White evangelical voters show steadfast support for Trump

By PETER SMITH

After former President Donald Trump gave his victory speech early Wednesday, at the Palm Beach Convention Center, dozens of his supporters gathered in a lobby to sing “How Great Thou Art,” reciting from memory the words and harmonies of a classic hymn, popular among evangelical Christians.

It was a fitting coda to an election in which Trump once again won the support of about 8 in 10 white evangelical Christian voters, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters. That margin — among a group that represented about 20% of the total electorate — repeats similarly staggering margins of evangelical support that T rump received in 2020.

Pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church of Dallas, one of Trump’s most prominent evangelical supporters since the 2016 campaign, called the election a “great victory.”

“Yes, there were some faith issues important to evangelicals, but evangelicals are Americans, too,” Jeffress said. “They care about immigration, they care about the economy.”

Jeffress dismissed concerns of those who predict a Christian nationalist administration.

“People who are not Christians are unduly worried he’s going to institute some kind of oppressive theocracy. He has no interest in doing that,” Jeffress said, noting that Trump has shown no interest in banning same-sex marriage or imposing an absolute abortion ban.

Trump’s strongest supporters among evangelical leaders can likely expect the kind of White House access they had in the first Trump term.

Trump has proclaimed a sense of divine mandate.

“Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason,” Trump said in his victory speech, referring to the widespread proclamations among evangelical supporters that he received miraculous divine protection in the near-fatal assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. “And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness.”

FILE - President Donald Trump holds a Bible as he visits outside St. John's Church, June 1, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File) — FILE – President Donald Trump holds a Bible as he visits outside St. John’s Church, June 1, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

Some Trump critics fear he will implement a Christian nationalist agenda they see as giving Christians a privileged position in the country and flouting the separation of church and state. Others wonder how such an agenda would look in practice.

On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to “protect Christians in our schools and in our military and our government” and in “our public square.” Many church-state battles in recent years have focused on Christian symbols in public settings, such as displays of crosses.

The Republican platform pledged to defend Christians as well as Jews facing persecution. While it included a general pledge to protect the worship of all faith groups, those were the only two singled out by name. The platform also championed the right to “pray and read the Bible in school.”

Trump is pledging to support other evangelical priorities, such as support for Israel and a pushback on transgender rights, saying, “God created two genders, male and female.” Evangelicals have been dismayed that Trump has distanced himself from the strictest antiabortion proposals, though evangelical leaders saw Trump as preferable to Harris’ strong advocacy for abortion rights.

Pro-Trump rallies featured expressions that have been embraced by Christian nationalists, such as the song “God Bless the U.S.A.” Many at Trump rallies wear shirts proclaiming, “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president.”

Evangelicals’ support of Trump initially took many by surprise, given his casino ventures, multiple marriages, accusations of sexual misconduct and, more recently, his central role in fomenting the 2021 Capitol riot and his conviction on fraud charges. But many supporters dispute these accusations or see him as an imperfect but powerful champion.

“People support President Trump not for his piety but for his policies,” Jeffress said.

John Fea, a history professor at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who wrote a book on the evangelical backing for Trump in his 2016 campaign, said the persistence of that support was not surprising.

In this campaign, Fea said he spoke with evangelicals who were uncomfortable with Trump. They were “looking for any reason to vote for Harris,” such as some moderation on abortion. “I don’t think Harris was giving them much.”

It wasn’t just white, non-Hispanic evangelicals supporting Trump. So did about just over half of Latino evangelicals and about 6 in 10 white Catholics, according to AP VoteCast. Overall, about 6 in 10 Mormons also backed the former president.

Pastor Abraham Rivera of La Puerta Life Center in North Miami, Florida, attributed Trump’s popularity among all Latinos, and evangelicals in particular, to their conservative values regarding morality and family.

“The gender identity issue that the left pushes a lot, I think it puts off a lot of Latino evangelicals,” Rivera said. Members of his congregation voiced some concerns about Trump’s “personality or things he says,” but not his policies, Rivera said.

He expects the frequent contacts that Latino evangelical leaders had with Trump’s first administration to continue, giving them a voice. In contrast, he felt doors “were shut closed” in the Biden White House, which seemed to disregard the values of many conservatives.

But Rivera added: “The idea that some evil Christian right is going to take over everything is just crazy.”

Fea said a Christian nationalist agenda may be more rhetorical than substantive on the national level — whereas he said there are genuine cases of it on the local level. He anticipated that the Trump administration would not push back against such things as a new Louisiana law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools and an Oklahoma education official’s order for public schools to incorporate the Bible into lessons. Both face court challenges.

Even if the administration’s expressions of religion are in rhetoric rather than policy, that can have an impact in a country that is more secular and religiously diverse than in past generations, said Andrew Whitehead, author of “Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States.”

“For those who do not embrace that expression of Christianity or the Christian religion or no religion at all, they will feel marked as ‘other’ and not truly American,” said Whitehead, associate professor of sociology at Indiana University Indianapolis.

Whitehead anticipated that a Christian nationalist view will likely motivate restrictive immigration policies on the grounds of protecting traditional American culture, such as the first Trump administration’s ban on travel from several Muslim-majority countries.

The 2024 Republican platform pledged to use “existing federal law to keep foreign Christian-hating Communists, Marxists, and Socialists,” as well as “jihadists” out of America. On the campaign trail, Trump said he would form a federal task force to fight the “persecution against Christians in America.”

Other groups, nationally and within local churches, are poised to push back on a Christian nationalist agenda.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State pledged to resist any Trump administration policies that privilege Christians and use claims of religious freedom as a “license to discriminate,” said Andrew Seidel, the group’s vice president of strategic communications.

He anticipates the incoming Trump administration has a plan to implement the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which he said has a Christian nationalist blueprint, despite Trump distancing himself from it.

“This time, they are ready for a win,” Seidel said. “Last time they were the dog that caught the car. They didn’t know what they were doing. They’re going to be ready to go on day one.”

The Rev. Tim Schaefer, pastor of First Baptist Church of Madison, Wisconsin, said he opposes Christian nationalism in part because it defies the separation of church and state – an important belief in his Baptist tradition.

“Our job then is to remind folks that we were not established as a Christian nation,” he said. “There was a desire on behalf of the founders to be a religiously pluralistic nation.”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Originally Published: November 7, 2024 at 10:52 AM PST