Theological foundations of evangelical support for Trump's leadership

1 An Analysis of the Theological Reason behind Evangelicals’ Support of Trump: the Emerging Theology of Leadership Coming From the Trump Base Research Question Why have so many evangelical Christians thrown their support behind President Trump? As Smith and Martinez of the Pew Research Center have shown, Trump received more of the evangelical vote (at 81%) than Mitt Romney before him (78%), John McCain in 2008 (74%) or George Bush in 2004 (78%).[footnoteRef:2] For a man who never identified with or campaigned as an evangelical, Trump managed to secure more of their votes than his recent predecessors—and his public persona, charismatic antics, contentious charm, and personal predilections would not have given any serious student of theology a reason to suspect that this would ever be the case. So how do he manage to do what his immediate predecessors had been unable to do—and what does it suggest of today’s evangelical groups? [2: G. Smith and J. Martinez, “How the faithful voted: A preliminary 2016 analysis.” Pew Research Center. ]

Thesis Statement The theological reason behind evangelicals’ support of Trump is situated in the emergence of the theology of leadership embraced by the evangelical base and coupled with a political theology in which the main characters of the election were cast in Biblical colors and the concept of “Make America Great Again” appeared like a new covenant between God and evangelical Americans. Within this base’s theology exist all the conceptual shifts that characterize modern religious thought and interpretation.[footnoteRef:3] [3: Philip Gray, “Political Theology and the Theology of Politics: Carl Schmitt and Medieval Christian Political Thought1.” Humanitas 20, no. 1/2 (2007): 175.]

The State of the Question in Current Scholarship The evangelical theology of leadership emanating from President’s Trump’s evangelical base of supporters is unique in that it is anchored in the conceptual shifts that are characteristic of modern religious thought and interpretation. For example, as Daniel Miller shows, on the one hand evangelicals would typically distance themselves from a loud, brash, boldly unapologetic candidate who had a record of infidelities in his past, indulged in “locker room talk,” and was hardly known for being a Church-going Christian.[footnoteRef:4] Yet after many evangelicals’ preferred candidate, Ted Cruz, lost the primary to Trump, the what evangelical supporters who had not already come around to promoting MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) now threw their weight behind the contentious celebrity, justifying their support by noting the former reality show host’s appealing elements—such as his support of families, the working class, protecting America’s borders, standing with Israel, his status as an outsider (and thus a serious threat to the Establishment), and even his political incorrectness, which was seen by many as a virtue.[footnoteRef:5] Cast opposite Hillary Clinton, Trump even came across as a paragon in many ways, a leader poised to “lock up” the lawless Clintons and “drain the swamp” of Washington, where so many controversies (from Watergate to Pizzagate) had arisen in recent memory. Trump was seen as—if not a Messiah-type—then at least a leader who seemed chosen by God to restore America to its origins—to the pathway set out by the Founding Fathers.[footnoteRef:6] [4: Daniel Miller, “The mystery of evangelical Trump support?.” Constellations, 2018.] [5: Colter Louwerse and Ron Dart, “Donald Trump and the Christian Zionist Lobby: Letter from Canada.” Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies 16, no. 2 (2017): 237-243.] [6: Philip Gorski, “Why evangelicals voted for Trump: A critical cultural sociology.” American Journal of Cultural Sociology 5, no. 3 (2017): 338-354.]

The events of the campaign also seemed to bear this out for his newly won base: nothing touched him.[footnoteRef:7] Scandals that would have derailed other candidates impacted him little; his base simply did not care about his character or his personal behavior. After all, he was Trump: it was to be expected. His base knew they were not voting for a saint, but rather for a Samson-type figure who would shake down the pillars of Washington. It also did not hurt that he had an orthodox Jewish son-in-law and an evangelical Vice President by his side. Mindful of his evangelical base, Trump wanted to show that he was with them in spirit even if he could not be with them practically in terms of how he lived his spiritual life. He represented for them a new kind of leader: a leader whose mission was to upset the status quo that had long been set in place by the enemies of God (aka the Democrats).[footnoteRef:8] [7: Benjamin Hatchen, “The policy and personal motivations behind the endorsement of Donald Trump by four evangelical endorsers.” (2017).] [8: John Fletcher, “Deep Stories of the Demonized: Empathy and Trump Evangelicals.” Performance Matters 3, no. 1 (2017): 94-102.]

