Episode 53: Sarah McCammon - The Politics of Evangelicalism
In this episode of Faith for Normal People, Pete and Jared talk with NPR Politics reporter Sarah McCammon about the political influence of evangelicals and their support for Donald Trump. They explore how fear, cultural identity, and political strategy shape evangelical politics; the Republican Party’s relationship with religious voters; and the shifting demographics of Trump’s base. Join them as they explore the following questions:
Why do evangelicals support Donald Trump despite his personal life and values?
How has evangelicalism become intertwined with the Republican Party?
What role does fear play in evangelical political engagement?
How do evangelicals view cultural and political changes in America?
Why did Trump gain increased support from non-white voters?
How has the influence of evangelicalism in politics changed over time?
How can people navigate political and religious differences in personal relationships?
Quotables
Pithy, shareable, sometimes-less-than-280-character statements from the episode you can share.
“[Evangelicalism] is a uniquely influential and important cultural and political force in the US. But I think it's a mistake to single it out as uniquely bad because I don't think it is. I think there are many good things and I think many of the bad things are shared by other religious traditions in their extremes.” — Sarah McCammon
“Sometimes scripture comforts me, but I also can't shake the memory of having verses quoted to me in ways that were very terrifying or in ways that felt divisive, or even just being told [as a kid] that a good Christian reads their Bible every day. A good Christian has a devotional every day and wants to.” — Sarah McCammon
“As strange as it might sound to an outsider or to somebody who looks at data or looks at the cultural influence of evangelicals, there was a sense [growing up] that we were kind of this embattled minority, this persecuted minority. And some of that comes from the Bible…from what we take to be Jesus's words about following God and Christianity. People kind of then take those and apply them to our context, which is a fraught and questionable thing to do in the first place.” — Sarah McCammon
“I'm not saying it's a good one or the right one or advocating it in any way, but I think this is the vision in the minds of a lot of evangelicals of how God wants people to live: Mother, father, children. This is God's formula for happiness or something like that. And so you see the culture becoming more progressive, more open to women having rights, working outside the home, legalized abortion, same sex marriage—all of these things sort of violate the conservative Christian idea of how things should be.” — Sarah McCammon
“Today, this huge epidemic of loneliness and isolation, our country's struggling with drug addiction, etc. And I think evangelicals have sort of mapped those problems onto their vision of what's wrong with the country. Like there's a correlation that sort of portrayed as a causation. And I think Trump harnessed all of that fear and all of that angst about how the culture has changed, where the country is going.” — Sarah McCammon
“We live in a country where there's just massive economic inequality and it's easier for people of a lot of different backgrounds and persuasions to look around and say, ‘Something's off, something's wrong, things aren't going so well.’ Evangelicals look at that and they feel that feeling and they say, it's because we've strayed from God's way.” — Sarah McCammon
“So when Trump taps into that rhetoric of restoring the country, bringing things back, people hear that and they resonate with it in a certain way. Trump promised to do a lot of things that conservative Christians wanted, obviously overturning Roe v. Wade would be the paradigmatic example, but what a lot of conservative voters tell me is that they feel like Trump and the Republican Party speak to religion and respect religion in a way that they don't feel seen and respected by Democrats. That is the feeling, that is the perception. And so it really is about two different pictures of what America should be, is going to be, is about. And Trump's painted a picture for many evangelicals that resonates with their own.” — Sarah McCammon
“There's just this attitude, this view [from evangelicals], that there are fundamental rules that the world works by that we understand as Christians, as readers of the Bible, in a certain way. And the reason that so many things go wrong is because people don't understand them, and don't apply them properly. It does tend to prime people for simple answers and Trump is really good at marketing those.” — Sarah McCammon
“I get asked this question a lot: ‘Why do evangelicals support Trump? He's so ungodly,’ or whatever. And it's not like evangelicals think that Trump is some devout Christian. I mean, they know that he's not. ‘We don't need a pastor. We need a president.’ And you hear things like that on the lips of rank and file voters as well. They're not looking for him to be that. They're not. They're looking for him to be a champion for their agenda and their beliefs and their values, to feel seen—to feel like the culture that maybe once existed that they saw as more in line with the ideal will be preserved and maybe be restored. They're looking for him to do all of that for them, but not necessarily to be one of them. That'd be great, but it would be icing on the cake.” — Sarah McCammon
“It's a big, increasingly diverse, increasingly complicated country. I think some of the religious messages that resonate with white evangelicals actually transcend white evangelicals as the evangelical movement becomes more diverse.” — Sarah McCammon
“I think a lot of people who pay attention to this kind of stuff [argue] that evangelical is just increasingly a political-sociological label. And so people who may hold some or all evangelical beliefs, but don't see themselves as aligned with MAGA, are less and less likely to call themselves an evangelical. They may just call themselves a Christian.” — Sarah McCammon
“I think that's why you hear these kinds of culture war issues continuing to pop up. It's not that most Americans are all that motivated by abortion or transgender issues. It's that a segment of Americans who are very politically engaged and vote at high rates are motivated by them.” — Sarah McCammon
Mentioned in This Episode
Books:
Violence & the Bible for Normal People by Caroline Blyth
The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church by Sarah McCammon
Join: The Society of Normal People community
Support: www.thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give
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Jared: You're listening to Faith for Normal People, the only other God ordained podcast on the internet.
Pete: I'm Pete Enns.
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Jared: Today on Faith for Normal People, we're talking about the politics of evangelicalism with Sarah McCammon.
Sarah's a national political correspondent for NPR and co host of the NPR Politics podcast. Her work focuses on political, social, and cultural divides in America, including the intersections of politics and religion, which is relevant for today.
