Why Do American Evangelicals Love Trump?

This is a very polarizing topic but amidst preparing for an upcoming course I will be teaching at the University of Toronto, I had a chance to research how much the Trump phenomenon has changed American evangelicals including the academic literature on the community.

I thought I’d share what I have learned, much of it written by thoughtful evangelical insiders who are also scholars, with the goal of offering some insider and outsider perspectives on this interesting time in history. Do keep in mind that we won’t all agree on everything, and, further, that all religious communities are internally diverse. Many prominent evangelicals oppose Trump (from David French and Beth Moore to authors mentioned below). But a good recent survey shows 82% do support him.

Also, by “evangelical” I mean White American evangelicals as scholars widely agree that the Black Church is simply different. So, here’s some of the interesting things I have found:

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Redistributing Shame and Dignity

Donovan Schaefer – a scholar I have interviewed – wrote a few years ago that Trump’s superpower is that he redistributes shame and dignity. Many of his followers have felt denigrated or shamed by cultural elites (because they’re too Jesus-y, too rural, less often university-educated, or because they are white males) and Trump manages to reverse this. He breaks taboos brazenly, swatting aside the elites who try to shame him, and often effectively demeans or demolishes opponents. We humans hate feeling shamed and Trump gives some of these folks a sense of pride and dignity while putting down the very groups that his followers have felt looking down on them for years.

Photo credit: Amazon.com, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, Tim Alberta

The Fear

A famous 1960s article described The Paranoid Style in American Politics, namely that American politics tends towards apocalyptic fears. There’s an extreme undercurrent to American politics (visible in the intense commitment to guns or state license plates that proclaim “Live Free or Die”) and while Canadians and the British feared communist spies during the Cold War, only the USA had a full blown Red Scare panic that led to McCarthyism.

Similarly, evangelicals fear not only a waning of cultural power but that “enemies are coming for them” as captured in a book by Tim Alberta (p.116). Alberta, an evangelical and pastor’s son, gained access to many leading evangelicals as a fellow believer. Time and again, they spoke to him and to their communities about grave threats – that Christians will be jailed, the Bible will be banned, that COVID was a trial run for shutting down churches, and a not-insignificant number who think Democrats are performing child sacrifices. Language of war, siege, and the devil comes up a lot. Groups who feel that threatened will do anything to survive and, in that context, a leader’s infidelities or crass language can seem trivial.

Trump supporters find joy in him and in their community of like-minded Americans. Photo credit: Swag listings from Etsy.com and Poppypine.com.

And the Fun

While many writers note the apocalyptic fears, David French (an evangelical who writes for the New York Times) deserves credit for highlighting that most liberals miss how the fear is mixed with fun. People at Trump rallies are made to feel afraid but also to have a good time. His followers take joy from his diatribes on liberals, Democrats and the media, and they find connection and community with like-minded peers. They have boat parades, chant, pray, cover their bodies and homes in MAGA swag, and believe under Trump, they will win America back and save it from the darkness.

If Schaefer highlights shame and dignity, Alberta and French highlight the important role that powerful emotions like fear and fun play in the connection Evangelicals feel.

Photo Credit: Mel Gibson on the set of Braveheart, 1995 by Scott Neeson, Wikimedia.org, CC BY-SA 3.0

Masculinity

Ryan Burge, the best pollster on American religiosity, recently shared a stunning fact – sociologists take it as a given that women are more religious than men, but amongst Gen Z Americans, men are now more religious than women. Burge’s thoughtful article highlights how many of these men appreciate a masculine church message of sacrifice. Many of these men are not university educated but at church, they find a mission and purpose, namely to follow Christ and to start a family that they will lead, provide for, and protect.

They also find camaraderie and community and some feel that it’s the one institution where their status as men is not treated as a problem.

Women, conversely, have been leaving American Christianity in droves. The #MeToo movement exposed abuse in the churches and many women care deeply about reproductive freedom. Many women see the church as threatening women’s freedom and safety.

In her runaway success book, Jesus and John Wayne, evangelical writer Kristen Kobes Du Mez wrote about how white American evangelicalism is centred on White masculinity. She showed how sermons and advice books draw from strong males like John Wayne, Braveheart or Reagan, more than from Paul or (at times) Jesus.

In a culture where there has been a reckoning about male power and abuse, the churches may offer a positive message that appeals to some young men.

Photo Credit: Dr. Anthea Butler and her book White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America from AntheaButler.com.

Race

Anthea Butler, an African-American scholar, attended an evangelical college and identified as an evangelical – until, as she explains in her book, White Evangelical Racism, she felt overwhelmed by the evidence that “evangelicalism is synonymous with whiteness” (p. 11) both culturally and politically.

In her book, she traces the long history of how evangelicals have relied on race to construct their own communal borders: supporting slavery before the Civil War; backing Jim Crow; undermining the Civil Rights Movement (attempting to tie it to communism); and how the Moral Majority, the Religious Right, and Trump have used race to stir fears and mobilize voters. She argues that claims of upholding morality and virtue become exposed time and again when powerful conservative White men (pastors or politicians) violate moral rules and are excused as long as they uphold American identity as a Christian nation (which she claims is code for White Christian Nation).

Photo Credit: Tyler Merbler, Outside during the US Capitol during the January 6, 2021 attack on the building. Wikipedia.org, CC BY 2.0

Politics and Idolatry

A through line connecting all these writers is they all see American evangelicalism as foremost a political group more than a merely religious one. They claim the community has fused conservative religion with conservative politics. Alberta (and some evangelical leaders he interviews) claims his community is guilty of idolatry for worshipping America more than Jesus.

Photo Credit: National Park Service, Public Domain on Wikipedia.org

Conclusions

What results will this have? It is hard to say. Evangelicalism is quite strong in the United States and sociologist David Martin showed decades ago that fusing religious identity with nationalism often helps religious identity to remain strong.

Conversely, this fusion is complicated because the fusion is only with part of the national population in ways that sometimes casts the other half of the population as an enemy. Certainly, many critique evangelicals for being more interested in power than in Jesus and confidence in organized religion has been declining for decades. There is a small amount of evidence that younger white evangelicals may be less pro-Trump but data is still a bit scarce.

The upcoming election is obviously significant but there is no doubt that Trump has changed America more than any leader since at least Reagan. Religiously, culturally and socially, America is more polarized than at any time in my life.

Evangelicalism may provide a home for many, especially white men who feel unmoored by a culture where they feel they don’t belong and are often looked down on. At the same time, fusing white male identity and nationalism threatens the safety and belonging of others, from minorities to immigrants to women. The unity Americans say they want seems far away given there often isn’t even agreement on basic facts. And language of enemies and siege stirs anger and frames compromise as treason.

We can only hope that the two sides will develop some capacity to hear one another. There are a minority within the evangelical community calling for change. And the culture may need to give more thought to the struggles of young men. These may seem faint hopes but cultures are fluid and ever-changing and the future can often surprise us.

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