People who believe God is on their side in the mundane field of electoral politics have caused great problems throughout history and everywhere in the world. I hate to say it, but the Romans may have known what they were doing with the lions. Evangelicals— fat white ones anyway— have been a force for great evil in the U.S. and their perspective on politics is in fundamental conflict with America values. They don’t belong here. They should go live in Russia or someplace where they’d be happier. The founders were adamantly opposed to the merging of religious beliefs with political ideology because it leads to the kind of discrimination and marginalization of individuals and groups holding different viewpoints that Europeans were escaping when they moved to this continent. Evangelicals in politics have represented nothing so much as divisiveness and ugly polarization. Aligning religious beliefs with specific political positions always— not sometimes, always-- contributes to social and political division, preventing dialogue and compromise across ideological lines, you know… cause God’s on their side. I love my country and those fat white evangelicals are lucky I’m not in charge.
Remember, throughout history, religionist groups have used their faith to justify political oppression, violence, and war against those who hold different beliefs. The Crusades, bloody wars between Catholics and Protestants, sectarian conflicts in the Middle East and the Northern Ireland Troubles are a few examples. Let’s never forget that when individuals or groups believe they are acting with “divine justification,” the door swings wide open for unchecked power, intolerance and disregard for human rights. The concept of a chosen people or divine mandate is used to justify discrimination and oppression against those deemed “other.” This has been observed in various instances throughout history, from the Spanish Inquisition and the conquest of the Western Hemisphere to the Partition of India to the Rwandan genocide. The concept of non-defensive “just war” within certain Christian traditions provides a framework for justifying violence against those deemed heretical or “pagans.” This fueled the belief that conquering and converting indigenous populations was a righteous act. Additionally, individuals claiming divine authority tend to escape accountability for their actions, creating a dangerous environment for abuse of power.
Like any cult, when political views become intertwined with religious beliefs, it creates a strong sense of in-group loyalty and hostility toward those outside the group, again an anti-American “us vs. them” mentality and the demonization of opposing viewpoints that wipes out critical thinking and constructive solutions to societal issues.
That said, “White evangelical Christian voters have lined up behind Republican candidates for decades,” reported Ruth Graham and Charles Homan on Monday, “driving conservative cultural issues into the heart of the party’s politics and making nominees and presidents of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. But no Republican has had a closer— or more counterintuitive— relationship with evangelicals than Trump. The twice-divorced casino magnate made little pretense of being particularly religious before his presidency. The ardent support he received from evangelical voters in 2016 and 2020 is often described as largely transactional: an investment in his appointment of Supreme Court justices who would abolish the federal right to abortion and advance the group’s other top priorities. Evangelical supporters themselves often compare Trump to the ancient Persian king Cyrus the Great, who freed a population of Jews even though he was not one of them.”
But religion scholars, drawing on a growing body of data, suggest another explanation: Evangelicals are not exactly who they used to be.
Being evangelical once suggested regular church attendance, a focus on salvation and conversion and strongly held views on specific issues such as abortion. Today, it is as often used to describe a cultural and political identity: one in which Christians are considered a persecuted minority, traditional institutions are viewed skeptically and Trump looms large.
“Politics has become the master identity,” said Ryan Burge, an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University and a Baptist pastor. “Everything else lines up behind partisanship.”
This is most true among white Americans, who over the course of Trump’s presidency became more likely to identify as “evangelical,” even as overall rates of church attendance declined. The trend was particularly pronounced among supporters of Trump: A 2021 Pew Research Center analysis found that white Americans who expressed “warm views” of him were more likely to have begun identifying as evangelical during his presidency than those who did not.
The Republican caucuses in Iowa next week will be a test of how fully Trump continues to own that identity. Among his rivals, Gov. Ron DeSantis has invested most heavily in courting Iowa evangelicals, using a traditional playbook. He has secured the support of prominent evangelical figures and attested to his hard-line bona fides on abortion, an issue on which he has criticized Trump for being inconsistent, and in culture-war fights in Florida, his home state.
“In Iowa, these things matter,” said Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for the DeSantis campaign.
But Trump’s track record and recent polling suggest that is not certain. In early December, Trump had a 25-point lead over DeSantis among evangelical voters, according to a Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa Poll.
What may matter more than endorsements and policy plans are Trump’s [phony] embrace of Christianity as a cultural identity— and his promises to defend it.
At a recent rally in Waterloo, Iowa, Trump cast Christians as a broadly persecuted group facing down a government weaponized against them. Catholics are the current target of “the communists, Marxists and fascists,” he said, citing a recent controversy about a retracted F.B.I. memo, and adding that “evangelicals will not be far behind.”
…Church membership in the United States has been slipping for decades, along with the share of Americans who identify as Christian— and particularly as Protestants, the branch that has historically been the gravitational center of American religion. In the middle of the 20th century, 68 percent of Americans described themselves as Protestant. By 2022, 34 percent did, according to Gallup. (A further 11 percent described themselves as simply “Christian…”) A larger share of conservatives than liberals report leaving church. In 2021, for the first time on record, less than 50 percent of Americans were members of a church.
…As ties to church communities have weakened, the church leaders who once rallied the faithful behind causes and candidates have lost influence. A new class of thought leaders has filled the gap: social media personalities and podcasters, once-fringe prophetic preachers and politicians.
There was little sign at the outset of the 2016 Republican primary season that evangelicals would take to Trump as enthusiastically as they eventually did. When World magazine, an influential Christian publication, surveyed about 100 evangelical leaders in December 2015, none of them named Trump as their preferred candidate.
But as Trump gained ground in the early primaries, his growing strength among white evangelical voters became clear. Polls showed that the future nominee was most popular among one group in particular: white evangelicals who seldom or never went to church… He capitalized on eroding trust and participation in civic institutions and then, as president, remade the institutions in his own image.
Trump elevated a cohort of obscure evangelical pastors and media figures, who were often outside the theological mainstream but unwavering in their devotion to him. He increasingly championed Christians as a constituency, rather than nodding to their values, as previous presidents had. His rallies took on a tent-revival atmosphere.
…The evolving evangelical identity is already scrambling how politicians appeal to these voters. Burge’s research has found that “cultural Christians” care relatively little about bedrock religious-right causes like abortion and pornography.
In interviews across Iowa, non-churchgoing Christians who supported Republican candidates, even those who said they believed in governing the country by Christian principles, cited immigration and the economy most often as their top issues in this year’s election.
While they almost universally opposed abortion, they were also often skeptical of the more uncompromising policies that candidates like DeSantis have championed.