Pete: Sure is. And I mean, Sarah's been around. She's covered several presidential elections, including the 2016 campaign when she reported on the rise of Trump movements, divisions when the within the republican party over the future and the role of religion in those debates and she's also the author of The Exvangelicals-a wonderful book-loving living and leaving the white evangelical church, which is what guides our conversation today.
Jared: Yeah, and don't forget to stay tuned at the end of the episode for Quiet Time, where we're going to reflect on the conversation we have together here. So I think that's it. Let's dive in.
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Sarah: “It's not like evangelicals think that Trump is some devout christian. I mean, they know that he's not, so they're not looking for him to be that. They're not. They're looking for him to be a champion for their agenda and their beliefs and their values, just to sort of feel seen, to feel like the culture that maybe once existed that they saw as more in line with the ideal will be preserved and maybe be restored. They're looking for him to do all of that for them, but not necessarily to be one of them. That'd be great, but it would be icing on the cake.”
[Teaser music ends]
Pete: Hey, Sarah. Welcome to our podcast.
Sarah: Hi. Good to talk to you both.
Pete: Yeah, great. It's great to have you here. And, look, let's just get started. Just tell us briefly, you know, what, what's your background in terms of Christianity. So people can just sort of situate you a little bit better.
Sarah: Yeah. So I didn't call myself an evangelical when I was growing up. I just called myself a Christian. We were just Bible believing Christians, people would say born again sometimes, but we were evangelical by I think any reasonable standard theological or cultural. I grew up, you know, and I was born in the early 80s so right at the beginning of the Reagan era right at a time when the Evangelical movement was increasingly becoming aligned with the Republican Party and a sort of political project. That was an important part of my childhood, but the big focus was on our faith, on our-you know-belief in Jesus and in the aspect, you know, a sort of an expression of that faith that involved evangelism, in many cases, the idea that we should be sharing the good news, the gospel with people around us-both people that we knew and sometimes with people that we didn't know. And, you know, Kansas City, Missouri, so very Midwestern, conservative. It was a white evangelical community, not exclusively, but overwhelmingly. And everything that went along with that, like I said, you know, theologically and culturally.
Jared: Yeah, that may be one of the more evangelical things you could say was “we're not evangelical.” We didn't think of ourselves as evan—let’s just call it Christian.
Pete: Yeah.
Jared: Right, that's how it was for me growing up too.
Sarah: “We just believe the Bible.”
Jared: Right, exactly.
Pete: We're just like Paul.
Jared: [Laughing] That's right. A direct line. Um, I'm curious. Within that upbringing, what parts of that do you think continued to shape and influence you throughout your, I mean, even as maybe your faith has shifted, what are things that have continued to shape you both kind of the good and the maybe not so good?
Sarah: Yeah, I mean, I wrote a whole book about sort of why I don't consider myself an evangelical anymore and why a lot of other people use labels like exvangelical or similar labels to talk about coming from that world and everything that that entails.
But, you know, one of the things that I think I have given a lot of thought, especially in the past couple of years through the process of writing the book and talking about it with a lot of people is the many, many really good things that I take away and continue to take with me from that background. And I think a big one is just the belief in, you know, the image of God, the dignity of every human being, um, sort of God inside of or represented through, um, manifested in some way in every person.
I think that's a really beautiful idea and one that I hope, I hope, uh, on my best days, compels me to see people around me lovingly and with hope and with respect. And sort of a related idea, I think, if we believe that the image of God is in every person, every person sort of bears and manifests the image of God, then I think that leads naturally into the idea of redemption, which is such a critical idea in Christianity and the hope for redemption, right?
The idea that nobody is lost completely. Anybody can be forgiven. Anybody can turn their life around. I think that's a harder one to hold onto sometimes the longer you're on this planet, but it's a really beautiful and hopeful idea and it's one I try to take with me. But, I think you asked about the good and the bad.
Um, you know, obviously the bad is, anybody who has left church can probably relate to a lot of the bad things and we can talk about them in more detail if you want. But for me, I could probably sum it all up as just fear, you know, fear of difference, fear of other people. Fear of getting it wrong, fear of God, but not in the, you know, the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom sense, but the terror kind of sense.
And that's something that I think I still struggle with at times, but the more that I lean into the idea that God is good and God is loving, which is another essential idea of my childhood. The more that I um, you know, that love casts out fear, right? To quote the Bible. The bad, the bad part is the fear. The good part is sort of the love.
Pete: Right. And those two things are often even still put together in evangelicalism. God loves you, but there's always the added, as “long as you…”, you know, um, do X, Y, or Z, or say the proper prayer or things like that. So, yeah, I mean, the fear is such a big motivating factor in a lot of religions, I think, not just evangelicalism.
Sarah: For sure, and you know, that's something I try to caveat. A lot of the things I say about growing up evangelical, my experience with evangelicalism, I don't think these are necessarily unique to evangelicalism, but that's my tradition, that's my world. And it is a uniquely kind of influential and important cultural and political force in the US. And so, um, that's kind of why I talk about it and the perspective from which I talk about it. But I think it's a mistake to single it out as uniquely bad because I don't think it is. And I think there are, I'm glad you asked about the good things, because I think there are many good things and I think many of the bad things are shared, um, by other religious traditions in their extremes.
Pete: Yeah. So on that, can I just ask quickly about whether…what role the Bible may have played too and whether that's a good thing or bad thing?
Sarah: Well [chuckles]
Pete: [chuckles] That’s a loaded question isn’t it?
Sarah: [Sarcastically] Something that I'm sure none of your listeners will understand at all is that I have a very complicated relationship with the Bible. And I think that that's because the Bible is a complicated book. And if you, I think, uh, think about it critically, it's hard not to see that and to feel that. And especially if you want to take it seriously. And if you grew up in a tradition that does take it seriously. And you want to honor that tradition, but you also want to honor reason and compassion and science and modernity and all the things that, um, we also have access to.
