This is the 11th Guy Memo in a year guiding the media and other observers on dynamics within U.S. evangelical Protestantism. There are growing signs of a crack-up including, for sure, sexual scandals and self-inflicted wounds, but also the gap between institutional elites and the grassroots, creating division, instability and, we can expect, long-term damage.
If 11 articles seem like overkill, The Guy notes this has long been the most dynamic segment in American religion, and probably the largest in terms of active attendance. Though made up of organizationally chaotic fiefdoms, the movement’s impact rested upon substantial solidarity in belief and social outlook compared with other religious sectors.
Then seven years ago the disruptive force known as Donald J. Trump emerged.
Which brings us to last week’s significant scan by prominent evangelical Marvin Olasky in the conservative National Review.
Importantly, this does not come from some well-meaning outsider (thinking of you, David Brooks) but a career-long insider who’s profoundly conservative in both biblical belief and politics. But he is also anti-Trump.
Here we need to pause to sketch the landscape in evangelical journalism.
Olasky says the “big three” news outlets of evangelicalism are World magazine, where he was longtime editor-in-chief, the 66-year-old Christianity Today and Charisma, voice of the Pentecostal-charismatic wing of this hard-to-define world. (Beat specialists would of course add other informative websites without print editions.)
During Trump’s 2020 campaign, Charisma CEO Stephen Strang issued a book subtitled “Why He [Trump] Must Win and What’s at Stake for Christians If He Loses,” followed by a magazine piece telling readers “Why We Must Support Trump in Prayer and at the Polls.”
But the other two top editors disagreed. In World, Olasky proclaimed Trump morally “unfit for power” just before the 2016 election. In 2019, Christianity Today editor-in-chief Mark Galli called for Trump’s impeachment and removal from office over Ukraine meddling for partisan purposes. (More information: Olasky and others quit World last year in a complicated tiff with the board. Galli retired and now stands accused by his former magazine of sexual harassment.)
Political scientist Ryan Burge, a reigning expert on the religion factor in public life (and a GetReligion contributor), insists that, contrary to what you may have been told by journalists, evangelicalism has not declined in the Trump Epoch.
However, the movement has changed — perhaps permanently. Olasky (reachable via the Discovery Institute at cscinfo@discovery.org or 206–292-0401) agrees, drawing not only on social science but angry letters and emails from 1,600 subscribers after he declared Trump “unfit.”
Trump drove many evangelicals away from that label, noted Olasky, but “he brought in millions more. One in six Trump voters who did not self-identify as ‘evangelical’ in 2016 did so in 2020.”
Pew Research says among white adults surveyed in both election years 25% called themselves evangelical or born-again in 2016 and 29% in 2020. Olasky deadpans that either Trump is one of Christianity’s greatest evangelists or “the definition of ‘evangelical’ has changed.”
Olasky figures the latter and quotes Stephen Haynes of Rhodes College, who contends pro-Trump evangelicals “may have given up on Christianizing Trump, yet no one can dispute that he has succeeded in Trumpifying American Christianity.” Or, more accurately, a notable segment within it.
Olasky understands voters in 2016 who did not want Hillary Clinton as president, but is surprised that evangelical support continued to grow during Trump’s term and after his “stolen election” claims and the January 6 attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s ballot victory. In April, Olasky re-contacted a random sample among those 1,600 subscribers and found all remain pro-Trump.
Yes, Trump draws many from the half of self-identified “evangelicals’ who rarely or never attend worship and the millions of them who do not actually believe core Christian teachings. But that’s not true with his World readers. What about them, or those so consumed by “political passion” that “the Republican Party platform has become more important than the Gospel”?
A number of preachers and prophets compared Trump with biblical King Cyrus, a pagan who nonetheless fulfilled God’s will by restoring the Jews to Jerusalem. Or, Olasky figures, some see the United States a “God’s chosen country” being “taken over by His enemies.”
Some simply voted — reluctantly, according to some poll numbers — on the basis of judicial appointments. (The Religion Guy wonders whether Supreme Court victories on abortion and religious freedom will weaken that motive going forward.) For some it’s sheer “desperation” that justifies bullying or warps their judgment. Faced with whether to change their view of Trump or of ethics, “many did the latter,” he says.
His illustrative clincher quotes Donald Trump Jr., in a talk last Christmastime. “We’ve turned the other cheek, and I understand, sort of, the biblical reference — I understand the mentality — but it’s gotten us nothing. OK?”