages, the extreme left risks rejecting the ethical foundation of their own program. Having described all existing social relations as rooted in concepts and traditions of power, the far left has ironically provided no foundation of justice from which to justify their own exercise of power (Josephson and Holder, 157–60).

  48. That fringe is estimated to be relatively small, perhaps 6% of the population. In the internet age the extreme voices are magnified (A 2018 study called “More in Common” by a team of sociologists is helpful here; https://hiddentribes.us/about#authors).

  49. Democracy in America, Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, trans., (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 244.

  50. A President Biden would likely have even more trouble governing the left, which will feel liberated and emboldened and impatient for its agenda.

  51. See especially Hofstadter, 118.

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    R. Ward Holder & Peter B. Josephson

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Holder, R.W., Josephson, P.B. Donald Trump, White Evangelicals, and 2020: a Challenge for American Pluralism. Soc 57, 540–546 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-020-00525-z

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