White Evangelicals and their Path Forward with Donald Trump
Getty Images / The Washington Post
In June 2020, amid nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd, President Donald Trump posed with a Bible outside St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC. Police used riot-control tactics to clear protesters from Lafayette Square to prepare for the photo op. Trump bounced the Bible in his hands for a few moments before holding it up for reporters to photograph. When asked, “Is that your Bible?”, President Trump replied, “It’s a Bible.”
This served as a signal moment for many Americans. Trump’s holding up of evangelicals’ holy book and his response to the reporter’s question acted as evidence that Trump viewed the Bible as many politicians had before him: as a prop and a tool to exploit for his personal gain. Any casual consumer of American politics could conclude, taking into account this moment and Trump’s questionable past comments and demeanour, that he did not embody Christian values, and thus would be undeserving of any evangelical votes.
This was not the same takeaway that white evangelicals gleaned from this moment. Instead, their takeaway was quite the opposite, as evidenced by their strong and vehement backing of Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. According to post-election polling from the Pew Research Centre, 59% of voters who regularly attend church services cast their ballot for Trump, while only 40% did so for Biden. Among white evangelicals, 85% who regularly attend church services voted for Trump, as did 81% who attend less frequently.
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, it was also white evangelicals who clung to the false belief that Donald Trump had actually won the 2020 election and stood idly by while he attempted to stay in control. It was in part due to their indolence that the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol had occurred. That day, people professing to be part of a religion that preaches about loving one’s enemy attempted to reverse the results of a democratic election, allow their preferred candidate to stay in power, and block the winning candidate from being certified for the position that the people had chosen him for. Many Americans can only imagine what their next steps would have been had their efforts been successful.
Despite all of this, white evangelical voters appeared to be moving away from President Trump during Biden’s presidency. This apparent trend can be traced back to two major events. The first is Trump’s public endorsement of the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. While a vaccine was in the early stages of development during the final months of Trump’s first presidency, and the President dubbed a vaccine roll-out plan called “Operation Warp Speed”, evangelicals seemed open to the possibility. However, once Biden won office and the vaccine rollout began in earnest, many evangelicals retreated further and further into their conspiracy-filled online echo chambers, where their concerns about the vaccine were developed and amplified. Donald Trump, meanwhile, attempted to take credit for the vaccine that had been widely dispersed under his successor’s administration. This move by Trump caused many evangelical voters who had backed him heavily in the last election to feel betrayed and used by him, as he did not corroborate their concerns about the vaccine. The second event that seemed to move evangelicals away from Donald Trump was his official declaration of a position on abortion. The overturn of Roe v. Wade by the United States Supreme Court in July 2022 was a decision almost overwhelmingly applauded by evangelicals due to their staunchly anti-abortion stance. While their faith in Donald Trump somewhat rebounded after he took credit for overturning the legal precedent, evangelicals’ perception of Trump was again negatively affected by his eventual declaration of a position on the issue. Donald Trump took the stance that while he personally was pro-life, abortion needed to be left up to the states. In effect, Donald Trump declared himself pro-choice.
Fast forward to 2024, and Donald Trump has won the election, in part because he made gains with nearly every voting demographic. While extensive data detailing how people of faith voted is still to come, exit polls from the Washington Post demonstrate that evangelicals were not immune to this trend. In 2020, nearly 60% of evangelical voters cast their ballots for Trump. This year, that number has risen to 62%.
While it remains to be seen if Donald Trump will govern in a manner that evangelicals approve of, the question of where the voting demographic goes from here is one on the minds of many. The next presidential election is a long way away, but very few candidates have had as firm a grasp on the evangelical vote as Donald Trump has. Will Trump’s successor be able to replicate his success, or will evangelicals look for deliverance from another place?
Alex Borgert (he/him) is a second-year Political Studies and Philosophy joint honours student and a lower-year intern at Political Digest.