Religion and the election of Trump

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/11/2024 (317 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The U.S. election is over. How did religious people vote?

Exit polls from news outlets found a majority of those who identify as Christians voted for Donald Trump, including 63 per cent of Protestants and 58 per cent of Catholics. For white Protestants, that figure was 72 per cent, while for white Catholics it was 61 per cent.

For Catholics, that was a jump of eight per cent over 2020, when 50 per cent favoured Trump while 49 per cent supported Biden. Some of that increase may be because of the increase in support for Trump among Hispanic voters, with 53 per cent voting for him in 2024 compared to 28 per cent in 2020. (Trump also saw a surge among Latino Protestants, from 48 per cent in 2020 to 64 per cent this year.)

Unsurprisingly, 81 per cent of evangelicals overall also voted for him, similar to the figures for 2016 and 2020.

Jews went the other way, with 78 per cent voting for Kamala Harris. So did those who claim no religious affiliation — 71 per cent of the “nones” voted for her. A majority of Muslims voted for her as well (63 per cent), with 32 per cent voting for Trump. Four per cent of Muslims voted for a third-party candidate such as Jill Stein.

About six in 10 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints supported Trump, while about eight in 10 Black Protestants supported Harris.

It may be too early to tell exactly why people voted the way they did. But Robert Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute suggested that it might come down to economics for Hispanics, while Trump’s message about being tough on immigration and crime may have appealed to some white Christians. Harris’s support for reproductive rights may have caused Conservative Christian voters to vote for her opponent.

For Jones, the 2024 election once again showed the close allegiance between white Christians and the Republican Party. “They have not moved a centimetre,” said Jones. “And they get out and vote.”

Not all religious people supported Trump. Some lamented his victory, worried that he will implement a Christian nationalist agenda by giving Christians a privileged position in the government and the country and that he will flout the separation of church and state.

They base that fear on comments from Trump himself, who told a Christian group in October “the more powerful you become, the better the country is going to be.” In February he told evangelical Christian broadcasters they would experience “power at a level that you’ve never used before” if he was elected.

According to prominent evangelical supporter Lance Wallnau, Trump’s win would give Christians in America an opportunity to tear down the “gates of Hell” in the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service. “We have to see these strongholds come down,” he said. “God’s giving us a chance to see it happen.”

For Christian nationalist leader Joel Webbon, Trump’s victory paves the way for the church “to instruct civil authorities regarding their identity and duties,” he said.

Trump did nothing to tamp down that kind of speculation. On the campaign trail, he pledged to “protect Christians in our schools and in our military and our government” and in “our public square.” Meantime, while the Republican platform pledged to protect the right to “pray and read the Bible in school” — no other holy scriptures or forms of prayer were mentioned.

Comments like that prompted Andrew Whitehead, author of Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States, to wonder if those who do not embrace that expression of Christianity will “feel marked as not truly American.”

Whitehead, who is also an associate professor of sociology at Indiana University Indianapolis, went on to ask if that Christian nationalist view might result in a pro-Christian stance that includes restrictive immigration policies against non-Christian immigrants in the name of protecting traditional American culture — something along the lines of the first Trump administration’s ban on travel from several Muslim-majority countries.

But Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas and one of Trump’s most prominent evangelical supporters since 2016, tried to squelch those worries. “People who are not Christians are unduly worried he’s going to institute some kind of oppressive theocracy,” said Jeffress. “He has no interest in doing that.”

As for Donald Trump himself, in his victory speech he stated that “God spared my life for a reason,” referring to the two assassination attempts he survived on the campaign trail. “And that reason was to save our country and restore America to greatness. And now we’re going to fulfil that mission together.”

Over the next few years, we will see how that turns out for everyone in that country — religious and non-religious alike.

faith@freepress.mb.ca

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