So I think the Bible, I mean, I think about the Bible, I'm sure, every day of my, just about every day of my life. Like, Bible verses come to me at random moments. I quote them to my children who aren't especially religious. Um, you know, they've been raised in the Christian tradition, but not in the way that I was, not steeped in it to the degree that I was.
Um, and sometimes scripture comforts me, but, you know, I also can't shake the memory of having verses quoted to me, you know, in ways that were very terrifying or in ways that felt divisive, or even just being told like a good Christian reads their Bible every day. A good Christian has a devotional every day and wants to.
And like my mother seemed to love it. Like she got so much out of it. And I felt so much guilt because I would sit down with like my little, I had so many different Bibles, but I think of like my little um, purple Bible that I talk about the book that had, you know, it was like King James and I'd be like reading through it and we didn't just do King James in my family, but like my, my Christian school did.
So I had that influence a lot and just reading through it, you know, trying to read through it like a book and just struggling, you know, like sitting on my bedroom floor at like 7 and going, ugh! This is really boring and really confusing. And so it's, I don't want to say a love-hate relationship, that sounds so strong, but it's a complicated relationship.
Jared: Yeah, I think that's relatable to a lot of our listeners for sure. Um, I want to maybe take a left turn because you mentioned politics and one of the things that we wanted to talk to you about, just because of your background, is this marriage of evangelicalism and support for Donald Trump. And I'm curious if you can give like, a good faith explanation. I'm always looking for kind of good faith explanations, because whenever we're online and social media people are all about giving, kind of, straw men and it's not always that helpful.
But what's a good faith explanation for why evangelicals have been so supportive of Trump, because that I grew up–sounds like we could have just exchanged uh the midwest for small town Texas and what you just described is my upbringing as well–and it still is like, it's confusing to me. Um, and so I still don't get it and I want to get it in a way that I think a lot of people, uh, like me, have family members and close friends who are still in that world who are supportive of Trump in a way that's, it's hard for me to connect. So can you maybe explain that to us?
Sarah: Yeah. I mean, I don't want to give myself too much credit, but I like to think, you know, I'm a journalist first and foremost. And so I try to just describe things, like, factually as much as I can. And of course we all filter things through our experiences. And, um, so, you know, I hope that I hope that everything, I try to make everything in good faith in the sense that it's, it's as attached to the truth as I know how to make it. Um, but I really think it's, and I think the answer lies in some of the things that I remember from my childhood and probably a lot of people who have people close to them or who grew up in the evangelical world may remember as well, which is this really complicated sense that, you know, as strange as it might sound to an outsider or to somebody who looks at data or looks at the cultural influence of evangelicals, there was a sense that we were kind of this embattled minority, this like persecuted minority, you know, and some of that comes from the Bible, from the way that Jesus talked about being a Christian, obviously speaking to a very different context when he talked about that.
And of course, he wasn't even talking about being a Christian. He was talking about being a follower of God or him or whatever you want to say it. Uh, but you know, what we, what we take to be Jesus's words about following God and Christianity. Um, you know, so, so people kind of then take those and apply them to our context, which is a fraught and questionable thing to do in the first place.
Um, it may be appropriate at times, but it may not. And then this, so this idea that, you know, we were sort of, you know, everyone was looking down on us. Everyone was, um, the country and the culture was moving in a bad direction. You know, I heard those things all the time. And I think Trump echoed a lot of those things, right?
The idea that like, uh, Christianity is under siege. Um, you know, Make America Great Again, some people thought that was just purely about racism and going back to a white America, and I can see why people saw that, but I think in the minds of a lot of evangelicals, who didn't have—white evangelicals didn't have the same, you know, racial history, had not suffered that oppression. Maybe were willfully blind to it, maybe just had a different experience, however you want to explain that, you know, they looked and they said there was a time when we lived, the country was more traditional, marriage between a man and a woman, the fathers sort of were in charge of the family, everybody was happy, and I mean, this is, this is the vision of the ideal family that I grew up with.
Um, you know, it's not, I, I'm not saying it's a good one or the right one or advocating it in any way, but I think this is sort of like the vision of how in the minds of a lot of evangelicals of how God wants people to live. Mother, father, children. This is like God's formula for happiness or something like that.
And so you see the culture becoming more progressive, more open to women having rights, working outside the home, obviously legalized abortion, um, same sex marriage, all of these things sort of violate the conservative Christian idea of how things should be. Um, and then I, but I think there are for, you know, a more progressive person, there are things that a lot of people would look at in the culture and agree that, that there are problems, right?
I mean, there's this today, this huge epidemic of loneliness and isolation, our country's struggling with drug addiction, um, you know, and I think evangelicals have sort of mapped those problems onto their vision of what's wrong with the country, you know? Like there's a correlation that sort of portrayed as, as, as a causation. And I think Trump sort of harnessed all of that fear and all of that angst about how the culture has changed, where the country is going, um, you know. We live in a country again where there's just massive economic inequality and it's easy for people—I think it's easier for people of a lot of different backgrounds and persuasions to look around and say, like, something's off, something's wrong, things aren't going so well. Evangelicals look at that and they feel that feeling and they say, it's because we've strayed from God's way.
Pete: Mmhmm.
Sarah: So when Trump taps into that rhetoric of restoring the country, bringing things back, people hear that that way and they resonate with it in a certain way. And, you know, Trump also I think he promised to do a lot of things that conservative Christians wanted, obviously overturning Roe v. Wade would be the sort of the paradigmatic example, but what a lot of conservative voters tell me is that they feel like Trump and the Republican Party speak to religion and respect religion in a way that they don't feel seen and respected by Democrats.
