NOTE: I am publishing tomorrow, in October 2024, a note to link back to this article which has continuing relevance even though it first appeared in 2019, during a debate about Donald Trump's impeachment (the first of two failed tries.) Some things have changed in the evangelical world since then-- I guess we're not supposed to say "evangelical" anymore but only "Christian Nationalist"-- but there is plenty of continuity too. For the current occasion I've made a few edits so that this reads little more clearly, now that certain specifics from the earlier debate have faded. For more about contextualizing it for 2024, click above.
“Many evangelicals are likely to switch their loyalties to the Democrats [in the coming election]—and the exact numbers will depend partly on whether they perceive that mainstream liberals are treating them with nuance and respect, as opposed to stereotypes and contempt.”
I wrote that back in 2008, in a context I will discuss shortly. It remains true today. Then, as now, there is tangible and realistic hope that Democrats can capture enough moderate evangelicals to swing the coming election—especially when combined with ex-evangelicals who are shrinking the raw numbers of the evangelical bloc—although a high percentage of Republicans in what remains of this bloc won’t budge.
But when the recent editorial from the flagship evangelical magazine Christianity Today [CT] appeared—the one calling for Trump’s removal that has recently made a big splash in the the news cycle—I could easily predict how public responses to it would unfold. This is like a bus that comes down the street with distressing regularity, and I am tired of people on the left botching the analysis.
Four Stages of a Dysfunctional Discourse
Here’s the pattern:
First, top leaders of the organized Christian Right would jump onto FOX News and kindred news channels to loudly declare that CT--which for decades has been the most recognized and respected voice of the centrist evangelical establishment--has become irrelevant. Right on cue, Ralph Reed and Franklin Graham did so, so that the New York Times duly reported that “Evangelical Leaders Close Ranks With Trump.”
Second, pundits on the left would also declare CT irrelevant, for some reason preferring to echo right-wing talking points. They would call the centrists at CT marginal compared to rightward warriors like Graham. They they would agree with Reed that to valorize the evangelical center-right at CT would be false consciousness. (For Reed, this would be a distraction from a moral center on the right, while for the left it would put liberal lipstick on what is for the left an authoritarian pig.) Thus, the always-first-to-the-punch Religion Dispatches (RD) published “Christianity Today Article Doesn’t Mean What You Think it Means,” This pieasce declared that CT’s call for impeachment is “not going to change much” because CT “does not” and “can’t” represent “a broad evangelical constituency.” According to them, this would be “impossible” since--although CT here respects “the authority of empirical fact"--everyone knows that real evangelicals are defined by an “authoritarian mindset” that has “no room for dissent.”
Perhaps because this last assertion about a supposed lack of dissent within the evangelical world is clearly absurd—at least for anyone who respects empirical fact—RD’s writer did backpedal slightly. OK, granted, evangelicals do disagree. But they only do so “between groups”--say Baptists versus Pentecostals for starters--while “within groups” they are known for their heavy pressure to teach their rank and file to conform. (This qualified approach is not all wrong. However, it leads toward precisely the sorts of internal cracks within an evangelical bloc that RD is trying to downplay). Thus, RD's backpedalling version continues, even if evangelicals do disagree, it holds true that they have a patriarchal and “tribaliz[ed]” DNA “incompatible with republican democracy.”
These first two stages happened almost immediately.
Third: the most substantive religious opposition to Trump would mainly be bracketed from the public discussion. I refer to a motley coalition that does include part of CT's readership--but only as its smallest and most lukewarm component. The wider left-liberal religious coalition (including Catholics, liberal Protestants, and a few moderate evangelicals who reasd CT) is quite large even though the CT swing group we have been talking about is quite small. Sadly, in twitter-sized discourse as conducted by evangelicals and secularists alike, since evangelicalism is almost the only religion that matters, it follows that evangelical dissent is almost the only religious dissent that matters.
Fourth: the conversation would quickly grind down into repetition and discursive chaos.
All four of these steps had already happened before I finished drafting this earlier post. Yet the process still sticks in my craw. So here I am, trying to push back against the logic that causes this pattern over and over.
