Donald Trump is white evangelicals’ greatest recruiter
Photo by History in HD on Unsplash
Most weeks, I hear from readers who share the pain they are experiencing after leaving their evangelical church of many years. I usually read their stories of being abused by an authoritarian leader and gaslighted by fellow congregants and find myself sympathizing. Sometimes hearing yourself share experiences out loud is more freeing than finding an answer right away.
This week’s messages were different though. Several readers sent me the new survey data from Pew Research Center and the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). Both speak directly to some disturbing realities in white evangelical culture. As I was wrapping up reviewing PRRI’s data, another reader sent me a message that summed up my own initial thought:
“How does it always end up being worse than we imagine?”
Because 2020 never really, fully ended? Kidding aside, in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, there was no sustainable course correction in white American evangelicalism. The Pew and PRRI survey data is just the latest in a growing body of information and stories speaking to this reality. Specifically, three things jumped out at me.
1. Donald Trump is white evangelicals’ greatest recruiter
Over the past six years, I’ve watched some white evangelicals — particularly more moderate ones who are uncomfortable with Trumpism — try to dismiss the tsunami of truth that now threatens to drown them.
Exit poll data showing soaring evangelical support for Trump was explained away as the result of sloppy head counts. The media’s definition of evangelical was wrong. Sure, some people are twisting the evangelical tradition into something that isn’t great — they’ll sometimes admit — but I’m not like that — they will quickly add on — implying that they are the rule, not the exception to it. Evangelicals voting for Trump were holding their noses as they did so. If the Democrats weren’t so evil, they suggest, then evangelicals wouldn’t have to vote for someone like Trump.
There was always a reason, always an excuse, even as white evangelical leaders began openly embracing Trumpism after the majority of their followers had already done so.
The best way to respond to a tsunami isn’t to sprint to the shoreline and disagree with its existence, even as it towers above and threatens to crash down upon you. It’s not wise to ignore the emergency broadcasts blaring that you need to flee inland to higher ground. In this case, a new surge of resentful, declinist populism was sweeping through white American evangelicalism, and nothing was going to stop it. Riding the crest of this massive wave was white American evangelicals’ latest, toxically masculine cultural and political savior Donald Trump.
It is perfectly fine to dislike reality, but saying reality isn’t reality because you don’t like it doesn’t make the problem magically go away. Actual reality is that Donald Trump is now white evangelicalism’s most effective recruiter and has been since that now infamous speech he gave at Dordt University, a small Christian college in Sioux Center, Iowa. Here’s what he said way back in January 2016:
“‘I will tell you, Christianity is under tremendous siege, whether we want to talk about it or we don’t want to talk about it,’ Mr. Trump said. Christians make up the overwhelming majority of the country, he said. And then he slowed slightly to stress each next word: ‘And yet we don’t exert the power that we should have.’
If he were elected president, he promised, that would change. He raised a finger.
‘Christianity will have power,’ he said. ‘If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else. You’re going to have somebody representing you very, very well. Remember that.’”
The majority of white American evangelicals internalized those words over the past five years. The only difference now is that there is even more data and more lived experiences to support the thesis. Analysis from Pew sums this truth up well:
“Among White respondents (including both voters and nonvoters) who did not identify as evangelicals in 2016 and who expressed a warm view of Trump at some point during the timespan of this study, 16% began describing themselves as born-again or evangelical Protestants by 2020.
In stark contrast, almost no White respondents (just 1%) who expressed consistently cold or neutral views toward Trump adopted the born-again/evangelical label for themselves between 2016 and 2020.”
These numbers are both instructive and alarming. Donald Trump and many white American evangelicals aren’t bringing people into their movement with the mindset of loving Jesus and their neighbors. They are furthering the hyper-conservative and far-right politicization of the American evangelical cultural project itself, with enduring consequences for us all.