And we could go into why that is, but that is the feeling, that is the perception. And so it really is about, like, sort of two different pictures of what America should be, is going to be, is about. And Trump's painted a picture for many evangelicals that resonates with their own. And he's delivered on a lot of those promises, right? I mean, the first time he was president he appointed three conservative Supreme Court justices. That led to the overturning of Roe and a lot of other changes that, you know, may still come to pass.
Jared: Mmm. Something you said too came to mind around when there's these, that we, there's these problems in our culture, there's problems in our society, and you mentioned “turning away from God” is that problem.
I think there's also this, um, at least for me growing up, the idea that sort of getting saved or becoming a Christian is the solution to all of your problems. And so that's, that is tied to, well, if everyone would just become a Christian, all of our problems would be solved. And we have this sort of liberal progressive agenda that's getting people to not be Christians, which is against what the solution is to all of our problems.
Like, holiness, you know, loneliness, homelessness, drug addiction, all of that, in my tradition, would have been like, well, yeah, if you get saved, Jesus kind of takes care of all that for you. And that maybe another reason I think that this sells is, is I feel like Trump does a good job of selling simple solutions, um, to very complicated problems and sort of, for me, I would have been prepped for that kind of way of thinking.
Sarah: I think that's really true. Yeah. And I mean, I'll hear things, for years now when I've gone, I've gone to many Trump rallies, not so many of this past campaign cycle, but many, many of Trump rallies in 2016. And, uh, you know, you hear things like, you know, we have problems in our country because we took prayer out of schools. We took God out of our country. We took God out of, out of the education system. Um, you know, even, I think there was, I can't remember which mass shooting it was, but um, when, when Trump was President and Pence, Mike Pence, who of course is an evangelical, was vice president, I remember he said something like, um, you know, he talked about the evil in the world.
And I, I picked up on that because it was like, you know, he expressed condolences, but, but also talked about just, you know, the suffering that people experience because of evil in the world. And there's just this attitude, this view that, you know, there are sort of fundamental rules that the world works by that we understand as Christians, as readers of the Bible in a certain way. And the reason that so many things go wrong is because people don't understand them, don't apply them properly. And I think you're right, Jared. I think a lot of it is, It does tend to prime people for simple answers and Trump is really good at marketing those.
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Pete: And you know I think just backing up for a second another factor, you know, the elephant in the room is “America is a Christian nation” by rights. Almost by divine rights and it's it's important for us to get back to that. And like you were saying Jared, that solves all our problems. If we can just get back to those “Christian roots”, which I don't even know what they are, but that, that would, that would solve the problems. And I think they see in Trump, as you're saying, Sarah, um, a person who can bring that about, who can bring back those glory days. And, um, I guess the jury's out whether that's going to happen or not.
Sarah: Yeah. And I think some of the, one of the most interesting sort of data points about that is I get asked this question a lot, you know, why did, why do evangelicals support Trump? He's so ungodly, whatever. And it's not like evangelicals think that Trump is some devout Christian. I mean, they know that he's not. I mean, was it, was it Franklin Graham or Tony Perkins or somebody? I can't remember which evangelical leader, but I think a few of them have said something to the effect of, you know, we don't need a pastor. We need a president.
And you hear things like that on the lips of rank and file voters as well. And so they're not looking for him to be that. They're not. They're looking for him to be a champion for their agenda and their beliefs and their values, just to sort of feel seen, to feel like the culture that maybe once existed that they saw as more in line with the ideal will be preserved and maybe be restored. They're looking for him to do all of that for them, but not necessarily to be one of them. That'd be great, but it would be icing on the cake, I think is a good way of saying it.
Pete: So do you think that explains the current, I mean, the recent election, the, uh, strong support that Trump had on a popular level, not just on the electoral level. And, um, you know, it wasn't just evangelicals who did this, right?
Sarah: Not at all.
Pete: Right, so it seems like there's more than there's more going on here than what we're talking about now.
Sarah: I think with any election you have to look at not just like what's the product that's selling but what's not selling.
Pete: Okay, right. Yeah.
Sarah: And I think this was a fascinating election. White evangelicals still overwhelmingly supported Trump, you know, and I think about the same numbers as before about 80 percent, so there wasn't any big change there, but the really, I think, surprising, maybe not that surprising if you've been talking to voters, but somewhat surprising result was how much other groups moved toward him.
Um, you know, this has been well documented, so I'll go over it quickly, but like Latino men, majority voted for Trump. Latino women moved toward him. Still a majority voted for Harris, but I think it was double digit movement. Um, and we saw this kind of movement in almost every diverse demographic. Um, especially young Black men, Asian voters. All of the movement was toward Trump.
Which, you know, I think complicates the narrative about this just being about race or going back to a white Christian nation. Um, I think that's a piece of it, for sure, but I think there's more going on and, you know, of course the economy was a major issue for a lot of these voters. We heard about that. I heard about that, my colleagues did while we were on the campaign trail, but I, I also heard about cultural issues, you know? I went to, um, I went to a Latino church in Pennsylvania, um, evangelical church. People there came from like 14 different countries, including the U.S. I think 15, including the U.S.
And almost everybody I talked—well, everybody I talked to was a Trump supporter. I can't say that everybody in the church was, but I talked to a lot of people. And, um, you know, most people had U.S. citizenship. Many of them were immigrants. Some were born in the U.S., um, but even a couple of people who didn't, were, expressed support for Trump. And, you know, I heard about the economy, I heard about the price of groceries and gas, but I also heard about concerns about crime, even concerns about immigration, you know, which I think, um, might be counterintuitive, but for these folks, they were culturally conservative, many were American citizens.