Trump appealed to a populist sentiment that wanted to see an America restored to its values—and these values were not represented by Hillary Clinton. The fact that Trump was running against Clinton gave him an extra sheen: her antagonism towards the evangelicals made Trump much more attractive, especially as he embraced them—never attempting to identify as one, never hiding his true self from them or asking for their forgiveness for past sins; Trump embraced them and united himself to them because they shared a vision of America—one in which America was a moral country, governed by the rule of law; a country that put Americans first instead of illegal immigrants or Arabs or the Chinese. For the evangelical Christians, America was or at least should be synonymous with Protestant Christianity. Trump did not oppose this vision of America—not in the way or in the extreme that Clinton did. Her rhetoric of inclusiveness violated the Protestant ethos of exclusivity. Trump’s bold and brash ways and his unapologetic demeanor emboldened them to the see him as their leader, if only in the beginning, of a larger movement that would redirect America from its current path towards atheism and communism, towards falling apart families and economic despondency; Trump would redirect them back to the feeling and belief that Americans were God’s chosen people—the elect.[footnoteRef:9] [9: Daniel Miller, “The mystery of evangelical Trump support?.” Constellations, 2018.]

For Trump’s evangelical base, the “Make America Great Again” slogan echoes of the old doctrine of “Manifest Destiny” and reminds them of America as the “City on a Hill”—the shining light of the Protestant ethos for all the world to see and follow. Trump’s character is not what they are after: it’s his words that they clamor to. He promises a return to the Promised Land and identifies the obstacle to that goal—radical Islamic terrorism (and immigration). He stands by Israel, which the evangelical base prefers. As Wong (2018) states: “White evangelicals’ more conservative political attitudes are driven by a sense of in-group embattlement, or the idea that their group faces as much or more discrimination as persecuted outgroups.”[footnoteRef:10] From this perspective, the theological reason for evangelicals’ support of Trump stems from this sense of persecution by the modern world. They see themselves and their beliefs as being marginalized. [10: Janelle Wong, \\\\\\\"The Evangelical Vote and Race in the 2016 Presidential Election.\\\\\\\" Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics(2018): 1-26.]

If Obama represented the threat of secularism and liberalism, Trump was the hero of the evangelicals because he did not scorn or deride their Christian message, heritage, or beliefs. If Obama and Clinton were non-committal in terms of espousing a Christian message because of their promotion of the dogmas and doctrines of political correctness, which meant that they could identify no God or group in particular as special, Trump was the leader who would “restore religious liberty”—by which the evangelicals understood the right to pray in school, the right to hang the 10 Commandments, the right to return Protestant Christianity to the public sphere—in short, the right to be unapologetically evangelical and to not have to worry that they might one day be forced to conform to the “norms” and “standards” of a communistic society in which no one was permitted to evangelize, no one was permitted to proselytize, and no one was permitted to be “saved”—which is how many evangelicals interpreted the vision of America as presented them by the Democratic Party under the leadership of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Indeed, the theology of leadership that Trump embodied was one that stood out as a stark contrast to the secular, liberal doctrines of political correctness. The doctrines of political correctness were like heresy to the evangelical base of Trump—and he understood this and demonstrated a willingness and desire to lead them out of the eight years of oppression they had suffered under Obama—eight years of politically correct assertions; assertions that Hillary Clinton echoed and doubled-down on all throughout her campaign; assertions that sounded to the evangelical base like noises coming from the Egyptian Pharaoh as he kept the Hebrews enslaved in captivity. The evangelical base of Trump developed a theology of leadership in which Trump could figure as a Moses-type of leader to escort them out of the harm’s way of another four to eight years of anti-evangelical political correctness. Trump would not bow down to the heathen god of political correctness—not on the campaign—and that was what marked him as the leader the evangelicals could get behind. Jeb Bush lacked the stamina; Cruz lacked the charisma; Rubio lacked the swagger. Trump had the confidence that he could deliver victory: and victory for Trump meant defeat for Hillary and Obama; it meant defeat of the antagonistic political correctness that had threatened to starve out the evangelical spirit of America. Trump indulged this characterization of him as a leader of the marginalized people of America—the forgotten people—the evangelicals. He played up to this idea of being the supporter of Christian traditions that had been replaced in recent years by non-discriminatory, PC slogans. He often hurled insults at the idea of saying, “Happy Holidays!” during the Christmas season. He asked his crowd, “Wouldn’t it be nice to hear people say Merry Christmas again?” And then he would launch into his “Crusader Trump” persona—the fire-brand leader persona that would dare say, “Merry Christmas!” in the face of all the Obamas and Clintons and politically correct anti-Americans of the world. This was, in essence, the type of thing that filled his evangelical base with joy. It was also the type of thing that filled the enemies of the evangelical base with dread—and this, too, served as a theological rationale for evangelicals to support Trump all the more: the political left despised him.[footnoteRef:11] Judith Roberts gives a sense of the perspective of the kind of Trump opposition that the evangelical base faced: “It wasn’t just that Trump did not seem like a polished politician to me—which I wanted. It wasn’t just that I considered him to be unfit for office—which I did. It also was that all around me from social media and conversations with conservative Christians, voting for Trump was not only American, but it was the Christian thing to do. If I voted for Hillary Clinton, I was voting to abort babies at nine months and supporting soldiers’ deaths in the Benghazi scandal.”[footnoteRef:12] If the perspective of the Roberts is to be understood accurately, it would suggest that Trump’s evangelical base was not so much supporting Trump as it was rallying behind him because the only other choice represented for them all of the abominations that they so despised—abortion, incompetent leadership, more Establishment politics that would lead to nothing but the continued persecution of the middle class. The theology of leadership that developed out of this movement was one that echoed the plight of the Egyptians looking upon Moses for deliverance. [11: John Fletcher, “Deep Stories of the Demonized: Empathy and Trump Evangelicals.” Performance Matters 3, no. 1 (2017): 94-102.] [12: Judith Roberts, “The Lord Has Sounded the TRUMPets?.” Constructing Narratives in Response to Trump\\\\\\\'s Election: How Various Populations Make Sense of an Unexpected Victory (2018): 84.]