2. Our country needs a solution for the right-wing media ecosystem
I’m going to drop this alarming chart from PRRI here and then move to my last point, because I don’t have a solution and neither does anyone else:
3. Those who say American evangelicalism can be reclaimed aren’t seeing their cultural bubble, or actual history, for what it is.
There’s a debate right now between more moderate white evangelicals and the outside world on what evangelicalism even is. Examining this debate is critical to understanding why the shrinking minority of more moderate evangelicals come across as completely unaware of the seriousness of the crises in American evangelicalism.
These evangelicals often say that evangelicalism in the American expression is about a set of beliefs: conversionism, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism. If you’re not familiar with these terms, here are some definitions from the National Association of Evangelicals:
Conversionism: the belief that lives need to be transformed through a “born-again” experience and a life long process of following Jesus
Activism: the expression and demonstration of the gospel in missionary and social reform efforts
Biblicism: a high regard for and obedience to the Bible as the ultimate authority
Crucicentrism: a stress on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as making possible the redemption of humanity
Some, more moderate white evangelicals will even go so as far as to say that, yes, there are some concerning problems in American evangelicalism, but the bulk of white American evangelicals hold true to the above beliefs. The Gospel Coalition, one of the flagship institutions of a supposedly more centrist evangelicalism, is perhaps the loudest purveyor of this view.
On the other side of this debate are exvangelicals, a small faction of people who are still within the moderate white evangelical group, those belonging to other forms of the Christian faith, and large segments of the general public. We look at what white American evangelicalism is in the real-world and mostly just see Republicanism, Trumpism, and social conservatism.
Why? There are two primary reasons.
First, there comes a point when reality takes the form of a gut-punch. The last few years especially have lifted the veil and shown us that white American evangelicalism is not centered around conversionism, activism, biblicism, or crucicentrism. Many white evangelicals are being spiritually formed by Fox News and their ilk, not their pastors or their Bibles. Social reform is really about having the political ability to dominate American culture, a truth we have seen play out in the mostly manufactured religious liberty wars. And Jesus has been transformed from the sacrificial, loving Savior the Bible points us to (John 1:29–34) into a cheap, cold-blooded, and militant cultural and political warrior.
Evangelicals are deeply politicized and actively pushing the Republican Party’s relentless march into authoritarianism and political extremism. And key Republican leaders and media outlets — like Trump and Fox News — are actively shaping white American evangelicalism right back. It’s a vicious reality, leaving less and less daylight between the two sides as evangelicalism and Republicanism overlap more and more.
Second, there is a rapidly-expanding body of scholarly and historical analysis showing us that this “centrist evangelicalism,” as outlined by the National Association of Evangelicals, has almost always been a minority in American evangelicalism. Well-researched books such as Jesus And John Wayne, White Too Long, and Taking America Back For God — just to name a few — deftly show us that the narrative many more moderate white evangelical leaders tell about their movement has been excessively whitewashed, often times without them even realizing it. When we see that white American evangelicalism is really about these cultural and political realities, and largely always has been, the broad white evangelical embrace of Donald Trump makes perfect sense.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
This debate on what evangelicalism even is in the American context has reached an impasse, at least for now. Most of the more moderate white evangelicals are committed to a deeply flawed ideological belief that their version of evangelicalism is the dominant version, even if it isn’t the loudest at this moment. Meanwhile, those of us who stand outside of the white American evangelical subculture are much more interested in the way things actually are, not what more moderate evangelicals say they are or want them to be.
I’d be remiss if I failed to point out there are some exceptions to this impasse. There is a small minority of evangelicals working toward something better. Their work is important and, personally, I find it admirable. I count some of these people as friends. But even they see the tsunami coming their way, because American evangelicalism is a populist political and cultural movement at its core, not a Christ-centered one.
This is why so many pastors have quit their churches the past few years. And many in this centrist minority are now giving up in exasperation as well. As the proverbial tsunami comes crashing down around them, they too are now heeding the emergency broadcasts and fleeing to higher ground.