They're afraid of the same things that a lot of white Trump supporters were afraid of, um, and a couple of them talked about, you know, ideology around gender issues, um, things their kids were hearing in schools, or things that were being talked about, um, in schools around, you know, transgender issues, and they were uncomfortable with that, and so, you know, it's a big, increasingly diverse, increasingly complicated country.
I think some of the religious messages that resonate with white evangelicals actually transcend white evangelicals increasingly as the evangelical movement becomes more diverse. And so, it'll be really interesting to see where those numbers go in four more years.
Jared: And it seems like too, there is a conflation of some of these things, uh, that maybe, um, I guess the word that comes to mind is Christian nationalism, but that's not the right, uh, that's not really what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about how our national interests and our Christian worldview, uh, get conflated and I think that's part of this too like when you talk about those issues that wouldn't be, you know, narrowly considered religious, but now because uh, evangelicals kind of advocate for seeing all of life through the lens of faith, we start to have a broad net.
So now immigration does become a religious issue in some form or fashion. There are you know pastors all over the place trying to connect those dots and talk about how these things are a religious issue and tying it back to their faith more and more. So do you see that kind of broadening net where people, it is, I just kind of think sometimes there's like a, oh, well, we're using, there's the evangelical bloc and then there's other people who are supporting Trump for these other reasons. But I think that that evangelical bloc is more and more seeing these issues as religious issues if that makes sense.
Sarah: You know, I'd have to think more about whether or not like immigration and the economy fall into the religious lens. I mean, they don't, my instinct is not so much. Although there could be an argument made that there is, but you know, I heard like I mentioned the transgender issue. I also heard about abortion. I mean, some of these, just right the kinds of culture war issues that white evangelicals have mobilized around forever and seem to also be, um, there's an uptick, at least this is one reporting trip I'm talking about, but I think, I think, you know, my instinct is that this translates more broadly than this one church I visited in Pennsylvania, because of the way that the election results came out.
And, you know, I spoke to, uh, essentially the Latino outreach director for the faith and freedom coalition, which is, you know, a conservative, um, political organizing group led by Ralph Reed, you know, formerly of the Christian coalition, long time, uh, white evangelical activist and leader, and they have a really robust get out the vote campaign. And you know, she told me that something like maybe a fifth or a quarter of their door knockers speak Spanish.
They've made a really concerted effort to reach out to Evangelical pastors and so I think in the same way that you get in the Republican Party, in the religious right, a marriage of sort of socially conservative and fiscally conservative ideas that seems to be, um, spreading more broadly beyond just, you know, white evangelicals, right, White Christians. But, you know, the big caveat here is in four more years, you know, if the economy is, well, I don't know if, if the economy is, stays strong or is perceived as strong under Trump, I think it'll be harder to sort of disentangle like what's culture, what's economy, what's, you know, other stuff.
Jared: Right, right.
Pete: That's a great point.
Jared: Well, and I think for me, I think what I was thinking of is we mentioned economics, like in some of the circles where, um, I have these conversations, it's like being a good steward, uh, is a good faith principle. And so that kind of covers over economic practices around, you know, what does it mean to be a good steward with our resources? And that tends to line up with more conservative economic practices. Um, and then that gets kind of lumped in as like, well, we're being, we want to be good stewards of our, uh, economy and of our resources and money.
Pete: And not send money to Ukraine. Things like that?
Jared: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So you mentioned, we were talking about Republicans generally. Can maybe we talk for a minute about, on the flip side, just because you don't have probably a bit more of an insider perspective on this. How would you say the Republican Party views evangelicals? Like, I'm always curious how sincere, which is a tough question for you to answer, of course, but, you know, are we using this label as a, uh, as a voting block to increase votes?
Like, what, what data do we have out there to say how the Republican Party views evangelicals?
Sarah: I mean, I think that's a big question. So I remember one of the things I write about is back in the 90s, when I was a teenager, I remember James Dobson, you know, the prominent evangelical leader started out, you guys know, started out as a psychologist and moved into becoming a political activist, really, and among other things. James Dobson sort of led this, I don't want to call it a revolt, quite, but, you know, raised a lot of concern about the fact that, you know, he didn't see the Republican Party essentially as courting evangelicals sufficiently.
He was, um, unhappy with the vice presidential pick that year for having, I think, some history of pro choice remarks. And you know, there was, this is something I heard growing up too. This idea that, like, the Republican Party didn't appreciate Christians enough and that Christians weren't active enough. They needed to make their voices heard, um, you know, kind of went both directions.
But I think that today, that I don't think that, you know, Evangelicals are like the red headed stepchild of the GOP. I think they, in many ways, are just the core of it. Um, I was looking at some data in preparation for this conversation from, uh, the general social survey, um, and a piece by Ryan Burge, who does a lot of data analysis about evangelicalism. He's a researcher.
And, you know, the, the percentage of Republicans who were evangelicals back in the seventies was, I can't remember the exact number, but it was pretty relatively small. And it's just, it's grown and grown and grown since then. And so, you know, evangelicals, like 80 percent of evangelicals vote for Trump.
Right. But also like the Republican party is increasingly dominated by Evangelicals who make up, you know, yes, they're a voting bloc, but I think that they're a voting bloc because they turn out regularly, because they vote in lockstep, because they're reliable, and because they're organized. I mean, a minute ago I mentioned, um, like the faith and freedom coalition, which has this massive get out the vote effort that is bigger each election cycle. Um, you know, we're talking millions of sort of, uh, low propensity voters, that they doorknock and turn out on behalf of the Republican Party and Republican candidates. And so, the evangelical movement is intertwined with the GOP today, and is really critical to it.
