White Evangelicals and the Election

AFTER A LONG and extraordinarily toxic election, white people elected Donald Trump president of the United States. They weren’t the only ones voting, but the white vote—coupled with efforts to suppress minority voters along with diminished enthusiasm and turnout among all voters—was enough to make the difference. After beginning his political career with a racist birther campaign against the first black president, then starting his presidential campaign with a speech that viciously denigrated Mexicans and immigrants, Donald Trump won the election not in spite of but because of his bigotry.

One of the important moral discussions that will take place over the coming months is around the questions “Who did evangelicals vote for in 2016, and why?” White evangelicals overwhelmingly supported Trump, but evangelicals of color did not. In light of these results, we need to step back and ask much-more-basic questions, such as “What is an evangelical?” “What do evangelicals look like?” and “What issues motivate evangelical voters?” The answers are more complicated and more encouraging than what the media and pollsters have traditionally described and what the votes of white evangelicals in this election painfully showed.

In 2016, the conversation about who evangelicals are and what issues motivate them began to change. An influential declaration signed by 80 racially diverse evangelical leaders focused on their rejection of the racial and gender bigotry of Trump. It clarified the fundamental differences between older white evangelicals and a new generation of multiethnic evangelical leaders and what they care about.

One sign of progress is that when the media discuss religious voting preferences, they are now more likely to use the phrase “white evangelicals” as a category rather than assuming that the term “evangelicals” applies only to white people.

In fact, we have seen that somewhere between 24 percent and 37 percent of evangelical Christians in this country are not white—and when they are left out of the conversation, it erases the voices of tens of millions of people, many of whom prioritize different issues in the voting booth than do white evangelicals, despite their shared beliefs in the lordship of Jesus Christ and the authority of scripture. These evangelicals of color have stood up and spoken out—along with some white evangelicals who believe that abortion and gay marriage do not supersede all other political issues.

DURING THE 2016 presidential election cycle, the vast majority of white evangelicals acted more white than evangelical, putting their white identities ahead of their Christian identities, and choosing their identities as Republicans over their identities as Christians. They prioritized the strategic idol of a conservative Supreme Court and were willing to look the other way not only on their candidate’s bigotry but his shocking lack of personal morality. When the videotape emerged of Donald Trump bragging about adultery and sexual assault, some white evangelicals initially said “enough.” But in the end, the votes of white evangelicals demonstrated the truth as many of them came back to the Republican candidate—including 75 percent of white evangelical women. Because of this politicizing of the term “evangelical,” many younger evangelicals no longer are comfortable using the word to identify themselves.

The early October declaration by evangelicals against Trump and the release of the Access Hollywood tape the same week did create space for national media to examine more carefully their conceptions of who evangelicals are and how they vote. A few weeks before the election, a poll from LifeWay found that 65 percent of white evangelicals—but only 15 percent of nonwhite evangelicals—planned to vote for Trump. Data from exit polls only heightened this gap, showing that Trump ultimately received 81 percent of the white evangelical vote.

WHERE DO WE go from here? The next generation of evangelicals, like the population as a whole, is more racially diverse than ever. The issues of concern to these evangelicals include supporting alternatives to abortion, but also include racial justice and healing, criminal justice, immigration reform, LGBTQ equality, creation care, reducing poverty and income inequality, and peacemaking.

White evangelicals have been exposed as hypocrites for sacrificing their morals in this election at the altar of power, but their numbers are shrinking each year. It will be up to a new, multiracial generation of evangelicals to chart a new course for their part of the Body of Christ as we look to the future. And indeed, that new and multiethnic generation will actually redefine the word “evangelical” and its meaning in the public square. With God’s help, I’m following their lead as we go forward.