White evangelical Christians helped bring US President Donald Trump to power. They remain among his most ardent supporters. This, even as the president seemingly has gone out of his way to mock Christianity and its first commandment.
One year in, the vast majority (69 percent) of white evangelicals continue to approve of Trump’s job performance, according to Pew Research data. That is compared with his 39 percent approval rating nationally.
It is true that support for Trump among all religious groups — including white evangelicals and white Catholics — has steadily dropped since he took office, with the exception of black Protestants who were already near rock-bottom approval levels and are largely Democratic. It has not collapsed.
It is not just that there is nowhere else to go, although that is likely part of it, given Democrats’ trouble with religious voters. It is that many Christians actually seem to like Trump’s policies.
A solid majority (58 percent) of white evangelicals and nearly half of white Catholics (46 percent) say they support all or most of his plans and policies, compared with 27 percent support nationally. They also trust his judgement. White evangelicals are twice as likely (40 percent) as the general public (21 percent) to say they are confident that Trump acts ethically in office.
This, even though Trump has depicted himself as Christ in an artificial intelligence-generated image, hired a spiritual adviser who compared him to the risen Christ, tweeted praise to Allah on Easter Sunday before threatening to destroy a civilization, used his National Prayer Breakfast speech to air his 2020 election grievances and continues to disparage the pope.
At some point, these are not random missteps. They are a pattern.
What are Christian groups getting in exchange for such embarrassment and harassment? Or have they so fully given their allegiance to Trump and the Republican Party that their priorities have become indistinguishable from his own?
There is no longer much daylight between the Make America Great Again (MAGA) policy agenda and evangelical support, even on issues that would seem to be far from the pulpit. Whereas 44 percent of US adults support getting rid of diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the federal government, it jumps to 75 percent among white evangelicals, according to a Pew survey released last year.
The same percentages hold for cuts to federal departments and agencies. While only 39 percent of US adults approve substantially higher tariffs, it soars to 69 percent among white evangelicals. A vast majority (65 to 71 percent) support the decision to use military force in Iran.
In places where the administration has directly bucked evangelical political priorities, the religious right has looked away. For example, the vast majority (74 percent) of white evangelical Protestants say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases.
However, Trump is the first Republican president to suggest the US should allow taxpayer-funded abortions, and he had longstanding anti-abortion language removed from the party’s platform prior to the 2024 election.
Seven of 10 evangelicals say the US has a moral responsibility to accept refugees, according to polling by Lifeway, but Trump suspended the US refugee program last year, and it is now functioning at its lowest level in half a century.
To be clear, the president is not a pastor-in-chief. The US is unique in its religious freedom. History is replete with state-based religions or forced secularism (the latter of which MAGA is in some ways a reaction against). The US founders intentionally forged a pluralistic path.
However, Trump’s second term is making it obvious that the US has entered a new era of church and state — even if it is not exactly clear yet what it looks like.
For most of US history, Christians were not beholden to a single political party. They could function as an independent constituency and source of political accountability with priorities drawn from outside of party platforms. For example, the religiously motivated campaigns for the abolition of slavery in the 19th century or the whole-life movement and restrictions on child labor in the early 20th.
The rise of the religious right in the 1980s was an inflection point, with evangelicals consolidating within the Republican Party and making demands of political leaders under former US presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush on everything from school prayer to fighting communism to the Equal Rights Amendment. Today, the demands seem to work the other way around. MAGA elected officials — and particularly Trump — direct the priorities of the religious right.
Amid deep political polarization, it has become unacceptable to draw political priorities from an independent source (such as religious beliefs) and not a party platform. To question the actions of one political party or to criticize its leader is seen as proclaiming loyalty to the other side. Gone is the long-held religious ideal that the church ought to be a counterweight to political power.
These days, partisan blasphemy has become worse than the religious sort. It is a problem considering that Christian teachings do not line up cleanly with any political party or government.
For now, evangelicals are sticking by the president, but when even outright blasphemy does not warrant an apology, who else is being mocked?
Abby McCloskey is a columnist, podcast host and consultant. She directed domestic policy on two presidential campaigns and was director of economic policy at the American Enterprise Institute. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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