Keeping It In Perspective: Why Cheers for Christianity Today Should Be Lukewarm
Before we go further, let’s be crystal clear—this CT attack on Trump offers something far milder and more ambivalent than a full-throated religious left position such as William Barber’s. Barber rightly calls CT’s critique “anemic” and complains that it focuses primarily “on an individual’s moral failings.” He points out how, despite some punchy phrases, CT included a loophole that might allow evangelicals to construe everything as fine, provided that Trump is removed, even if Mike Pence continues most of his policies. Indeed when CT’s editor received space on MSNBC to restate his case, he largely fretted that evangelical hypocrisy was undermining its “credible” leverage for “the pro-life cause.”
Moreover, CT has a long track record of being slow to accept emerging positions during past sea changes in US public opinion. (See this book and this one for the excruciating detail, or contrast CT with this leftward competitor.) Many of the arguments that CT has been debating lately—like dialing back condemnations of LGBTQ folks or accepting women’s rights as “Biblically” defensible—are things that their liberal Protestant compatriots processed decades ago and are bone tired of rehashing. CT’s moves are far past due.
Nevertheless there are some people in CT’s world who are grappling with these issues for the first time through no fault of their own. (I often teach such students, so I know them well). I also know from my scholarly study that some of CT’s past shifts toward centrism have been key signals of shifting dominant opinion. For example, when CT turned on Richard Nixon, this represented one of the last nails in the coffin of his presidency. When they supported LGBTQ marriage rights, this was a strong signal that the tide had turned. They were far from heroic in either case, yet their change was not trivial.
Thus, although I feel like Sisyphus taking up these issues again, and I can only give CT moderate encouragement instead of enthusiastic cheers, I do defend its intervention. It matters because sincere people are still pondering these issues, because CT’s stance slightly widens cracks in evangelical debates, and because (if we pay attention) this can help us grasp how evangelical Trumpism is shrinking (not strengthening) the Republican base.
As a trio these considerations are by no means trivial. If critics claim that they add up to nothing or merely traffic in self-delusion since debates about evangelical values are “impossible,” this is simply wrong. And it is wrong in a notably unhelpful way.
The New York Times and the Dysfunction Du Jour
Sarah Posner, one of RD’s top muckrakers of Christian Right dirt, scored a prominent New York Times editorial entitled “That Christianity Today Editorial Won’t Change Anything.” She draws on the same evidence that led me to write that we can “safely project ongoing Republican supermajorities” among white evangelicals. Does anyone deny that? And she showcases disturbing examples of evangelical Trumpism, drawn from her impressive field research. Unfortunately, her basic logic structuring this dovetails with the above-noted RD article, dailing up the hostility to 11: Evangelicals are “insular” with “unwavering loyalty” and organized as a “spiritual army” that is nearly impervious to outside evidence because it considers Trump a “divinely anointed leader.”
I responded as follows to the Posner piece on a NYT readers’ thread:
CT probably has a readership that is 25% never-Trumper and 50% Democratic—so it’s a minority in the evangelical world—although it represents quite a few ministers who preach to Trump voters. I suppose some readers would turn around and support Cruz or Pence instead, and some will probably vote for Trump if he runs again.
But…
This minority also represents a non-trivial swing group electorally and shows that the idea of a solid 80% white evangelicals for the GOP is either slipping a little (agreed, not a lot) OR more importantly reflects a shrinking baseline “pool of 100%” because mainstream evangelical politics functions very effectively as machine to produce EX-evangelicals.
A slip from 80% to 70% in white evangelical support, especially with a shrinking “pool of 100%,” would swing many elections. This is a non-trivial example of Trump’s base being a house of cards in some respects—although this is hard to judge behind all the bluffing on FOX. Posner is pointing to real problems, but she is not helping to solve them by overplaying the strength of the house of cards or the idea that evangelicals are a monolith.
Most of these ideas washed away in the flood of punditry raging around us. The longstanding nature of such evangelical divisions, the fluidity of evangelical debates, and the place of left evangelicals in wider social formations stayed out of focus.
