White Evangelicals - Who Are They? What Are They?
There are 61,000,000 white evangelicals in the US. 49,000,000 voted for Trump in 2020. That was 67% of Trump's total vote of 74,000,000. About one-half of white evangelicals live in the South. They tend to be ill-informed and less educated than the average American. They are on the far-right fringes of Christianity, basically identifiable with fundamentalists, with both groups reading the Bible as literal. They key on hellfire and damnation while paying lip service to the Christian ideal of loving thy neighbor.
Their claim to support Trump on “pro-life” grounds is a religious feint and masks their true propensity toward nationalism and racism.
Conservative commentator and evangelical Christian David A. French writes: “We know that opposition to abortion rights motivates white Evangelicals far less than their leaders’ rhetoric would suggest. Eastern Illinois University’s Ryan Burge, a leading statistician of American religion, has noted that immigration drove Evangelical support for Donald Trump more than abortion.”
Many essentially see politics as a great battle between White, Christian America and the multiracial, religiously diverse reality of 21st century America. Government is there not to produce legislative fixes to real-world problems but to engage their enemies on behalf of White Christianity.
Other statistics connected to white evangelists bolster the view that racism or defense of white supremacy is at the heart of the Republican Party. PRRI's (Public Religious Research Institute) chief executive Robert P. Jones writes:
Among voters who hold an unfavorable view of the Black Lives Matter movement, believe the U.S. criminal justice system treats all people fairly, or believe that racism is a minor problem or not a problem at all, more than eight in ten voted for Donald Trump.
The fixation with defining the United States as a White Christian nation is on full display nightly on Fox News, where replacement theory — not abortion or gay rights — drives so much more of the conversation, says Jennifer Rubin.
In this context, White evangelical Christians’ attraction to the thrice-married philanderer Trump is understandable, as is their support for the cruelest immigration policies (e.g., child separation) and the anti-Muslim travel ban – even the claim of forbidding “Merry Christmas”. It’s all about race and religious identity, not policies founded on Christian values.
Their minority status is what has fueled the MAGA movement. Because they can never win (at least in a democracy with free and accurate elections), their political venom will not abate.
The aims of White evangelicals run smack into the American ideal that “all men are created equal” and constitutional protections that allow no bias against any particular religion or racial group. In that regard, they have become deeply antidemocratic.
Until the emergence of Trump, they had been self-contained in their rural worlds of religion. With Trump, they have emerged as a potent and dangerous political force.
If there is any hope for this group, it lies with the fraction of White Evangelists who do NOT fit the MAGA category and believe truly in the core message of Christianity and Jesus Christ.