And, you know, um, it's been noted that Trump rallies increasingly feel sometimes like religious services or revivals. You know, they open with prayer very often, and they include sometimes religious songs and religious imagery. And so, um, you know, are there Republican leaders who are sort of cynical and dismissive of evangelical voters? Probably. I'm sure there have been, but, um, they've become very powerful. And, you know, during Trump's first administration, prominent evangelical leaders of all stripes, you know, from the sort of charismatic movement, uh, to the more mainstream, the Southern Baptist movement and so forth, um, had quite a bit of access to the White House and I would expect much the same the next time around.
Pete: Maybe Sarah, if it's okay for you to maybe take your journalist hat and maybe just put it to the side for a second. Um, I know that's hard to do, but, um, to just where, I mean, where do you think this is going? I mean, I mean, we don't want to predict, but just in terms of trends, I mean, what. What can we expect in the next two years, the next four years, in terms of the continued influence of evangelicalism in American politics?
Sarah: It's hard to say. I mean, as I'm sure you're well aware, the country is becoming less and less religious. The only really substantial growth in the category of if you look at, you know, charts and graphs and polls about religion in America, the only growth is in people who are not, religious nones, um, disaffiliation, unaffiliation, everything else is pretty much shrinking.
Certainly, white Christianity is shrinking, and that includes white evangelicalism. And so, you know, one of the questions I have, I don't make a lot of predictions, but I like to ask a lot of questions is, what will that shrinking pool that the GOP has relied on for so much, for so long, what will that mean for the future of the Republican Party?
Now, if you'd asked me that a couple years ago, I would have said, well, it's probably going to be really bad, but, um, looking at the results of the 2024 election and the coalition that Trump won—um, I mean, according to analysis by Steve Kornacki at NBC, Trump got like one in three non-white voters, and so the Republican Party I mean, has recognized for over a decade now that they needed to reach out to non-white voters and broaden the tent.
Everybody thought that Trump would be the death knell for that with his rhetoric about, uh, minorities and especially immigrants. But that, so far, after this election cycle, doesn't seem to be true. Um, I think a lot will depend on whether the Democrats can regroup and create a message that sells, that sort of appeals to sort of center left, center right voters, centrist. Um, I think that they may have scared off, you know, some sort of centrist voters who are just primarily worried about the economy and don't want to fight the culture wars. They may have to think about how to, how to regroup and repackage the message and persuade voters that they really are, you know, the party for the working class as they used to be seen.
Um, and a lot will hinge, of course, on how Trump performs in the White House. You know, he has made a lot of promises. He said a lot of things. He says a lot of things just about every day, and it's hard to know which ones are going to turn into policy. And if so, what those policies will mean for people on the ground.
And so I think it's just impossible to predict. Um, you know, if he steers the ship and the economy is strong and Democrats can't coalesce around a message, then I would expect more of the same. But I think, I think there's a, it's an incredibly dynamic time and, um, anything can happen. So I don't know. I don't know.
Pete: And if we've learned anything, it's that predictions haven't worked.
Sarah: Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, you know, again, I think this election upended so many expectations, but what exactly was doing the work there? Um, and let's not forget that the Democrats were running with a candidate that only had a hundred days to sell herself to the public and, you know, with a, I think in many people's minds, a weakened president.
And so, um, you know, that's obviously an important factor as well. I mean, that's not really answering your question about what do white evangelicals do going forward. I don't see white evangelicals in any substantial way becoming less Republican anytime soon. I think that if, uh, Trump was going to scare them away, he would have done it by now.
But, um, you know, increasingly, I think a lot of people argue that, uh, who pay attention to this kind of stuff, that evangelical is just increasingly a political sociological label. And so, um, you know, people who may hold some or all evangelical beliefs, but don't see themselves as aligned with MAGA, are less and less likely to call themselves an evangelical.
They may just call themselves a Christian. Um, like I did as a kid.
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Jared: It also seems that it's not going to matter too much, um, as evangelicalism declines, like all these other religious groups, because it feels like, just the people that I talk to who are, who support Trump and voted for Trump have largely done so for even if they have an evangelical persuasion or more increasingly people who are not evangelical, that's, you know, I feel like, I guess I would say, economy is in some ways a deeper religion for a lot of people in our country. And so, it's like, that's really the driving force of it. It is not, even for people who would say they're evangelical sometimes when I have those conversations, they're able to sort of set that aside and say well, I'm voting for this for economic reasons. Um, and so I just think they were able to capture that audience in the 80s and 90s and now into the, you know, 2000s but now it seems like it's less of an important factor.
And so in my mind, it seems like the evangelicalism of it is going to have less and less of a, uh, it's going to be less and less important. I think I don't know. What would you say to that?
Sarah: I mean, I think evangelicals have been important recently because again, they're just, they used to be one in three—I'm sorry, one in four or five Americans, depending on how you count. Now, it's down to like 14 percent of the population. But again, you're talking about, I mean, that's a chunk. That's still a chunk of the population, right? And like 80 percent of them vote Republican, um. Compare that to mainline or Catholic, uh, white mainline Protestants and Catholics, is something like 55 percent Republican. There's still like a Republican tilt, but not nearly so profoundly.
And so, I mean, some of it is, it's not, it's not necessarily only about, well, all these evangelicals, all these people are evangelical and they really care about, like, abortion and gay marriage. It's also about, just like, here is a reliable group of voters that you can turn out again and again and again and they don't move.
Um, and, you know, in a country where there are so many small subgroups of people with all these different, differing agendas, I mean, it's just, like, you can just go, you know, get a big bucket of votes there if you can get evangelicals behind you. And so, I think it's, it's, but yes, I mean, I think that the culture war issues probably will have less salience going forward, I don't know. I mean, in this country, in American politics, it's not, it's never about one thing, right? It's about motivating the people that will go to the polls.