Corwin Smidt, however, notes that not all evangelicals supported Trump and makes a distinction between type: “weekly church-attending, evangelical Republicans were far less supportive of Trump than evangelical Republicans who attended church far less regularly, as too were Republicans from the mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic faith traditions.”[footnoteRef:13] [13: Corwin Smidt, “The role of religion in the 2016 american presidential election.” Zeitschrift für Religion, Gesellschaft und Politik 1, no. 1 (2017): 133-162.]

The Types of Sources to be Used The types of sources to be used in this project will consist of scholarly journal articles like those cited in the previous section of this proposal, as well as literature from the mainstream media that captures the essence of the Trump campaign, commentator analysis, and examples of evangelical support. Other sources will include theological scholarly literature to help explain the conceptual shifts that characterize the currents the modern religious thought and interpretation, political theology, and the theology of leadership. Some explanation of MAGA, how it takes the shape of a covenant for Trump’s evangelical base, and how evangelicals promote this covenant with the fervor of faith, will also be discussed a variety of the same sources. Some sources, such as Corwin Smidt’s, “The Role of Religion in the 2016 American Presidential Election,” provides a great deal of quantitative data regarding the demographic shifts that allowed Trump to garner more and more support from the evangelical base as the primaries wore on. Other sources are more qualitative in nature and provide both theoretical and theological insights in the reasons for the evangelical base’s support of Trump. These sources include Philip Gorski’s “Why Evangelicals Voted for Trump: A Critical Cultural Sociology,” and Daniel Trump’s “The Mystery of Evangelical Trump Support?” as well as Smith’s American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving, which paints a distinct picture of Trump’s eventual evangelical base pre-election, complete with all the theological shifts that spring from modern religious thought. Methodology To better understand the theological reasons of evangelicals for supporting Trump, this project proposes to use interview method to ask questions that are formulated based on the research of the subject. The aim of the interview method is to obtain better and deeper insight into a phenomenon so as to experience greater clarity on why something happens. The why that is meant to be answered using this method is the theological reason that evangelicals personally cite as serving as the basis of their support for Trump. The researcher wants to see if evangelicals personally couch their decisions in a rhetoric that is spiritual and theological or social and political. The sample that is intended to be used for this project will consist of evangelical Christians who can be interviewed after making contact with them via social media. Skype can be used to conduct interviews, and the participants’ data can be analyzed using content analysis to identify the themes that emerge to explain the reasons. Outline Description of the Outline The outline for this project will begin with Chapter 1, which will provide an introduction that will frame the problem to be understood by describing Trump’s unlikely path to the White House. It will then discuss the evidence that shows that evangelicals supported him more than they did any of his recent predecessors in the election against Hillary Clinton. It will then discuss the background of evangelicals’ involvement in politics and discuss the emerging theology of leadership and show how it is connected to political theology in the 21st century. The research questions will be identified and discussed, and they will focus on asking why evangelical Christians turned out to support Donald Trump from a theological position—i.e., what are the theological reasons that evangelicals give for supporting Donald Trump? The nature of modern religious thought will then be analyzed to help serve as a backdrop for this investigation and frame the theological positions of today’s evangelical population within a specific construct. The emerging theology of leadership out of the need for the evangelical community to have a political leader who reflects their feelings, sentiments, experiences of marginalization, and yearning for a renewed Christian America will be assessed and the key concepts, such as theology and leadership will be defined. Chapter 2 will be used to provide a literature review, including an analysis and synthesis of the materials used to gather information on the subject during research. The research aims to be broad in scope by including scholarly articles from peer-reviewed journals, mainstream media works such as articles found in Time and The Atlantic, which investigate evangelical support for Trump. The review will also include clips from Trump’s speeches, media reports on Trump and his base, as well as theological arguments from commentators who have a background in theology so that an adequate and appropriate frame can be constructed that will provide context for this investigation into the theology of leadership of evangelicals. Ample room will be given to the notion of the theology of leadership in order that the results obtained from the interview with evangelicals can be compared and contrasted with the ideas of the theology of