Evangelicals voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. They did it not once, not twice, but all three times: in 2016, 2020, and 2024. This is not a secret, but if you don’t believe me, here are some relevant statistics, courtesy of Ryan Burge:
Trump has consistently banked the vast majority of evangelical voters; 70-80% or more. All this, when Trump himself stands as an emblematic example of what Christians should not be: the desires of the flesh, personified. Our entire Thing is that we are regenerate! We are little Christs! We are held to a higher standard! We are (allegedly) the moral skeleton that binds America together! But when the most transparently debauched presidential candidate in decades came along, we flocked to him without a murmur.
I have been told, of course, that voting for Trump is the lesser of two evils. I have not been convinced. Either way, the problem really isn’t the voting. It’s the championing. It’s about the evangelicals who have consistently mortgaged their principles to enforce a double standard, the Megan Bashams and Franklin Grahams of the world. I won’t, and can’t, list all of them, but names spring immediately to your mind: Christian men and women who have raised their unquestioning support for Trump dangerously high. These are the true victims of the “culture war,” Christians whose reputation amid both their fellow believers and the world is not gospel first, but politics first.
But let’s set that aside for a moment. Trump’s popularity among evangelicals wasn’t only present in the general election. Here are two charts. First, Republican primary voters’ choice in 2016, sorted into groups by how often they attend church:
To be fair, Trump support decreases with church attendance, but he still leads every bracket except the most committed church attenders, where Cruz narrowly edges him out. Remember that this was in 2016, before he was the incumbent, when his only track record was that of the stereotypical TV star playboy, in the wake of the Access Hollywood tape and countless other scandals. What about eight years later, when the Republicans had an opportunity to move on from Trump and take advantage of a weak Joe Biden presidency to get back to their staid, boring, rule-of-law, fiscal-conservative roots? After multiple serious legal scandals, the January 6th riots, and the open disapproval of half his original cabinet?
Trump performed better among evangelicals than among the rest:
Wait a minute. I was told the justification for voting for Trump was that he was the “lesser of two evils”. But in the Republican primaries, evangelicals somehow picked the only evil available to them. Both in 2016, when he had no incumbent advantage, and even more so in 2024, by which time his candidacy was thoroughly compromised on both moral and political levels.
So maybe the problem is the voting. Maybe evangelicals were given an easy chance to prove themselves; to defend the nation from obvious moral rot. Maybe we were passed the ball before an empty goal only to fall flat on our face.
In this article, I am doing one of the things I hate most: treating a large group of individuals as one single moral agent and criticizing the group’s actions as if each member were responsible. “Evangelicals” are not a monolith, nor are they a hivemind. Just as a nation cannot have a walk with God, evangelicalism does not act or vote as a collective. I know lots of evangelicals and lots who voted for Trump, each for their own reasons and justifications. And that’s… fine. It is not everyone’s duty to carefully follow politics.1 There are more important matters than who is chosen to rule us. I am going to share heaven with these folks someday, for which I am thankful. I don’t mean this article as a personal attack.
But the evangelical movement has done itself immense reputational damage by its enthusiastic support of Donald Trump. We are sent to bring Christ’s gospel to a watching world. How can we pretend our testimony is unsullied if we are unwilling to condemn this man? His personal life is a disaster. He cast aside his Christian policies long ago. He openly commits sacrilege and blasphemy. The test of “will you compromise your values to espouse this politician?” should be dreadfully easy. The bar is flat on the floor, and yet we stumble. Even the world can see this man for what he is; it is not as if Trump has been subtle about it. There have been no surprises on the road to our self-degradation, no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves that he is, at heart, a good person, just a little rough around the edges. We cannot pretend that our support has been unwilling or misgiven. There are too many MAGA hats in our closet for that, too many social media posts, too many bumper stickers in the church parking lot. Our support has not been quiet. The world is not fooled.
It is easy to criticize the Other Team. It is also more fun. But much more important is the ability to criticize your own team. We, believers, are the ones held to the higher calling. We are the ones commanded to be lights in the world. When a man like this arises, even as part of the Republican party, we must not look the other way. It is not difficult to distance ourselves from him. Trump’s story is not yet over. Neither is evangelicalism’s. But it is our reputation at stake, not his. The world needs to know this is not who we are.
To be fair, I suspect most of them don’t actually know about all the corruption. For how shall they know unless they are told?
I think you hit the nail on the head that voting is not so much the issue as championing. Whatever churchgoers think of the man as president is one thing, invoking him as a culture warrior is another. The latter element seems to be the one more likely to infect churches. I've read some great stuff lately on how Trump has agitated a very odd synthesis between Christian conservatism and something like Nietzschean will to power.