Perspective: Why do white evangelicals still staunchly support Donald Trump?
President Trump with Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. in Lynchburg, Va., in May 2017. By John Fea John Fea teaches history at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pa. and is the author of"Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump." April 5 at 6:00 AM A recent Pew Research poll found that 69 percent of white evangelicals approve of how Donald Trump is handling his job as president of the United States.
The Pew survey revealed that Trump is more popular among white evangelicals who regularly attend church and less popular among those who do not. Why the divergence? Because many white evangelicals who attend church regularly came of age politically and spiritually in the 1980s, precisely when the Christian right was born.
Jerry Falwell, a Baptist minister from Lynchburg, Va., formed the Moral Majority to “train, mobilize, and electrify the Religious Right” in preparation to fight a “holy war” for the moral soul of America. Falwell’s organization played a major role in electing Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 and shaped a vision for white conservative evangelical political activity that remains strong today.
While it has failed to “win back” the culture, the political strength of the resultant movement cannot be underestimated. It has shaped much of white evangelical political activity in the 21st century. The result has been that, even as the GOP has achieved remarkably little for the Christian right over the past four decades, the ironclad relationship between white evangelical churchgoers and Republicans has, if anything, grown stronger.
That idea has remained so potent over the decades because it is embedded in evangelical churches. Pastors use their pulpits to speak about these cultural issues. Adult education classes in churches often focus on such topics. Members of small-group Bible studies discuss them. Some church leaders consistently stoke fear in their congregations by pointing to threats to religious liberty, both real and imagined.
But these pastors cannot control the messaging their flocks imbibe after they leave church on Sunday. And a massive Christian right messaging machine targets these Americans with precision. Ministries and nonprofit organizations, driven by conservative political agendas, bombard the mailboxes, inboxes and social media feeds of ordinary evangelicals.
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