Why White Evangelicals Voted for Trump and Why They Will Do So Again in 2020
Why White Evangelicals Voted for Trump and Why They Will Do So Again in 2020
by Tony Campolo
In November of 2016, Donald Trump was elected president with the help of 83% of white evangelicals. Since his election, there have been many who have wondered why evangelicals so strongly voted for him, and continue to support him. Here are some explanations.
I’m a Democrat; but I think Democratic Party strategists fail to have a good read on the American people. I agree with Jim Wallis, the editor of Sojourners Magazine, who, as a subtitle of one of his books wrote, “Why the Republicans Are Wrong and the Democrats Don’t Get It.” Hillary Clinton lost in her bid for the presidency, in part, because the Democrats, as Jim Wallis wrote, “Don’t get it.” Furthermore, if they don’t wake up to the mindset of mainstream white evangelicals they will lose again in 2020. The Democrats still don’t get it.
There were two primary reasons why Hillary Clinton lost a significant number of white evangelical voters during the 2016 election. First, her views on abortion, especially as they were expressed in the last televised debate she had with Candidate Trump, came across as too extreme for most evangelicals. She declared herself as supporting abortions for pregnant women right up until the very end of a pregnancy. That turned off many progressive evangelicals who agreed with her on most other issues.
Hillary’s husband, Bill Clinton, also was “pro-choice” on the abortion issue; but his statements on abortion were far more nuanced. He said that abortions should be “legal, but rare.” Furthermore, he promoted a plan that he claimed could help make abortions rare. Bill Clinton knew that as many as 72% of abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, were driven by economic forces, and that by addressing many of the economic concerns of economically limited pregnant women, the number of abortions per year could be cut significantly. In reality, the number was cut each year he was in office.
To understand President Clinton’s thinking, consider a single pregnant woman who works at a super market for the minimum wage. She finds that she is hardly able to support herself, let alone carry the extra financial burden of supporting a newborn child. In addition, she knows that there will be very limited government provision for day care for her child. Add to her difficult situation the threat that if she took off from work for a couple of weeks to have and nurture her new baby, she might lose her job. Even then, her problems would not end. If she lacks medical insurance coverage, the threat of a high hospital bill could prove overwhelming. Given such realities, it is easy to understand why such a distressed woman might feel driven to have an abortion, even though she might rather become a mother.
Bill Clinton’s campaign addressed each of these concerns. He was unable to get through Congress all the legislation he wanted, especially when it came to health care; but at least his political agenda convinced many voters that he would do his best to make abortion rare. Most of us know, as he did, that simply making abortion illegal would only drive it underground, delivering many poor pregnant women into the hands of “back alley butchers.” Several pro-life advocates found his proposals attractive and recognized that many of the Republicans in Congress who claim to be pro-life usually voted against those very economic measures that could reduce the number of abortions.
There is much evidence to support the claim that the abortion issue is decisive for many voters, but this is especially true for most evangelicals. I personally know several politically progressive evangelicals who voted against Hillary Clinton on the basis that they viewed her as being extremely liberal on the abortion issue. In my own state, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, a traditionally blue state, a strong pro-life candidate, Rick Santorum, won his campaigns for the House and then later for the Senate against pro-choice candidates, gaining wide support not only from Christians in the evangelical camp, but also from significant numbers of Catholics who, in previous elections, had voted for Democrats. When the Democrats eventually did put up pro-life candidate Robert Casey to run against him, Senator Santorum, an incumbent, lost big-time.
If the Democrats, who can be expected to continue to be pro-choice in 2020, would deal with abortion as Bill Clinton did, they might be able to win more elections, especially in swing states like Pennsylvania. Their campaign strategists should pay more attention to the statistics that show that, unlike the 1960’s and 70’s, America is moving more and more in a pro-life direction, especially among young voters and intensely so among evangelicals.
A second reason why white evangelicals tended to vote for Donald Trump and for other Republican candidates in 2016 was their impression that the Democratic Party came across as being anti-religious. Whether or not that impression is the reality, at least we must agree that if things are real in the imagination, they are real in their consequences. What they heard over the 1500 evangelical radio and television stations very much seemed to generate in the imaginations of many evangelicals that whenever religious issues were raised in the political arena, the Democrats would be likely to vote against their interests. Recently, for instance, several of the presidents of the Coalition of Christian Colleges and Universities, an organization that unites more than 150 evangelical schools, shared fears that the government might end the Pell grants and government subsidies for the “work study programs” that are essential for covering tuition costs for many of their students. These evangelical academic leaders have been concerned that a liberal Supreme Court, likely to be put in place by a Democratic president, might vote to end these programs on the claim that such programs could be defined as government funding of religious institutions. They feared that this, in turn, might be viewed by the court as a violation of the constitutional principle of separation of church and state.
These government-funded programs have enabled significant numbers of economically limited students to attend both Protestant and Catholic faith-based schools. If these benefits were ended, some of these religiously-based schools would be hard pressed to find the financial support they need to continue to function. This would be a tragedy— not only for the students and the schools that would be affected—but also for the rest of America. Faith-based colleges and universities have provided a huge proportion of America’s most needed leaders and specialists, and they do so with at least half of their financial support coming from private sources. The Democrats could prevent any such attack on faith-based schools if they took pre-emptive action and passed legislation that protected these schools from such fiscal cuts. This would go a long way to create a counter-narrative to those who claim that the Democrats are anti-religious.
Religious television and radio programs regularly preach that religion is under attack in this country, primarily at the hands of Democrats. As a case in point, the impression is created by many evangelical media personalities that some Democratic Party leaders support efforts to secularize Christmas by such actions as opposing religious carols at ceremonies at the White House and even the use of the word “Christmas” in public statements. President Trump shows no hesitation in using the word “Christmas,” and many evangelicals view this as an effort on his part “to put Christ back into Christmas.”
A third reason why many white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump could be because there may be some of them who vote Republican no matter what. It’s almost as though the Republican Party is viewed as the “God Party” by such evangelicals. During his campaign, Trump made the statement that his support base was so solid that he could go out and shoot someone in broad daylight and his supporters would still vote for him. I’m afraid that what he said might be true, especially for some in his evangelical base. I hope that’s not true; but with some people on both sides of the political aisle, party loyalty is far too important and, at times, transcends moral and religious values.
Adriana Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, once said, “For me, there is one question I ask of any candidate which takes precedence above all others. I ask: ‘What will you do for those whom Jesus called, as cited in Matthew 25, ‘the least of these?’”
We, who are part of the Red Letter Christians movement (see www.redletterchristians.org) would like to ask this same question of any candidate, regardless of party affiliation. Given the recent two billion dollars in government cuts in programs for the needy and oppressed by a Republican Congress, I think that the Democrats could come out ahead among many white evangelicals in the next presidential election by making “caring for the poor” a campaign issue. That kind of issue could win over even some of the white evangelicals who are increasingly aware that Trump and his fellow Republicans in Congress are more supportive of benefits for the rich than for providing a social “safety net” for the poor. That’s something the Democrats could do to help them win in 2020.
In some of those red letters that highlight the words of Jesus we read that He said that those who have ears should hear. If the Democrats want to win over white evangelical voters, they had better hear these things that evangelicals are saying.
Tony Campolo is a founder of the Red Letter Christians Movement, a well-known and respected writer and speaker, an inspiration to many. He is a board member of Christian Ethics Today, a frequent contributor to the journal, a trusted friend and colleague.
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