Traditionally, the USA is supposed to be a secular state. Still, people are not prohibited from voting according to their religious norms and spiritual traditions. One of the influential groups of religious voters is evangelicals (born-again Christians): during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, they have shown their power supporting Donald Trump.
Evangelicals developed as a group within American Protestantism from 1740 with the practice of revivals â sermons with charismatic speakers who promoted empowerment through religion. The defining features of evangelicals are their conservatism and literal reading of scripture (Nelson, 2019). The evangelicals as a political power began to establish during the 1960s due to the government funding of sex education and removal of school prayer. The Moral Majority, the New American Christian Right are bright examples of new-born Christians in politics that promoted themselves as the side of morality to oppose the corrupting pressure from the outside.
Nowadays, evangelicals are represented not only by whites. For example, the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey has shown that about a half of Black Americans identify themselves as born-again Christians (Wong, 2018). Different in their socioeconomic status and racial identity, born-again Christians are similar in terms of religious commitment: many of them often attend religious services, pray, believe that the Bible expresses the ultimate word of God, and their religion represents only true faith, and recognize the value of living a religious life.
Political candidates usually want to attract evangelical voters because they constitute a great voting bloc. For example, President Ronald Reagan used “God talk”, a rhetoric tool referring to the divine more often than any other president before him, supported prayer in schools and anti-abortion measures (Nelson, 2019). George W. Bush also used the religious trend in politics, actively seeking evangelical votes as many other Republican Party candidates.
Social and political issues that are most important to evangelicals show their tendency to be conservative due to growing liberalism. For example, the Christian Right united various Christian groups of fundamentalists and evangelicals as a white movement that criticized other religions and liberal changes (Nelson, 2019). During the 2016 elections, evangelicals created a key voting group for Donald Trump: they supported him despite his dubious moral features because Trump’s policies resonated with their political agenda. According to the 2016 survey, many evangelicals support same-sex marriages, while White and non-White evangelicals showed various attitudes to other questions: Whites more often expressed conservative views, especially on issues of slavery, immigrants, and Black Lives Matter Movement (from 50 to 61% of respondents) (Wong, 2018).
According to Gorski (2019), about two-thirds of evangelicals are white Christian nationalists that take the pro-life position on the abortion issue, refuse to support gay and interracial marriages, express a high level of pride over the American nation and military. The driving factor of these attitudes is the anxiety of White evangelicals about threats to their traditional community and nostalgia for “White Christian America,” as well as fear of discrimination against Christians.
The political views of evangelicals are traditionally tied to their religious beliefs. For example, abortion is seen as a threat to family values, and some evangelicals think that contraception contributes to the spread of abortion (Nelson, 2019). In addition, when morality means conventional gender behavior, abortion and birth control could bear down the traditional motherhood. Homosexuality is also considered a threat to a family unit. Most of the new concerns for white evangelicals in the 2016 election are centered around racial issues as dangers to the conventional order of things.
Evangelicals gain prominence as a key voting bloc since the 1960s, and in the 2016 election, they have shown themselves as one of the most significant voters. They often see themselves as a minority and therefore oppose their group to other religious communities, afraid that their Christian nation is infected by immigrants and corrupted by humanists lacking traditional virtues.
References
Gorski P. (2019) Why evangelicals voted for Trump: A critical cultural sociology. In: Mast J., Alexander J. (eds) Politics of meaning/meaning of politics. Cultural Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. Web.
Nelson, M. T. (2019) The changing values of American evangelicals in politics. (Publication No. 312) [Thesis, Honors College]. UVM Honors College Senior Theses. Web.
Wong, J. (2018). The evangelical vote and race in the 2016 presidential election. The Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, 3(01), 81â106. Web.