leadership to see how well they line up. Some analysis of the election itself must also be provided so that the fact that the 2016 presidential election was of a specific binary character can be seen. Many voters felt, for instance, that the election was an either/or event that would settle and define the future of America for good. These various research points will be synthesized to establish a sufficient foundation for assessing the results of the interview process, discussed in the next chapter. Chapter 3 will discuss the methodology to be employed for this project, which will be the interview method. This chapter will provide a description of how the sample was obtained, how the interview was conducted, and how the data collected from the interviews was analyzed. Chapter 4 will provide a description of the results that were obtained from the interviews and show how they compare and contrast to the themes identified in the literature review regarding the research question. The point of this will be to see how well the two data sets line up to help the researcher make sense of the theological reasons for evangelical support of Trump. Chapter 5 will discuss the findings and provide a description of the researcher’s conclusions on the theological reasons that evangelical Christians have for supporting Donald Trump. Outline I. Introduction a. Trump’s campaign to the White House i. Why it is unique ii. What distinguishes Trump from previous “conservative” candidates b. Trump was supported overwhelmingly by evangelicals i. A brief examination of the statistical evidence showing that evangelicals supported him more than any of his recent predecessors c. Question: What is the theological rationale demonstrated by evangelicals for their support of Trump? i. A brief discussion of why this research question is important for understanding where evangelicals are today and how their theological orientation intersects with the social, cultural and political forces of the modern era. d. Review of the evangelical base in the past i. A brief discussion of how evangelical theology has evolved over the years and how they have gotten involved in politics in the past e. Brief discussion of the emergence of the theology of leadership, framed within the concept of political theology i. A brief examination of how the theology of leadership relates to evangelicals today, and how political theology relates to the evangelicals’ situation f. Definition of terms: theology and leadership, political theology, evangelical II. Literature Review a. Scholarly articles on evangelical support for Trump i. A description of what academics have had to say about the relationship between Trump and evangelicals b. Media coverage of Trump, his campaign, and his base i. A description of how Trump and his base were covered by the mainstream media c. Articles on the theology of leadership i. A description of what this theology means among scholars and how it relates to evangelicals d. Articles on political theology i. A description of how this theology relates to the emerging theology of leadership among evangelicals e. Articles on the expressions of the theology of evangelicals over the past few decades i. A description of the evolution of theological and religious thought among evangelicals f. Historical analysis of evangelicals, their theology, and how they intertwine with politics i. A description of how the evolution of religious thought has intersected with the evolution of society, culture and politics in America g. Literature on the political framing of the 2016 presidential election as an either/or event—i.e., two polarizing candidates and how that polarization impacted voters’ and how they overcame experiences of cognitive dissonance III. Methodology a. Description of the interview process and its aims—to investigate what evangelicals themselves define as their theological motivation for supporting Trump b. The interview process will be conducted via Skype after gathering a sample population among evangelicals within the online community of social media c. The interviews will be open-ended and will consist of three basic questions: i. Can you define your theological reason for supporting Trump? ii. What kind of leader does Trump represent for you? iii. Has your support of Trump wavered at all? d. These questions will be used to obtain information on what evangelicals think about the leadership of Trump, how it intersects with the theology of evangelicals today, and how evangelicals express that intersection in their own terms and considerations. The data will be analyzed using content analysis so that themes can be identified. e. These themes will be compared and contrasted with the themes that emerged from the literature review so as to see whether the theology of leadership, stemming from the concept of political theology is sufficient to explain the theological reasons that evangelicals have for supporting Trump. IV. Results a. In this section, the results of the project will be provided. b. The themes from the interviews will be compared and contrasted with the themes from the literature review. V. Findings a. In this section, the findings will be discussed. b. It is hypothesized that the evangelicals will identify the basic principles of theology of leadership and political theology in their responses. c. It is expected that the main theological reason for supporting Trump will be that he represents to them a leader who will oppose the de-Christianization of America.