And so, I think that's why you hear these kinds of culture war issues continuing to pop up. It's not that most Americans are all that motivated by like abortion or transgender issues. It's that a segment of Americans who are very politically engaged and vote at high rates are motivated by them.
Jared: Right. Yeah, that's a great point. Well, as we, um, as we wrap up our time, maybe I can take another left turn into just some, some practical, a practical question. Um, and that is how, all the stuff that we're talking about, how has that impacted you, your ability, um, to have conversations with people who, um—I just think we have a lot of, uh, listeners who would identify as, like you said, exvangelical, deconstructed Christians who are in relationship with a lot of people who voted for Trump, Republicans, and maybe don't themselves align that, but have a hard time relating, connecting, having conversations. How do we have constructive political conversations when religious identities are now so far apart for some of folks, you know, I guess, a large part of our listeners at least?
Sarah: I think it's really hard for a lot of people and it depends obviously on, like, what their relationship is to those people, how close do they need to be to them? How, you know, I mean, is it a casual conversation at the grocery store, or is it like your family member? And, um, you know, I think with, with more casual connections as a journalist, something that I have, I hope, learned how to do is sort of listen actively and listen with sort of, you know, uh, I try to be as non -judgmental as possible and ask questions, you know, if someone says something offensive, sometimes I can, rather than trying to argue with them, just ask a question and see where they go with it.
Um, but when it comes to people that you're close to and that there's like an emotional connection to and with whom those relationships can be a lot more fraught, uh, it's tricky. And, you know, I write in The Exvangelicals about a lot of different ways people have navigated that, you know, some people end up quite distant from family or friends when they would rather not be, but it's the only way to sort of maintain, uh, a boundary or sanity, but a lot of people I think are able to navigate these difficult conversations. Um, you know, I have, uh, I talk to people who, who, you know, have, I think, very complex, sometimes even unspoken boundaries with family members about things they don't talk about and things they do talk about and, you know, it's always when you're close to someone you want to be able to share as much of your life as possible, but I think, uh, sometimes it's not possible.
But I guess I'll leave you with one more thought, um, to answer that question, which is, you know. My own family is, uh, politically diverse. And, um, you know, on election day, the family thread got very quiet. And I was just kind of like, waiting for somebody to say something. All of a sudden, like, the morning after the election, the text thread lit up and I was like, Oh, gosh, what is it?
And I looked and it was my father, good Midwesterner, sharing a photo of the newly laid, uh, driveway in front of their house. He was very proud of it. And he didn't do it himself, but he had it done. And, you know, I just thought, you know, sometimes we can just talk about concrete and driveways and landscaping or, in the last couple weeks, snow. We don't have to talk about all this other stuff all the time. And, you know, that might sound like a cop out to some people who are like, you know, I know there's this idea that we all need to go talk to our families and confront them about their bad ideas, um, and sometimes that's true.
But I don't think it's always true and I think we have to choose our battles and I think that we have to treat people with the same respect that we want them to treat us with and so not everything has to be a fight. That is something that I think I have learned as I've reached middle age, so maybe we're just too tired to fight at this point.
Pete: Yeah. And maybe that's, that's the big lesson to take away is, um, rethinking our political rhetoric and how we engage other people and befriending those we disagree with and, uh, trying to move to a better place.
Sarah: Yeah.
Pete: Alas, that's more than we can do on this episode, right? Jared?
Jared: That's true.
Pete: Yeah. Well, Sarah, listen, thank you so much for being with us. We had a great time talking with you and for taking the time to be with us. You're a busy person, so we really appreciate it.
Sarah: Yeah. My pleasure. It's good to talk to you too.
[QUIET TIME MUSIC BEGINS AND FADES OUT]
Jared: And now for Quiet Time…
Pete: With Pete and Jared. Sarah said a lot, there's a lot going on politically, but what—?
Jared: Are you saying she talked too much? Or… [Laughing]
Pete: No, she didn't talk nearly enough. That's what I’d say. But so, uh, you know, what, what's something that maybe you're taking away from this conversation today, Jared?
Jared: Yeah. I mean, both of us, when we were reflecting on the conversation, talked about this fear factor, um, that a lot of the, uh, motivation for a lot of this comes from fear. And I think it's hard to identify, I think for me, I wouldn't have said that explicitly as a kid because it's not that I was, I was really feeling fear, but a lot of the rhetoric for why we should be motivated to do things was because if we don't, bad things might happen or bad things are already happening. We have to stop the bad consequences of those things.
And, and so I just want to, for me, set that tone that, uh, when we talk about fear, it's not always like a cowardly hiding in the corner. No, it's something a little bit more nuanced than that. But what did you think about that? The fear piece?
Pete: Yeah, I mean, for me, I think that's huge. And you mentioned, you know, you don't always recognize it as that, but it's a deeply motivating factor, I think, just in being human. And, um, I remember, you know, years ago, a therapist asked me, what are you afraid of? I was like, nothing really. And he goes, okay, let's talk about that.
Jared: Okay. So first of all, you're lying to yourself.
Pete: Or you're just not aware, right? You're not aware of how much you're, you're afraid. And, and, um, you know, I feel this is not a novel point, but that, um, that it has been used very effectively in recent years in political rhetoric and probably not just recent years, but every political cycle, there's fear. And fear motivates people to vote.
And, um, I think many, uh, Christians have been, uh, that fear has been nurtured and exacerbated to the point where, you know, it's made a tremendous impact on American politics. So maybe just knowing what we're afraid of and being able to articulate it and not just being, um, sort of in reactive mode, but in responsive mode.
