Why do some US evangelicals still support Donald Trump?

By evangelical historian, Martyn Whittock

How strong is evangelical support for Donald Trump now? How has his recent bout of Covid affected that perception? And watching from outside the US, how is it possible Bible believing Christians can back such an extraordinary figure?

In 2016 Trump attracted the support of 81% of US (mostly white) evangelicals. In addition, between May 2019 and March 2020, the New York Times reported that the number of weekly church-attending white Protestants (a wider group than ‘evangelicals’) convinced that Donald Trump was ‘anointed by God to be president’ grew from 29.6% to 49.5%.

However, things have become more volatile since. By early May 2020, white evangelicals approving Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis had fallen six percent compared with the second half of March.

By early June and the unrest following the death of George Floyd, unease had occurred among some evangelicals. Trump’s approval rating among white evangelicals fell from nearly 80% to 62%. This has caused Trump to double-down on his pitch for the evangelical vote.

The soul of America

This explains the Bible-brandishing photo-opportunity outside Washington’s St John’s Church on 1 June. Interestingly, by the last week of June, 72% of white evangelicals polled said they approved of Trump’s performance and 82% were inclined to vote for him (Pew Research Center). It seems that the white evangelical slippage away from Trump had been halted. In contrast, large majorities of ‘Black Protestants’, generally evangelicals, (83%) and ‘Hispanic Catholics’ (74%) disapproved of Trump; among those designated ‘Black Protestant voters’, 88% said they would vote Biden.

‘Soul’ and ‘God’ are increasingly referenced in the fevered context of US politics, in a way unfamiliar to the more secular politics of the UK. This is escalating as November’s presidential election approaches. Some UK evangelicals may envy this – but they should be careful what they wish for. This is because a lot of ‘freight’ travels behind this particular political ‘engine’.

We can see this complexity in the way that a highly divisive politician – capable of crude speech towards women, ambiguity (at best) regarding white supremacists, ruthless self-promotion, dishonesty, climate-change-denial, insensitivity to racial issues, stereotyping of foreigners, aggressively nationalist, and with no track record of evangelical Christian faith – has become the go-to politician for US white evangelicals.

Why US evangelicals support Trump

The prime reason lies in Trump’s appointment of conservative judges, as the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg shows. Supreme Court nominations will, it is hoped, guarantee conservative judgements for decades to come. Trump has certainly delivered with such appointments since 2016.

The ultimate evangelical target is the reversal of Roe v. Wade (1973), which underpins current US abortion legislation. Hence the number of abortion-related laws going through state legislatures at present, in an attempt to force this back to the Supreme Court. This is probably the single most important factor behind evangelical support for Trump, although it is difficult at present to assess what the ultimate ‘desired legislation’ would look like. Trump was once ‘pro-choice’ but his position has changed and come into line with evangelicals.

There is also an evangelical desire to roll back LGBTQ rights; although Trump’s position on this has been ambiguous. However, conservative judges will not necessarily deliver as expected, as was seen in June when Trump-appointee to the Supreme Court, Gorsuch, upheld federal law with regard to LGBTQ rights.

Other issues also appear on the conservative agenda: defence of school prayers; funding for Christian schools (even if charged with discriminatory practices); defending fundamentalism in schools (eg ‘Creationism’); restricting availability of contraception to young people; allowing tax-exempt entities to promote politicians. Antagonism to feminism is also a feature and many evangelicals have historically opposed equal rights legislation. They expect Trump to promote many of these issues in return for their support.

Marginalised minority

The key thing is that evangelicals see themselves as a marginalised (even oppressed) minority, whose outlook, values and interests are overlooked and scorned. The striking thing is that this defensive position can swiftly transition into an offensive bid for power to force these values on the nation. Because they believe they are acting for God, there are times when the usual rules of the game (protection for other minorities, voting rights, questions of whether a faith position can be imposed on others) seem not to apply.

Desire for a semi-theocracy

It is at this point that the defence of a minority position can begin to feel like an attempt to enforce a semi-theocracy on a modern nation. Given Jesus’ statement that ‘My kingdom is not of this world’ (John 18:36), there is definitely an issue here that requires serious reflection. But it is one that Christians – and not just US ones – have found difficult to engage with since the Edict of Milan (313). Access to political and coercive power, in order to achieve a desired end, can come at a cost, especially when moral compromise in one area becomes seen as acceptable collateral damage necessary to achieve victory in another.

In addition, the Old Testament is frequently referenced by evangelicals, who explicitly describe Trump as a modern-day Cyrus (e.g. Isaiah 45:1-3): doing God’s will, despite not being of the household of faith. Trump’s support for current Israeli government expansionist actions, and his moving of the US embassy to Jerusalem, are cited as evidence of his ‘Cyrus anointing’.

For many such observers, the president’s apparent rapid recovery, after testing positive for Covid-19, will only have strengthened their belief in his divine anointing. Returning to the Oval Office on 7 October, Trump described his illness as being ‘a blessing from God’. Only the previous evening he had tweeted an attack on Biden for being, in Trump’s view, ‘against 2nd Amendment and Religion.’ Biden is a devout Catholic but, clearly, Trump is determined to keep up the claim that he alone is the bulwark defending religious freedom and that God is on his side. It is not hard to guess Trump’s target audience.

On a wider front, though, it should be noted that many US voters are less convinced that this is a sign of providential approval. A Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted following the president’s positive Covid-19 result, found that 9 out of 10 Democrats, and 5 out of 10 Republicans, thought that Trump ‘probably would not have been infected’ if he had followed public health rules devised during the current pandemic.

Consequently, dramatic as these recent events have been, they do not seem to have impacted on the longer term issues regarding support for (or opposition to) Trump, which are rooted in deep cultural tensions.

But things are more complex…

Whatever one’s position on these areas, the driving ideological motivation is clear but often missed this side of the Atlantic, where many of these areas are no longer contested by evangelical Christians, even if they are not happy about aspects of the status quo. At times, though, US actions feel as much like an attack on aspects of modernity, as a defence of a minority’s interests. And opposing viewpoints are framed as anti-Christian.

However, it gets more complex yet. This is because many evangelical supporters who endorse Trump also frequently seem comfortable with: framing ‘Black Lives Matter’ as a law and order issue and not about systemic racism; opposition to gun control; visceral opposition to Obamacare; opposition to environmental legislation; climate-change-denial; strident nationalism; antipathy to international agreements; acceptance of extreme conspiracy theories (of which those emanating from so-called ‘QAnon’ are some of the most alarming).

Some of these are rooted in an evangelical apocalyptic outlook (not confined to the USA) which interprets current events as aspects of the impending End Time, and which looks for the hand of antichrist in the actions of opponents. Others, though, are from the established play-list of the US right. While campaigning in Ohio, in August, Trump denounced Biden as being against God and guns!

Which brings us to race. Black evangelicals believe in the same gospel, but they don’t support Trump. Race has been ‘the elephant in the room’ all along. It never features as an evangelical objective, but there are times when one feels that a commitment to a whiter USA and a return to a time when white people dominated the agenda is lurking, unspoken, in the background. Sometimes, the things they don’t care much about (racial injustice) shout as loudly as the things they do (abortion). That would be strongly denied, of course. Nevertheless, one feels that black evangelicals spotted it long ago.

The US evangelical position can be very difficult for non-US evangelicals to understand because it includes features common to many other evangelical communities, but mixed with things specific to the US religious right. Consequently, when US evangelicals insist that the whole ‘cocktail’ has to be drunk, it can leave many other evangelicals feeling shaken, not stirred!