Evangelicalism and Politics
- Nov 15, 2018
- 2 min read
Published in The American Historian
John Fea, Laura Gifford, R. Marie Griffith, and Lerone A. Martin
In 2016 Donald J. Trump won the presidential election with overwhelming Christian evangelical support. Commentators and pundits have struggled to explain how a president who seems to scorn traditional Christian values—as evident in his rumored affairs, his divorces, and his alleged sexual assaults and harassment—has garnered the devotion of a majority of evangelicals. The American Historian asked four historians of religion and politics for their analysis of evangelicals’ affinity for Trump and of their commitment to the conservative movement more broadly.
1. Recently, historians have produced a “cottage industry” by writing extensively about the Religious Right and the role of evangelicals in mobilizing the Republican party of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. What critical turns and animating factors led to evangelicals’ enlistment in the modern Republican Right? When, in your estimation, did evangelicalism transform itself into such a potent political movement?
Lerone Martin:
Evangelicalism has been a significant force in American politics since at least the nineteenth century. However, the direction of this political force, as well as the media and scholarly attention it receives, has ebbed and flowed. In recent history, several critical turns and factors have led the overwhelming majority of white evangelicals to move towards the modern Republican party. One factor in this shift was the modern civil rights era and the black freedom struggle. The Brown v. Board Supreme Court decision outlawed the segregation of public schools. In turn, a number of white evangelical communities opened private schools as a way to oppose school desegregation, framing their hostility to Brown v. Board as an expression of religious freedom rather than ...
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