Jared: Yeah. Well, and that, I think that ties into another point that we wanted to talk about, which is the rhetoric we use to talk about this. Because I think like you said if we're, if we're being reactive, our language reflects that. It reflects the reactivity, the polar—when you're afraid of something then you're going to be angry at the people who are doing the thing that you're afraid of.
So if I'm, yeah, if I'm afraid that this particular candidate or this party is going to take this country in this direction, then the people who are for that, I'm going to be either afraid of, or more likely, angry at. And so, being able to recognize the fear I think is actually a good way to move away from this polar, this kind of polarizing rhetoric.
Pete: Yeah, because fear leads to anger, right?
Jared: Where’d you get that?
Pete: Yoda's right, he's out. Anger leads to…
Jared: That's in the Bible, right?
Pete: Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. Did I do that pretty well?
Jared: That was pretty good.
Pete: I think I did it pretty well.
Jared: That was pretty good. But, I mean I want to maybe play a little bit of devil's advocate on this, because I think some people will say it's not necessarily non-polarizing rhetoric, it is standing up for with passion and with a righteous anger, the right thing.
So how do we navigate? I mean, we've talked about this before and maybe I'm hoping you've come to some great enlightenment since the last time, but how do we navigate that? Because I… I think I, I'm, I think I would just say, I'm probably more on the, yeah, let's move away from the polarizing rhetoric, because it's just more my nature, but I kind of have that in the back of my head of people who are like, well, that's a kind of a privileged position because you're not maybe as impacted by some of these policy decisions as others.
Pete: And on the left and on the right, you know, people who are, you know, gay, who feel threatened, their existence feels threatened as a result of this.
And, um, they might rightly say to people like this, you, you don't, you're not going to suffer too much from certain policies, right? Or women, you know, you're not going to suffer too much. And I definitely see the point. I think there's a lot of wisdom that needs to be employed to know when to be sort of that black and white, prophetic kind of figure, which has a definite place.
Um, but in, I think in the, in the recent context, American political context, it's very hard to have a reasoned discussion with people. Right. And, and I think that's, that's unfortunate. So I'm hoping that, and I don't know what this looks like, but I've sort of caught wind of it over the past few weeks. Will this encourage us to have different ways of engaging each other over things that mean an awful lot to us?
Jared: That's a good way of saying that.
Pete: And not just polarizing. We're not all prophets. Right. There are prophets out there, and I've listened to them, and I'm glad they're there. Right. But, um, how can I, um, help enact change, uh, and it is probably not by demonizing, which is another way of putting it, demonizing people.
I don't, I don't want to do that. I have people in my life who are politically very different than I am, and we, we get along, right?
Um, nothing's going to change by my demonizing them. So, so I guess it's one thing to have a political, um, rhetoric that is, is prophetic, let's say, towards issues and towards policies and maybe towards certain limited individuals, but not towards everyone who happens to maybe feel aligned with some of those principles, right?
Even though I think they might be wrong, they are more than just that. I'm more than just what I think in terms of politics and that gets lost very quickly in this rhetoric. So I'm hoping that changes.
Jared: Yeah. Yeah. And I think for me, part of that too is how much of our behavior, how much are we willing to sacrifice for that cause also plays into it, because I think I can be, I think I'd be frustrated where we substitute the rhetoric, like how angry I can get, and how many people I can cut off is my social justice. It is my—
Pete: It is my virtue signal.
Jared: It's sort of like that is what I am about and that shows, rather than, well, I’m doing all of these things and then I have a very principled understanding of how I’m interacting with people based on this body of work. I’m showing up. And I'm doing the things in the world that may actually enact policy change. Um, so that's kind of my.
Pete: And I hate to be that guy, but it's, social media hasn't helped. The way people use it at least hasn't helped. And it's, it's, it's a chance to vent anonymously.
Jared: Well, that's a great segue into, I think the last thing we wanted to maybe discuss and unpack a little bit, which was the idea that, uh, this is complex stuff. Like there, there aren't simple answers. And I think social media doesn't help that where everybody has like a simple fix to whatever these complex problems are.
Pete: Right. And, just judging by some of the things that Sarah said in the episode, um, it's really hard to put people in boxes. You know, I mean, um, you know, AOC talked about how people voted for her who also voted for Trump. And it's interesting, you know, that sort of wrecks categories. So this whole landscape is getting much more complicated. And I think maybe the last thing to do in that sort of situation is to become more polarizing.
Jared: Well, because polarization I think is a simplification. And I, I'm all for making it more complicated, because I think the issues are more complicated. I think our world is complicated. So yeah, I think those things to recognize the complexity, I think, is to counter the polarization.
Pete: Right. And enough people have to do that, right? Not just 5% or 1%, but like most.
Jared: Which kind of goes back to that's hard to do with fear.
Pete: Exactly right.
Jared: Right. Um, it's hard to have that kind of front of brain thinking and thought process whenever you're being driven by fear.
Pete: So maybe we're at a tipping point or a shift, a paradigm shift, whatever we want to call it. And yeah. We'll see what the future brings. I don't know.
Jared: Yeah, we'll see.
[Outro music plays]
Jared: Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you want to support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just want to give a little money, go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give.
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Outro: You've just made it through another episode of Faith for Normal People. Don't forget you can catch our other show, The Bible for Normal People, in the same feed wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People team: Brittany Hodge, Stephen Henning, Joel Limbauan, Savannah Locke, Melissa Yandow, Tessa Stultz, Danny Wong, Lauren O'Connell, and Naiomi Gonzalez.
[Outro music stops]
[Blooper beep plays]
Jared: We’ll just leave it on that dramatic pause.
Pete: Buh-buh. Buh-buh.
[Blooper beep plays]