Finally, this is why efforts to “reclaim” evangelicalism are faltering and will continue to fail. The war has already been lost. In fact, it was probably lost sometime shortly after 9/11, when survey data started showing white evangelicals were more supportive of preemptive war, torture, and a harsh form of law and order politics than just about any other social group in the country. We’re just seeing the logical conclusions play out more fully now.
Photo by Jill Dimond on Unsplash
Closing Thoughts
Survey data showing the abiding connections between white American evangelicalism, the Republican Party, and Donald Trump is becoming more and more common. What makes data points like these resonate in our core though is that we can feel it, too.
For those of us post-evangelical Christians or people who feel trapped in white evangelical churches and spaces, we have personal stories and experiences that match this polling data in frightening ways. Many of us have seen fellow congregants or people we used to go to church with spewing online that the election was stolen, that mask mandates herald the end of all freedom, and that we should reject vaccines and the science behind them. Others have been subjected to intense gaslighting that aims to shift the blame for the January 6 insurrection. The faith in Jesus that we cling to has been questioned and attacked because we simply refused to bow to a serial adulterer who is credibly accused of multiple sexual assaults and is now threatening to tear our democracy to shreds.
And those experiences are just on the political and scientific fronts. As I’ve written extensively about before, the real abuse and hypocrisy hit when we questioned church leadership or the broken culture of our current or now former churches. We quickly learned the expectation is that we must never question the white, male baby boomer church leaders who seem to believe they have the answers for everything and that their job now is just to police the borders of their churches. In their minds, doing exactly as they say without question is synonymous with being a Christian. Thankfully, Jesus says otherwise (Matthew 23:1–28).
The darkest aspects of white evangelical culture are out in the sunlight like never before, waiting to be seen for what they are. It shows up in survey data. It shows up in our social media feeds. And many of us have been left reeling from real-world encounters with white evangelicals who demand we bow to their cynical cultural and political commitments, even though they are further from truth and the love of Christ than ever before.
Reality is reality. Let’s not sugarcoat it: the rest of this decade is going to be rough. For the Church. For our culture. For our democracy. We’re only now reaching the point in which the broader Church is starting to distance herself from white American evangelicalism. There is a long way to go before that break is strong enough that we can more fully escape the gravitational pull of evangelicalism. Even in decline, white evangelical consumer culture remains a powerful force that has pulled most denominations and many conservative churches into its orbit, often times without people even realizing it.
Without mass repentance that can be intimately felt across broader American culture, white American evangelicalism will continue to decline. That decline may have slowed quite a bit these last few years, but additional data shows us that white American evangelicals have experienced a massive bleed out for nearly two decades, shrinking from 23% of Americans in 2006 to 14% in 2020. More importantly, Pew’s most recent data shows us that the recent slowdown in the decline of white American evangelicalism is being driven almost entirely by newcomers with a far deeper affinity for Donald Trump than for Jesus. And, again, this is a reality that many people can feel. The data and lived experiences are in alignment with one another.
Here is where I find hope in the mess. As we have seen elsewhere in the world and even many times in the history of Christianity in America, God does not need white American evangelicalism to succeed in His purposes. The Christian identity should be rooted in Christ (Ephesians 1:5–8) and displayed though love for neighbor (Mark 12:30–31), not the resentful and controlling identity politics that white American evangelicalism requires.
This decade may be incredibly painful, but the Church will continue on just fine in the long run. A flourishing of renewal often comes out of mass spiritual death. The task before us now is to bring as many people as possible out of this broken culture to the safety of higher ground. All so that when the declinist tsunami that is white American evangelicalism finally comes crashing down to its own ruin, there is as little collateral damage as possible.
I explore faith and American church culture from Memphis, TN. Never miss an article by signing up for my free newsletter or becoming a member. You can also subscribe to my podcast.
