If there is one question people ask me over and over, it is this: Why do evangelicals support Donald Trump?
This story, told through devout families in Iowa, is our answer to that question. 1/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/09/us/evangelicals-trump-christianity.html

This is a topic that is controversial. It has torn families apart. It has dogged reporters & scholars. It has strengthened faith for some & destroyed it for others. It has revealed a polarized nation. And it will matter greatly to who wins the White House in November 2/

You have heard many reasons: That white evangelical support was purely transactional, about abortion or the Supreme Court. That evangelicals hated Hillary Clinton, or felt torn to pick the lesser of two evils. That they held their noses and voted. 3/

You probably also remember something else: Trump’s 2016 promise that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and “wouldn’t lose any voters.” What you may not remember is where he said it. And to whom. And the other message he had that day. 4/

Trump spoke at a small Christian college in Sioux Center, Iowa, in front of a three-story pipe organ, and he made a promise to evangelicals: If they elect him president, he said, “Christianity will have power.” 5/

And so to understand the relationship between Trump and white evangelicals, one has to go back to January 23, 2016. One has to hear his speech the way the evangelical community heard it. 6/

“You are always only one generation away from losing Christianity,” one man told me. “If you don’t teach it to your children it ends. It stops right there.” 7/

I started this story in December. I went to Iowa in January and March. After the pandemic hit, I reported via phone. I spoke with dozens of people, children to grandparents. We met at churches, at Casey's bakery, at Dordt, and at dinner tables in homes around the county. 8/

Their stories reveal the deepest impulses of mainstream evangelical Christianity & expose where its believers pledge allegiance. And they reveal that white evangelicals support Trump not in spite of who he is, but because of who he is—and who they are. 9/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/09/us/evangelicals-trump-christianity.html

The photos in the story are by the talented @ackermangruber. My editors @jialynnyang and @marclacey shepherded this story from start to end, and I am so grateful. 10/

Many of you have your own ways of answering this question. I would love to hear from you.

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