(As en went to press, various lawsuits disputing the result were ongoing.)
Gerald Bray reports from Alabama
The coronavirus pandemic has unexpectedly found me in Alabama, where I have enjoyed a front-row seat in the 2020 elections circus.
Foreigners concentrate on the presidential race, but there is a lot more to it than that. Americans vote for the two houses of congress (but only one-third of the Senate) and on many other things too. All politics is local, and my particular Alabama favourites this year were the decision to allow the sale of alcohol on Sundays combined with permission granted to take loaded firearms to church – for self-defence purposes, of course. Alabama is the heart of the Bible belt, where extreme libertarianism, combined with a flexible approach to social responsibility, creates a heady mix. The prospect of a drunken massacre in the choir seems remote, but we know that if one occurs everyone’s thoughts and prayers will be with the victims – and nothing will change.
You have to get your head around this when you read that 80% of white Evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in 2016, and many have done the same in 2020. For the mainstream media the label ‘Evangelical’ is often code for conservative-minded rural and working-class white voters. It does not include African-Americans, who are almost uniformly anti-Trump and more socially aware than their white counterparts. Nor does it include the Evangelical intelligentsia. Trump has a few defenders in academia, but they are not typical and have been roundly criticised by other Evangelicals. In truth, his defeat is a necessary catharsis for American Christianity. His blatant manipulation of Evangelicals and traditional Catholics has been an embarrassment and has brought few dividends beyond the appointment of three conservative justices to the Supreme Court. That legacy will endure, but ironically it has made Trump himself redundant, and so his departure is timely.
What happens now? Being anti-Trump does not make one pro-Biden, and if the opposition chooses a more acceptable leader – Mike Pence, perhaps, or John Kasich, the governor of Ohio and a strong Evangelical, things may be different next time. Joe Biden is too old to serve a second term, and Kamala Harris has little appeal beyond the minorities that she represents. Christian America can survive and recover from Donald Trump, if good people step up to the plate. We can only wait to see if they will.
Gerald is a research professor at Beeson Divinity School, Alabama. He is also Distinguished Professor of Historical Theology at Knox Theological Seminary, Florida. He is the director of research at the Latimer Trust at Oak Hill Theological College in London
Analysis from Martyn Whittock
By the weekend before the presidential election, polling commissioned by the Family Research Council (FRC) found a 96% support for Trump among those classified as ‘Spiritually Active Governance-Engaged Conservative Christians’ (their support for him had stood at 91% in 2016).
While representing only a tenth of the electorate, this particular group’s high turnout means they punch well above their weight. The overall evangelical community makes up about 16% of the electorate in the USA, but about 25% of voters. And once again in 2020, as in 2016, they formed a significant part of the Trump base.
While the figures are striking, the phenomenon is not new and Trump is simply the latest (and most extreme) manifestation of the nature of the US evangelical community’s electoral behaviour. Their voting in both 2016 and 2020 is simply a – particularly polarised – version of the structural pattern which intertwines US evangelicals and right-wing politics. It is, as some American commentators have put it, ‘baked-in’. Expect more of the same in the future, despite Trump’s defeat. The extreme belief in Trump’s divine anointing, that has been repeatedly demonstrated by US evangelicals, will not easily dissipate. How it will now express itself politically is open to question, but they will not quickly forget the access to political power that they have enjoyed over the past four years. It is that access to power which explains the most striking anomalies and apparent contradictions in US evangelical behaviour since Trump gained the Republican nomination back in 2016.
Conservative Supreme Court nominations (with the potential for the repeal of current abortion legislation), support for gun rights, downplaying of science, support for a particular form of Israeli politics, strident US nationalism, the promise of economic recovery rather than lockdown, and Trump’s explicit referencing of the evangelical community has (in 2020 as in 2016) outweighed his personal behaviour, Covid-19 mortality, racial injustice, the climate-change crisis, subverting international behavioural norms – and even his mocking of evangelicals in private. All of this drove the process which culminated in the evangelical support for Trump in November 2020, but which this time failed to deliver victory.
Many US evangelicals have a tendency to read political developments as signs of divine approval of the trajectory of events. This previously reinforced their confidence in what they considered to be the providential nature of Trump’s presidency. They have presented Trump as the political embodiment of a spiritual battle for the soul and future of the USA. In this battle they were prepared to turn their backs on a wide range of pressing issues, in order to achieve victory in key areas that have long been central to the agenda of the US evangelical right. It was a belief that was explicitly and repeatedly stated with extreme confidence during the years of the Trump presidency, when his presence in the White House (and their proximity to power) was frequently presented as evidence of God’s approval of the situation. It may now prove particularly challenging to interpret events in this way, in the context of his defeat.
For some other evangelicals, more inclined to stress the fallen nature of the world and the complexity of events, the Trump phenomenon holds up a mirror to a broken society and a politically compromised section of the church. In this, the wider international evangelical community remains as polarised by Trump, and what caused him, as it ever was. It is not over, despite the defeat of Trump and the victory of Biden. For many US evangelicals the culture war is ongoing and the USA remains deeply divided.
