Donald Trump is not a member of the Christian right. He’s obviously right-wing, and I know he calls himself a Christian: in fact, he likes to tell the crowds of his fans that his own memoir is only his second favorite book, since first place has to go – says he with a pious gesture – to the Bible.
But when asked to name his favorite Bible verse during his first presidential campaign in 2015, he didn’t respond. “The Bible means a lot to me,” he said, “but I don’t want to go into details. » He was equally evasive when asked if he had ever paid for an abortion. Although the twice-divorced Trump describes himself as a nondenominational Christian (formerly Presbyterian), he does not appear to belong to a Washington church and only occasionally attends church services. Most Americans do not consider him Christian.
Until now, Trump has depended on the support of white evangelical voters, who mostly supported him. But this political relationship has always been highly transactional: Trump gave them the Supreme Court nominees needed to overturn Roe v. Wade; they gave him their votes.
And this arrangement could well collapse. In September, Trump attacked his main Republican rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for his state’s six-week ban on abortion – a ban made possible only by the fall of Roe. “This is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake,” Trump said, to the fury of pro-life groups, some of whom now refuse to support him.
Will he cope with this loss of support from the Christian right? Incredibly, he could. That’s because Trump is representative of an important phenomenon in America, and elsewhere in the world: the rise of a post-Christian right that doesn’t care much about the issue of abortion.
Christianity has long been in decline in the Western world. When Matthew Arnold spoke of the “prolonged roar” of the “Sea of Faith,” he was responding to early signs of a decline in British church attendance that began in the mid-19th century and has never stopped. This process of secularization was not as early or as sudden in the United States, but it nevertheless occurred.
The best indicator of Americans’ religiosity is not intention to vote, but age. Older Democrats are more religious than younger Republicans. The Bible Belt still exists as a political force, but its influence is waning as America’s most godly generation ages and dies. The rising generation is not as religious as their grandparents, a fact that is seen most clearly in attitudes toward abortion, which are a reliable indicator of attitudes toward Christianity itself.
The vehemence of Christian opposition to abortion is unusual among world religions and was highly subversive when Christianity emerged in the first century Roman Empire, a culture in which infanticide and abortion were commonly practiced . Early Christians opposed paganism by rescuing abandoned babies from trash heaps and raising them in the church. This concern about the fate of unwanted babies – including unborn babies – has persisted for two millennia.
To legalize abortion – especially late-stage abortion – is therefore to explicitly reject Christian tradition. That’s exactly what younger Americans appear to be doing: 74 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds support legalization in most or all circumstances, compared to 54 percent of those 65 and older. The “long roar of withdrawal” is getting louder and louder.
To be clear, most Americans – and even most Brits – still prefer a compromise: allowing abortion in the first trimester, and later only in exceptional cases. The most extreme positions are held only by highly politicized minorities, on both the right and the left. But while the influence of the former declines, the fervor of the latter only grows stronger.
The overturning of Roe hurt Republicans’ electoral prospects. Not only because the pro-life vote is declining over time, but also because the introduction of new restrictive laws in states like Florida has served to energize a small but highly organized group of voters: pro-choice leftists , mostly women, who care deeply about the issue of abortion and are willing to devote significant time and effort to defeating pro-life candidates.
The same political phenomenon can be observed elsewhere in the world. In Poland, for example, the near-total ban on abortion in 2021 proved highly unpopular with the public, galvanizing the pro-choice lobby and contributing to the fall of the Law and Justice (PiS) government last month. Here again, a generational gap in religiosity is at play: only 23 percent of Poles aged 18 to 24 describe themselves as practicing Catholics, compared to 69 percent in 1992.
Trump’s great talent lies in his ability to correctly understand the public mood. If he is turning against the pro-life position, this suggests that his base may well turn against him as well. Trump was the first post-Christian Republican president of the United States. The way things are going, he won’t be the last.