True, some people in the liberal media did note how this matters for swing votes, although not without pushback from both left and right. Hardly any highlighted what I find most important—long-term shrinkage in the evangelical base and the question of where the defectors move.
Let’s belabor this for a minute. If you hear that 80% of self-declared white evangelical voters were solid for Trump—well, yes, polls do show this. But it is crucial to understand how this is 80% of a 100% that is a moving target—a baseline that is aging in ways that are alarming to leaders on the right and leaking adherents at a growing rate.
The word “white” with “evangelical” is equally important. Twitter-sized punditry often uses high-end estimates of “evangelical” power, conflates this with rigidly conservative white evangelicals, and—poof!—makes both evangelicals of color (Asian, Latinx, and black) and liberalizing white evangelicals disappear. Meanwhile, if we started from these latter groups, then added the less rigid (“never-Trump”) types of evangelical conservatives, together this cohort includes the majority of evangelicals. Yes, everyone knows that gradations the hard right remains the single biggest fraction, and also that some of the never-Trumpers would break for Pence. Still the situation is very far from being so monolithic that such variations don’t matter.
The Melting Glacier of White Evangelicals (Yes, Still Very Cold!)
More pointedly, the well-known “80% for Trump” datum that Posner uses to argue that nothing can change is a public relations disaster for the future of evangelicalism as a brand. The longer this number holds steady, the worse for the brand because it drives people (especially youth) away. 80% of a small and reviled group is not a long-term win. In this context, we can see CT’s editorial as a try at damage control.
No one should imagine CT’s move as a small new crack that will be easy to repair. Think of it as further evidence of widening in one of several longstanding cracks—some of which are already calving off chunks of a shrinking glacier. Who cares if the ice in the water doesn’t show up when we measure the remaining glacier and find only 20% of what's left opposed to Trump? The key issue is how and why the glacier is melting.
Importantly, my glacier imagery does not imply that all the calving ice is melting into a category of “secular nones.” Part of it surely is—and much media discourse assumes that most of it is—but in fact it is crucial to approach this issue “drop by drop” and measure the results using a system in which the categories of religious liberal or religious left are legible alongside “none.” That’s a longer discussion for another day.
Deja Vu: Can We Learn from the Past?
As noted earlier, I could predict how stages of the CT media drama would unfold before they even started. That was because I’ve been around this block before. During the Obama/McCain election of 2008, Pastor Rick Warren, one of the top evangelicals in the country at the time, hosted the two candidates for a “faith forum” at his megachurch.
Partly he used it to promote an impression (half-true at best) that he wanted to be a neutral referee in the election.
Partly he used it to lobby Obama from the right about abortion.
But partly (importantly!) he also signaled that sincere evangelicals should make up their own minds, and could legitimately decide to vote for Obama with Warren’s and/or Jesus’s blessing.
For those of us observing this faith forum from the left, the first two of these parts were annoying and the third was not a discovery we found illuminating or heroic whatsoever. But here’s the point. Even if Warren should have been mortified that he had not figured out long ago that Christians can support Democrats, and even if he was a biased referee on abortion—even if Democratic appeals to swing voters in Warren’s orbit created tricky trade-offs for holding together the Democratic bloc (which is a serious concern and the likely crux issue for RD)—nevertheless Warren did signal real waffling. He waffled in relation to constituents who were not monolithic but rather ranged widely across a hard-right to moderate-liberal spectrum (although with scarce numbers at the “fully woke” end of the spectrum.) This really mattered for swing votes in the election—even if not in huge percentages, and even if some of these folks were midway in a process of becoming ex-evangelicalism, such that they might not be legible as part of a 20% minority of evangelical voters.
I made these points in Religion Dispatches at the time—the quotation at the beginning was from this piece, and I also later wrote this piece among others. I could predict how the current debate would unfold because I’ve watched it unfold before. Gradually I learned that I am off-message from the main pundit discourse on evangelicals.
Still my arguments remain relevant for defeating Mr. Trump.
