Trumpism Is What White Evangelicals Have Wrought
After not quite 100 days in office, Donald Trump’s approval rating sits at just 42%. And 66% of voters now say his administration has been “chaotic.”
To my view, the word “chaotic” is true but it’s also understatement. Trump’s administration has been undemocratic, anti-American, unconstitutional, lawless, and flat-out cruel… not to mention an economic disaster, a model of bullying and brutishness, and a betrayal of our core values as Americans.
How did we get here?
How has America – the country that was a shining beacon of freedom – been brought so low?
In the words of political columnist David French:
“It’s safe to say that evangelicals are more responsible than any other American group for Trump’s political power.”
(Worth noting: French is a conservative commentator. He’s also someone who has long identified as an evangelical.)
Trumpism is what white evangelicals have wrought, and our very democracy is now paying the price.
The data shows the tie between Trumpism & evangelicals
In 2016, Trump won 80 percent of the white evangelical vote, and in 2024, Trump won 85 percent of white evangelicals, while winning only 40 percent of everyone else.
As French explained, if you removed white evangelicals from Trump’s coalition, “he would have lost all three of his presidential races by a landslide.”
Why the tie between Trumpism and evangelicals?
Getting to the crux of the “why” question, French explained that Trump’s bond with evangelicals isn’t just a result of flawed theology. Rather, “it’s a result of the broken culture that flawed theology helped create.”
It’s a culture so broken that “evangelicals don’t see Trump contradicting their values.” Instead, he’s like the men who lead their churches.
Bingo!
Trump is like the men that white evangelicals have had in leadership in their churches and in their denominations – for decades.
They’re comfortable with authoritarian men – and with unaccountable authoritarian men.
Indeed, Trump may even seem fatherly to them – like a beloved pastor.
Not only did overwhelming numbers of evangelicals vote for Trump, but they also gave him moral legitimacy by characterizing him as “God’s chosen.”
Evangelicals’ conditioning makes Trumpism comfortable
Imagine that you’ve been raised from toddlerhood to view pastors as anointed men of God. You’ve been taught to obey and submit to pastors because “they watch for your soul.”
These men are venerated and they will lead you on the right path.
As an adult, you may tell yourself that your faith renders your moral judgment impeccable – that it is “right” and good.
But in reality, your own moral judgment may be underdeveloped because, without much conscious thought for it, you’ve been enculturated to cede moral judgment to others – to pastors who tell you their view of what the Bible says and of what is “right” and good.
You have been conditioned – some might say “groomed” – to accept this and to believe that the pastor speaks as an authority on what God wants.
You aren’t accustomed to challenging things; to the contrary, you’re accustomed to conformity.
Conformity is what keeps you in community. And group dynamics are a powerful force in evangelicalism.
Furthermore, within white evangelicalism, a culture of clergy impunity prevails. Effective accountability structures are sorely lacking, and guardrails are nearly nonexistent.
So, if a pastor is unscrupulous, he pollutes everyone around him. His abuses and excesses are often ignored or covered up. And people in the faith take this as normal.
The pastor’s lack of accountability is exacerbated by the fact that there aren’t even any entrance hurdles to the profession. Within evangelicalism, a man can become a pastor simply by convincing a group of men that he’s been called by God – no credentials or seminary degree required. It’s the perfect profession for a con-man, and indeed, these men are sometimes masters of manipulation. The surface presentation is what matters in this culture.
The few who try to break with conformity or who dare to criticize – the whistleblowers – get vilified and outcast. And everyone else then absorbs the lesson and learns to keep their mouths shut.
Loyalty to the leader matters above all else.
“Touch not mine anointed!”
Not only do people accept the culture of clergy impunity as being normal, they sacralize it, proclaiming the pastors as having been “chosen” by God.
While this is not intended as a description of every individual within evangelicalism, it is a reflection of the culture within broad swaths of the Southern Baptist Convention, the country’s largest Protestant faith group.
And as goes the Southern Baptist Convention, so goes a lot of other white evangelical faith groups, including many nondenominationals.
The parallels to Trumpism
Just as evangelicals proclaim their pastors as being “anointed” by God, so too many evangelicals have proclaimed Trump as being “anointed.” It’s a characterization that bestows not merely worldly authority but divine authority.
And as with their anointed pastors, many evangelicals are quite comfortable in ceding moral judgment to the anointed one.
Even in the face of authoritarian cruelties, and even in the face of due process denials and deeds that threaten the very foundations of the rule of law, for many evangelicals, it simply won’t occur to them to question a proclaimed “anointed” one. They remain loyal.
So, like many evangelical pastors, Trump can trample others while avoiding accountability, because he’s surrounded by sycophants.
In his very first week in office, Trump fired seventeen inspectors general – the independent watchdogs who provided governmental oversight to detect fraud and abuse. I couldn’t help but wonder if Trump had taken a lesson from the lack of oversight enjoyed by evangelical pastors.
Just as evangelical pastors work within a culture of clergy impunity, so too Trumpism is working to create a similar culture of impunity within the federal government.
The malignancies within white evangelicalism – the authoritarianism, the impunity, the narcissism, the cronyism, and the cruelty – are now metastasizing into the nation at large.
And white evangelicals are so conditioned to these malignancies that they scarcely notice.
UPDATE 5/1/2025: According to a new Pew Research Center survey, white evangelicals remain Trump’s staunchest supporters. While other faith groups are more skeptical, nearly three-quarters of white evangelicals say they approve of Trump’s job performance. And amazingly, 7 in 10 of white evangelicals rate the ethics of top Trump administration officials as good or excellent.
RELATED: A newly released study by Samuel Perry shows that Christian nationalism is linked to a prioritizing of authoritarian parenting and corporal punishment while deprioritizing the development of children’s independent thought. Two-thirds of white evangelicals are adherents or sympathizers of Christian nationalism. So, for vast numbers of people who grew up within evangelicalism, they were raised with a focus on obedience, not on learning to think for themselves.
For more about the Southern Baptist Convention, check out my book, Baptistland: A Memoir of Abuse, Betrayal, and Transformation.
Thank you (once again!) for this articulation of thoughts I too share based on my own experiences growing up in white evangelicalism.
It’s a sobering reality to live within, but also not unfamiliar. I’ve been here before—many of us have—and the understanding you articulate here is one to be shared with those who remain befuddled, crying, “But why would Christians vote for a man like Trump?”
It was clear from the start they would.
Spot on Christa! In the past 35 years, missionary kid survivors of abuse in evangelical missions around the world have experienced the very same dynamics you report here. where abusers (mostly male) are not held accountable due to the patriarchal, authoritarian culture/system and bad theology.