During the 2016 election, then-candidate Donald Trump had a strange coalition of supporters. Despite him being divorced twice and remarried twice, being credibly accused of multiple affairs including one with a porn star, and behavior that can only be described as un-Christian, Trump has become the main beneficiary of white evangelical support. In fact, White evangelical support for Donald Trump is still at more than 70 percent, and more than 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for him in 2016.
Between Trump's political actions and the history of Evangelicals, the answer is quite simple: It's racism.
Evangelicals believe that Jesus Christ is the savior and that the Bible is God's revelation to humanity to be saved. The denominations were formed when the Civil War had just ended, comprising of people who were more likely to have supported the Ku Klux Klan and approved/participated in lynching. The largest group of evangelicals are Southern Baptists.
During the civil rights movement, many evangelicals opposed Martin Luther King Jr. Others such as Billy Graham believed that racial harmony would only when the nation turned to God. After 9/11, many evangelicals became malicious towards Muslims and the religion of Islam. They created cottage industries and ministries promoting Islamophobia. When Barack Obama was elected as the president, they bought guns and became Tea Partiers who quickly spread rumors of Obama being born in Kenya and that he was a Muslim. This ideology was promoted by none other than the son of Billy Graham, Franklin.
Evangelicals claim that they are accepting of everyone, even condemning racism as a sin. But then how can they accept someone who bans Muslims, ridicules people with disabilities, and wants to cut rights for the LGBTQ?
Above all, evangelicals love Trump's immigration policy.
As the visual shows above, evangelicals were at least 20 percent more conservative compared to the average American. A Washington Post/ABC Poll from January 2018 found that three-quarters of white evangelicals nationwide favored the Trump administration's crackdown on undocumented immigrants compared to 46 percent of all Americans. A Pew Research Center poll in May 2018 found that 68 percent of white evangelicals is not obligated to resettle refugees- 25 percent higher than the national average.
Tara Isabella Burton, a reporter for Vox, voiced how evangelical's attitudes towards immigrants didn't seem to match their scripture.
"The Bible contains numerous passages that seem to straightforwardly exhort care for the poor, immigrants, and refugees. Isaiah 10, for example, sees God excoriating those who "turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right." In Matthew 25 (which a Methodist pastor quoted to Jeff Sessions Monday while protesting his speech), Jesus warns his followers that those who withhold care from the poor or the refugee — "the least of these" — are seen as having done it to Jesus himself. Plenty of other verses — Leviticus 19:33–34, Jeremiah 7:5–7, Ezekiel 47:22, Zechariah 7:9–10 — express similar sentiments."
In the end, Trump's immigration policy is what gave him support from evangelicals and carried him to victory in swing states in 2016. It'll be interesting to see how this issue will fit into the 2020 campaign of Donald Trump and if evangelicals will give him the same amount of support the second time.
