Post-Trump, How Will U.S. Evangelicals Deal With Internal Rifts And External Hostility?

Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Arizona. Creative Commons photo.

(OPINION) The Donald Trump Era will end, whether in 2025 or 2021, and current state-by-state polls suggest it's the latter.

Reporters who get religion need to prepare for coverage whenever U.S. evangelical Protestantism reassesses its Trump-free past and future. That’s a big story, since this remains the most vibrant segment of U.S. religion, indeed, one of the nation’s largest movements of any type.

Evangelicalism first has internal rifts to work through. Make that white evangelicals. For the most part, Black, Latino and Asian-American evangelical churches, distinctly different in political sentiments, are unified, thriving and granted cultural respectability by the press.

White evangelicals’ public media image is all but overwhelmed by a coterie of Trump enthusiasts (think Jerry Falwell, Jr., Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, Paula White). There’s also a dogged faction of Trump skeptics (David French, Michael Gerson, Peter Wehner, or on occasion Sen. Ben Sasse or Southern Baptist spokesman Russell Moore).

But is evangelicalism merely a political faction? Of course not.

Largely ignored by the media, there’s a vast apparatus of denominations, local congregations, “parachurch” agencies, charities, mission boards and schools where leaders (whatever they think personally about Trumpish political histrionics) focus on traditional ministry and education.

The Trump years have created a gap between that non-partisan leadership elite and grassroots folk who identify as “evangelicals” with pollsters (whatever that means in belief or practice). Innumerable news articles have reported they gave Trump 81% backing in 2016.

But white evangelicals always vote heavily Republican. I advise journalists that white Catholics will decide Trump’s fate. Our own tmatt notes the evidence showing that the 2016 vote was more anti-Hillary Clinton than pro-Trump.

While the evangelicals try to overcome their political squabbles to recapture past morale, they face hostility from culture-shaping higher education and (yes) the mass media that enhances their image problems. This face off long predates Trump’s presidency but like much else has become more toxic as both advocates and foes fuse biblical conservatism with right-wing forces.

This well-worn pattern is displayed in neon lights this campaign year, typified by numerous articles and the following four new books. (I have yet to read these and bases his remarks on publicity.)

* "Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation” (Liveright) by Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a historian at Calvin University. She sees Trump as the apotheosis of 75 years of evangelical celebration of patriarchy and masculinity. (Disclosure: her school is affiliated with The Guy’s denomination, the Christian Reformed Church.)

* "Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump” (Random House) by Sarah Posner. The familiar How-Could-They? literature wonders how pious conservatives could favor so problematic a secularist. The book extends this freelance investigator’s article before the 2016 vote, “How Trump Took Hate Groups Mainstream,” which won a Hillman award.

* "The Power Worshipers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism” (Bloomsbury) by Katherine Stewart. Her survey of political maneuvers is hailed by many liberal outlets. Stewart’s outlook is well-known from her previous title, “The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children.” (Stealth? These voluntary after-school Bible clubs say their purpose is “to evangelize boys and girls with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.”)

* "Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States” (Oxford University) by sociologists Samuel Perry of the University of Oklahoma and Andrew Whitehead of Indiana University — Purdue University Indianapolis. Unlike the prior books, they cover the same ground in descriptive rather than polemical manner and give selected activists an ample hearing.

Though issued six years ago, I add “American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism” (Harvard University) by Matthew Avery Sutton, a Washington State University historian. That’s because Sutton reviewed three of the above books (excluding Stewart) for The New Republic and his remarks typify this situation. He believes evangelical strategists hoodwinked the populace and “whitewashed” away the “sexists, racists, and xenophobes” who control their fear-driven movement.

Mark Tooley of the conservative Institute on Religion and Democracy contends that religious “demonizing” of opponents smacks of the 19th Century Protestant establishment decrying dangerous Catholic immigrants, and that stereotyping tens of millions of citizens is “politically shortsighted."

Richard Ostling is a former religion reporter for the Associated Press and former correspondent for TIME Magazine. This piece first appeared at Get Religion.