Leading evangelicals are dismayed by their congregations’ surprising support for Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries.
“I just can’t believe so many Bible-believing Christians are voting for someone who so clearly doesn’t share our values,” one politically active evangelical told the Washington Examiner.
Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center put it more bluntly. “I just don’t think a Christian can support a sexist, racist, demagogic, misogynist, woman-hater, anti-immigrant person who shows none of the fruits of the spirit, who has called himself a Christian but puts his money in the ‘communion plate,’ and says he’s never had to ask God for forgiveness,” he said at a panel organized by the conservative Institute on Religion and Democracy.
Trump is nevertheless winning evangelical votes, even as leaders of the traditional religious right have endorsed Ted Cruz for president. Significant exceptions include Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr. and megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress.
The Washington Post created a backlash in 1993 when it described Christian conservatives as “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.” The hostile reaction largely concerned the characterization of these evangelicals as poor and uneducated, but now their leaders are also discovering they are not so easy to command.
The thrice-married, twice-divorced, frequently vulgar and formerly socially liberal billionaire has won Bible Belt states Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia and South Carolina, often by comfortable margins.
Trump carried self-described born-again Christians in states as varied as Massachusetts, Vermont, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Virginia. Some of these are not particularly evangelical-heavy states — moderate Republicans were key for Trump in places like Massachusetts — but in Mississippi, where Trump won by double digits, evangelicals accounted for three-fourths of the vote.
The Republican front-runner has done more to try to court social conservatives than the other parts of conservatism’s “three-legged stool.” He has done little to reassure national security hawks with his criticism of the Iraq War and talk about reevaluating NATO. While he has signed on to a supply-side tax plan, he shows little affinity for the fiscally conservative value of limited government.
Yet Trump has mostly adopted conservative positions on social issues, even if he doesn’t like talking about gay marriage. Trump has gone from describing himself as “very pro-choice” and a supporter of legal partial-birth abortion to pro-life and in favor of banning the procedure except in cases of rape, incest and when the life of the mother is in danger.
He was, however, recently tripped up on the question of criminal penalties for women who attempt to procure illegal abortions, eliciting criticism from both sides of the debate.
Evangelical support for Trump tends to decrease as church attendance increases, however. “One problem: Most polls are based only on self-identification, not on what people do or believe,” wrote Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra in the evangelical publication Christianity Today.
Religious conservatives have also handed Trump some of his biggest defeats. In Wisconsin, Cruz beat Trump among evangelicals 55-34 percent. Evangelicals were 62 percent of Iowa caucus-goers, going for Cruz by 12 points and helping him beat Trump in the state.
All the issues that were presumed to be deal-breakers for evangelicals (lack of personal piety, profanity, past and possibly present social liberalism) actually have turned off Mormons. Cruz won Utah with 69 percent of the vote, while Trump ran third. The Texas senator also carried the other Mormon-heavy state, Idaho.
But Christians concerned about a loss of cultural preeminence or their religious liberty may like a powerful figure such as Trump who offers to defend them, even if he does not entirely share their values.
“The evangelicals love me and I love them,” Trump boasts on the stump. It’s a love some evangelical leaders find puzzling.
