Evangelicals are among the most important cornerstones of Donald Trump’s support base and because he pushes for their causes, they overlook his misconduct.
Without men like Daniel Pritchett, Donald Trump would not be the U.S. president. They were the ones who decided the election for him. Now they want to ensure that Trump remains in office as long as possible. Pritchett is a pensioner in the small town of Staunton in the state of Virginia. “I thank God every day that Donald Trump is our president,”* he says.
And he really does do that. For these thanksgiving prayers he drives to his local evangelical church. Anyone that looks for him in the First Baptist Church will be greeted with a warm handshake. Pritchett carries a Book of Psalms in his breast pocket and has a “Trump-Pence” sticker pasted on the bumper of his Cadillac.
Pritchett is a million miles away from the cliché of a Trump voter. He does not belong to the supposedly angry, left-behind, so-called losers of globalization. His life is good. For 33 years he has headed up a supermarket in the town. At home, tropical fish swim in his aquarium. In his leisure time, he packs lunch boxes for school kids and collects donations for hospitals or for development projects in Africa and South America. In a few months Pritchett and his wife Betty will be celebrating their golden wedding anniversary.
Nevertheless, evangelicals like Pritchett are among the most important sources of support for the U.S. president. They account for around a quarter of the U.S. population — and more than 80 percent of them voted for Trump. Until now they have stood by him. While the president’s approval rating may have stagnated to around 40 percent on average, among evangelicals it is approximately 20 percentage points higher.
This makes evangelicals a decisive component of the Trump coalition within the population. Without their support his already historically poor popularity ratings would sink even lower. Trump would be finished politically. It is for this reason that he charms the evangelicals at every chance he gets — and this coming Thursday offers him his next opportunity. At the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, the political and economic elite meet with the Christian community — and Trump will be there.
Trump Is Restoring Evangelicals to Power
The alliance that has formed is certainly unusual. On the one hand, you have around 60 million devout Christians who lead a pious existence and who, over the span of decades, have asserted a claim that only men of spotless character may be eligible for the presidency. On the other hand, you have Trump, a man with five children from three different women, who spoke unapologetically about the breakdown of his marriage and who has been accused of sexual assault by at least 19 women. The moral voters support the pussy-grabber; how does that work?
“Trump has promised to restore political and cultural power to evangelicals,”* Neil J. Young writes. The historian is delving into religious rights and their connection with U.S. politics. He describes a deep-seated disappointment within the Christian community.
Indeed, in the past, evangelicals were even less successful in achieving their political aims. Even under President George W. Bush, who wore his faith on his sleeve, they made little progress. Instead, abortion remained legal and gay rights were strengthened. However, Trump not only promised to fight for evangelicals’ causes, he followed through with his promises, Young states. The president appointed an ultraconservative judge to the Supreme Court and kept the hopes of evangelicals alive that in the foreseeable future, pregnancy terminations could once more be prohibited. He filled his cabinet with numerous ministers who sympathize with the goals of the evangelical movement and recognized Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, a step that was of particular importance to evangelicals.
In light of these successes, many devout Christians are willing to overlook the president’s personal indiscretions. “As long as he delivers, he can get away with almost anything,”* Young argues. This new flexibility with regard to Trump is, however, not profitable for the reputation of evangelicals. “Many Americans still deem them hypocrites,”* the historian reveals.
Trump is “Not the Pastor of This Country”
In fact, evangelical activists have undergone an astounding transformation in the past few years. For instance, when Bill Clinton’s extramarital affair was laid bare, they decried him with near-biblical wrath. What should prevent a president who lied to his wife from doing the same to his country, questioned then prominent preacher, Franklin Graham.
Today, Graham is more tolerant. Trump is “not pastor of this country,” the preacher declared recently. Prior to this, the Wall Street Journal had run a story that a few months after the birth of his youngest son, Trump engaged in an affair with a porn star and paid her $130,000 to buy her silence during the election campaign. In response, Tony Perkins, president of the evangelical lobby group Family Research Council, referenced Trump’s passion for golf: “We kind of gave him… a do-over.”
However, it is not only prominent evangelicals who are no longer too particular about moral standards — the base is following suit. As late as 2011, only around 30 percent of evangelical Christians questioned in a survey agreed with the statement that a politician can still carry out his duties well even if his behavior in his private life is immoral. As Trump’s campaign began to gather momentum, this number grew to over 70 percent.
Even Daniel Pritchett, the pensioner from Staunton, only smiled when he was asked about Trump’s personal escapades. “We’re all sinners,”* he said. He then proceeded to quote from the Bible, Romans 13:1, “The authorities that exist have been established by God.” By which he means, Trump is president because God wants him to be, and, as such, concerns about the head of state’s behavior are out of the question.
Preaching the Truth — What About Trump?
A mile further in Harrisonburg, the rows of chairs in the Crosslink Community Church are slowly filling up. It has snowed overnight and the congregation can only get to the functional building on the outskirts of the city in dribs and drabs. Despite this, the church is full as the Rev. Matthew begins his sermon.
For almost an hour, he speaks about truth and truthfulness, about right and wrong and the need to call a spade a spade. The community listens intently, heads nodding in agreement in every row. Is this what devout Trump supporters value in the president? His directness? His unrestrained manner of speaking? And how does the claim to truth in the sermon match up with the president’s many contradictions? The Rev. Matthew does not want to talk about this after the service.
Others are more forthright. Influential evangelicals are worried about the waning morals among believers, and are therefore distancing themselves from Trump. The old guard, religious right political establishment has “serious moral problems,” warns Russell Moore, head of the political arm of the influential evangelical group, the Southern Baptist Convention.
They Will Hold True to Him in 2020, Too
Even a former evangelical adviser to the president is keeping his distance for now. After Trump’s controversial comments about the riots in Charlottesville last summer, the Rev. Alfonso R. Bernard, leader of a megachurch in Brooklyn, broke with the president. This, he said, was due to a “deepening conflict in values between myself and the administration.”
Voices such as this have been outliers up until now; most evangelicals are behind the president. Recently, however, his popularity ratings also sank slightly among this voting bloc. Should this trend continue, it could prove a problem for Trump. After all, evangelicals make up a considerable number of voters in many states, especially in the South and Midwest. If they choose to stay at home on election day, the president and his Republicans could be faced with a disaster at the midterms in November.
Young does not, however, believe that Trump would lose the approval of evangelicals for long. “Support for him may fall for the moment, but by 2020 at the latest we will find ourselves in a different situation,”* the historian argues. At the end of the day, it will not just be about seats in Congress at that point, it will be about the presidency and control of the Supreme Court. “Then the majority will return to the fold.”*
* Editor’s note: The original quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.
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