Let's be clear, I agree with left pundits such as Posner that we should not encourage left-liberals to defer to CT-type evangelicals across the board—especially when evangelicals demand veto power over core priorities. Let's underline this, since it is important and slippery from issue to issue.
The point is that I favor an electoral coalition that is broad enough to include “non-cool” moderate evangelicals. In my mind, the point is not at all tilting toward Joe Biden over Bernie Sanders. it is about building winning coalitions for either one.
To do this we need include people who are inconsistent in wokeness or may (within limits) even have troubling connections with some right-wing friends—provided that they will vote against Trump and support the fight against voter suppression. It does not help for building such a coalition—nor does it help us simply to understand what is going on—if we posit that most evangelicals are so insular and authoritarian as to be impervious to judgment and persuasion.
Wokeness: Can Anyone Get There From Non-Wokeness?
I know for a fact that many of my “super-woke” friends went through stages of life when they were not super-woke. When people are raised in conservative networks, that is the place where they need to start down a road of critically assessing what they were taught.
Thus, if conservative people start to think more carefully about the strengths and weaknesses of standard evangelical arguments, I try to give them the benefit of doubt. I know both from my historical study and from personal experience that stronger arguments often win out.
Of course this doesn’t always happen. But this is not because evangelicals are immune to argument, even if we “know” they're immune, based on our stipulated definitions of their essence. Yes, pressure to conform is real with evangelicalism. But this is a two-edged sword because it can create equal and opposite pressure to leave.
By saying what I just said, I do not take a backseat to anyone in my frustration with many people in CT’s world. I want to be civil—but, honestly, how long should it take intelligent adults to discern that they can say out loud that Trump is unfit for office? And don’t get me started about other places I disagree with centrist evangelicals—especially their tendency to sneer at other kinds of Christian commitment and judge it irrelevant to (their own) real Christianity.
It’s just that I can remember how my own seven-year-old mind managed, with whatever sincerity that was relevant for me in 1964, to learn from an evangelical subculture that Barry Goldwater was cooler than Lyndon Johnson. I soon got over that lesson by learning more—but how and why I learned was not fully under my control, either at age seven or even seventeen.
Much of what I learned was “insular,” just as the left critics insist. It was also deeply entangled with other dubious strands such as God blessing US imperialism. But on the other hand, I also learned a a lot of my dissent, especially about economic injustice, from evangelical discourse. This was a language I was taught to speak.
Being raised to take my place as a white Republican evangelical did not stop me from rethinking it. On the contrary, evangelicalism--at least as I experienced it--pressed me further and further—first toward the margins of evangelicalism and soon out of it. The more I learned the faster I moved. For a brief moment some of the smarter intellectuals in CT’s orbit kept me in their fold. Soon I moved on to ideas I found more persuasive.
This really should not be hard to understand. In real life, lived religion is like speaking a complex language in which one can debate about values. Being fluent in a language does not lock you into one argument or set of priorities, even if there are dominant patterns from place to place, as well as pressure to conform. Anyone who wants to move away from a given pattern, or toward a different vernacular, likely needs to start by critiquing or translating what they inherited.
Conclusion: a Shrinking Glacier Matters Even If It Is Still Very Cold
Moving leftward from conservative Christianity is an extremely common pattern in US culture.
“Who speaks for evangelicals?” is not a question that we can resolve using stipulated definitions, ones that exclude all data that doesn’t fit under our definition. This is a debate, and people with a tin ear who mainly insult their opponents, as opposed to respecting their opponent’s process and trying to persuade them, are likely to lose the debate. Counting fractions of self-identified evangelicals does not come near the heart of the question, because the stakes of the debate are how many people will come to renounce the evangelical label, as part of our glacier with chunks calving off.
So I repeat: a non-trivial minority of evangelicals—enough to be a significant swing group—will likely switch their loyalties to the Democrats. The exact numbers that split off—whether toward the small remant of anti-Trump evangelicals or more likely away from evangelicalism toward other religious and/or secular stances—will depend in some large part on whether they perceive that left-liberal critics are treating them with nuance and respect, as opposed to stereotypes and contempt.
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