First Church of God Pastor Charles Hundley sings a hymn during morning service Sunday, Jan. 7, in Des Moines, Iowa. Former President Donald Trump and his rivals for the GOP nomination have lobbied for support from pastors and religious communities. Religious evangelical and Christian groups have traditionally been critical of the Republican Party.
Charlie Neibergall/AP
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First Church of God Pastor Charles Hundley sings a hymn during morning service Sunday, Jan. 7, in Des Moines, Iowa. Former President Donald Trump and his rivals for the GOP nomination have lobbied for support from pastors and religious communities. Religious evangelical and Christian groups have traditionally been critical of the Republican Party.
Charlie Neibergall/AP
White evangelical Christians show no signs of backing down from Donald Trump. That appears to be one of the takeaways from the Iowa Republican caucuses, where the former president won a decisive victory over several challengers.
In 2016, evangelical support for Trump sparked widespread concern — given his divorces, allegations of extramarital affairs and sexual assault, as well as his insults toward women, immigrants and others.
But many white evangelicals, like Shelley Buhrow, look beyond all that.
Nobody is perfect
“Have you read the Bible?” » asked Buhrow. “Many people in the Bible married multiple times and didn’t always do the perfect thing.”
Buhrow, who attended a pro-Trump event in a suburb outside Des Moines preceding Monday’s Iowa caucuses, says she has supported Trump since his first caucus in Iowa in 2016.
“People are not perfect,” Buhrow said. “God is perfect.”
Buhrow ignores the 91 state and federal criminal charges Trump faces — including for trying to overturn the 2020 election. She says they are illegitimate and she doesn’t think they will stick.
A binary choice, this is no longer the case
In this 2020 file photo, people raise their arms in prayer during a rally for evangelical supporters of President Donald Trump at King Jesus International Ministry Church, Friday, Jan. 3, 2020, in Miami.
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In this 2020 file photo, people raise their arms in prayer during a rally for evangelical supporters of President Donald Trump at King Jesus International Ministry Church, Friday, Jan. 3, 2020, in Miami.
Lynne Sladky/AP
About eight in ten white evangelicals supported Trump in the 2016 general election, and a similar number. again in 2020, when he lost to President Biden. Some defended these votes as a choice between Trump, who would advance goals like restricting abortion, and a Democrat, who would not.
Republican state Rep. Luana Stoltenberg said she had some initial concerns about Donald Trump when he first appeared on the political scene.
“I just knew him as, you know, the developer and kind of a playboy type,” she recalls.
Stoltenberg had friends who “prayed for it” and thought Trump was “supposed to be” the president, and she herself quickly decided to support Trump in the 2016 election.
But this year, according to CNN Entrance Pollsmore than half of white evangelicals in Iowa still chose Trump, even though they had several other options.
Many, like Brad Sherman, who is both a state representative and evangelical pastor, see Trump’s tough style as an asset, even though the former president “sometimes says things I wouldn’t say.”
“Yes, he’s brash; he’s a fighter,” Sherman said. “That’s what we need right now on the political scene, in the environment that exists. You have to be tough.”
A culture at a crossroads
White evangelicals find themselves in a paradoxical time, as their overall share of the U.S. population decreases steadily. They wield inordinate power over American politics because of their grip on power. Republican Party. But two long-term trends have led to a decline in the number and cultural influence of white evangelicals: increasing racial diversity, just as Americans as a whole are becoming less religious. At the same time, Latino Evangelical communities seems to grow, a trend driven in part by immigration patterns.
Al Perez is an Iowa pastor who has worked on evangelical efforts aimed at connecting Republican candidates with voters of color in the state. Perez says sometimes the voices of non-white evangelicals have been left out of conversations about Republican politics.
Perez hasn’t endorsed anyone in the Iowa caucuses, but he says he’s concerned about how he’s seen some evangelicals talk about Trump, even comparing him to Jesus Christ.
“As an evangelical — Latino evangelical — I am very concerned,” Perez said. “It’s almost… messianic, like that’s the best way to describe it to you. I’m very worried.”
Perez is part of the Pentecostal tradition within conservative Christianity, which emphasizes miracles and direct communication from God. He was concerned, he said, when some in his tradition became convinced that Trump would win the 2020 election because of what they believed to be divine “prophecies” about him.
“I think the lines are getting blurred,” he explained. “We cross certain lines when we think that a certain candidate is going to solve all the ills and problems of the world, of America.”
An increasingly political label
In this 2020 file photo, Pastor Paula White, left, and other faith leaders pray with President Donald Trump, center, during a gathering of evangelical supporters at King Jesus International Ministry Church at Miami.
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In this 2020 file photo, Pastor Paula White, left, and other faith leaders pray with President Donald Trump, center, during a gathering of evangelical supporters at King Jesus International Ministry Church at Miami.
Lynne Sladky/AP
Samuel Perry, a sociologist at the University of Oklahoma, says that even after recent victories like overturning the abortion rights ruling Roe v. Wademany still see themselves as underdogs in a culture war.
“And they believe that Trump is the guy who fought in the past and continues to fight for them,” Perry said.
Since Trump took office, Perry says the word “evangelical” has taken on an increasingly political meaning compared to its religious or theological meaning.
“I think the conservative faction of evangelicalism that supports Trump has successfully claimed evangelical space,” Perry explained, “in a way that if you don’t adjust to it and feel like all, what that term represents now is you, and then you step back.”
But Perry says most of those who still identify as evangelicals show no signs of softening their attitudes. support for Trump.
Yet moving even a relatively small number of these voters could make a big difference in November.
Doug Pagitt is executive director of Vote Common Good, which works to persuade evangelicals and Catholics to support progressive candidates and policies. His group will focus heavily on a handful of key states this year.
“Because moving 3% of evangelicals away from voting for Donald Trump on Election Day makes it, by our estimates, impossible for him to win in these states,” Pagitt predicted.
This assumes that Trump becomes the Republican nominee. For now, all eyes are on the Jan. 23 primary in New Hampshire — a state with fewer evangelical voters and more moderates — which might be a little more open to another candidate.
