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1/ Some thoughts about this NYTimes article on evangelicals and Trump. As background, I grew up in Iowa in a fundamentalist, non-denominational church, although not in the community highlighted in the article. https://twitter.com/elizabethjdias/status/1292437478285205504
On one level, the role of victimization/fear of losing power and influence may seem bizarre. After all, evangelicals – by that we mean white, conservative, predominantly southern/midwestern - seem to be a particularly powerful religious group.
But this fails to understand the history of evangelicalism and American Christianity. Power can measured in multiple ways. Compared to other groups, white evangelicals are very powerful. Compared to American Christians from previous generations, they are much less so.
Modern evangelicalism is deeply attuned to these losses. The shared experiences of evangelicals are largely determined by them: the loss of science education to evolution in the 1920s, prayer in school in the 1960s, no-cause divorce laws, abortion legalization, LGBTQ+ rights.
The very clear trend, from this perspective, is away from social acceptance and legal protection of their preferred policy positions.
Further, the evangelical institutions we see today – the denominations, churches, colleges, and non-profits, are largely the re-creation of conservative Xtian institutions after losing others. Mainline denominations were lost to liberal Christians and historical criticism.
Universities were lost to secularity and pluralism. Wheaton is Wheaton because Christian conservatives lost Princeton.
Unlike other religious groups in the US, white evangelicals pair their “victimization” without the historical memory of oppression in the US experienced by Mormon, Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, or Black Protestant Americans.
Thus white evangelicals feel like a persecuted minority group without being shaped by the empathy for other groups that comes with really experiencing oppression.
So the victimization motive is a potentially powerful one. But I think the important question is why victimization/influence is the correct frame through which evangelicals view Trump, instead of the many other potential frames, also as easily driven by religion and experience.
The real answer, I think, for the vast majority of white evangelicals, is not particularly enlightening or interesting. They support Trump because they are strong Republicans.
They are strong Republicans because they found in the party an institution amendable to their needs and their influence, a connection fostered by Republican pols and evang. leaders over half a century.
White evangelicals are thus much more Republican than other white religious Americans, allowing evangelical identity to act as an anchor for Republican support.
I doubt Trump’s speech at Dordt did much of anything to persuade Sioux Center voters that some strong-man pro-Christian political savior was there to protect them.
I see it instead as Trump, in the best way he can, reminding GOP voters that they are central coalition partners, and that he will recognize that bargain: support = influence.
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