As donald trump increasingly infuses your campaign with Christian traps As he approaches a third Republican presidential nomination, his support is stronger than ever among evangelicals and other conservative Christians.
“Trump supports Jesus, and without Jesus, America will fall,” said Kimberly Vaughn of Florence, Kentucky, as she joined other supporters of the former president entering a campaign rally near Dayton, Ohio.
Many of the T-shirts and hats worn and sold at the March rally proclaimed religious slogans such as “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president” and “God, guns and Trump.” One man’s shirt read, “Make America Godly Again,” with an image of a luminous Jesus placing sympathetic hands on Trump’s shoulders.
Many participants said in interviews that they believed Trump shared their Christian faith and values. Several cited his opposition to abortion It is LGBTQ+ rightsparticularly for transgender expressions.
No one expressed concern about Trump’s past conduct or his bring charges on criminal charges, including allegations that he tried to hide secret payments to a porn star during his 2016 campaign. Supporters saw Trump as representing a religion of second chances.
And for many, Trump is a defender of Christianity and patriotism.
“I believe he believes in God and in our servicemen and women, in our country, in America,” said Tammy Houston of New Lexington, Ohio.
“I put my family first, and on a larger scale, America comes first,” said Sherrie Cotterman of Sidney, Ohio. “And I would, any day of the week, choose a president who openly knows he needs God’s strength over his own.”
In many ways, this is a familiar story.
About 8 in 10 white evangelical Christians supported Trump in 2020, according to AP Votingand the Pew Research Center’s validated survey of voters found that a similar share supported him in 2016.
But this is a new campaign, and that support has remained enduring — even though Republican voters in the early primaries had several openly conservative Christian candidates to choose from, none of whom have faced the legal troubles and allegations of misconduct that Trump has faced. In the Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina Republican primaries earlier this year, Trump won between 55% and 69% of white evangelical voters, according to AP VoteCast.
Trump even criticized a competitor, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, for enacting strict abortion restrictions. In recent years, some Trump surrogates have portrayed Trump as friendly toward the LGBTQ+ community.
Trump was the only Republican candidate to face numerous criminal charges, ranging from allegations that he conspired to overturn his 2020 election defeat to his current trial over allegations that he falsified business records while trying to illegally influence the 2016 election with money. secret for porn star Stormy Daniels. .
Trump was also the only Republican Party candidate with a history of casino ventures and two divorces, as well as allegations of sexual misconduct – one of which was confirmed by a civil court verdict.
Republican primary voters still overwhelmingly chose Trump.
This has frustrated a minority of conservative evangelicals who view Trump as an unrepentant poseur who uses the Bible and prayer sessions as photo props. They see him as someone who lacks true faith and faces credible and serious allegations of misconduct while campaigning with incendiary rhetoric and authoritarian ambitions.
Karen Swallow Prior, a Christian author and literary scholar who has spoken out against other evangelicals’ embrace of Trump, said this support in 2024 is familiar but “intensified.”
In the past, she said Trump supporters hoped, but were not sure, that Trump shared their Christian faith.
“Now his supporters believe in themselves,” she said. “Despite the fact that Trump is clearly hesitant to abortion and he’s hesitant on LGBTQ issues, those things are just ignored, they’re just erased from the narrative.”
At the rally in Ohio, several attendees cited their belief that Trump followed the Christian path of repentance and beginning a new life.
“We all come from sin. Jesus sat with sinners, so he’s going to sit with Trump,” Vaughn said. “It’s not about where Trump came from, it’s about where he’s going and where he’s trying to take us.”
The Ohio rally, like other Trump events, featured a recording of the national anthem sung by some of those convicted of Trump-related crimes. January 6, 2021attack on the Capitol, whom Trump called “patriots”.
At the entrance to the rally, a group distributed leaflets urging participants to “trust Jesus Christ for your salvation” and to support “J6 patriots.”
Caleb Cinnamon, 37, of Dayton, identified as Christian and said opposing abortion is a top priority. He cited Trump’s three Supreme Court nominations, which proved decisive in the 2022 ruling that overturned the Roe v. Wade precedent. Wade who legalized abortion across the country.
“Donald Trump is really the first president who has not only vocalized an anti-abortion position but also taken action behind it,” he said. “Republicans since the 1990s have said, ‘Let’s do this on abortion,’ but they haven’t.”
Jody Picagli of Englewood, Ohio, said her Catholic faith and views on abortion are paramount.
“I’m a great person who defends the right to life,” she said. “This is huge for me. And just morals. I think the moral compass is so out of whack right now. And we need religion and church here.”
She recognized that, with the Supreme Court By handing the abortion issue over to the states, a future President Trump may not impact abortion law.
“But I know he will never go to an abortion clinic and visit like our vice president did,” she said, alluding to Kamala Harris’ visit to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Minnesota in March.
Trump’s Christian supporters also cited nonreligious issues — from foreign policy and immigration to gas prices and inflation.
Robert Jones, president of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of books about white supremacy in American Christianity, said strong evangelical support for Trump is not surprising. But he said that in a 2023 PRRI poll, less than half of white evangelicals said abortion was a critical issue for them personally. More than half said five others were a critical issue, including human trafficking, public schools, rising prices, immigration and crime.
“One of the biggest myths about white evangelical support for Trump is the idea that it’s really about abortion and that they’re holding their noses and voting for Trump,” Jones said.
He added that Trump’s rhetoric about immigrants “invading the country and changing our cultural heritage” resonates with his audience.
The “Make America Great Again” slogan echoes an “ethnic-religious vision of a white Christian America, just below the surface,” Jones said.
He acknowledged that racial lines are not absolute, with Trump attracting black supporters such as South Carolina Senator Tim Scott.
The rally in Ohio included a large majority of white participants, but with some black and other ethnic groups represented.
Earlier this year, Trump received widespread applause when speaking to a conservative audience at the National Religious Broadcasters convention.
“We will protect Christians in our schools, in our military and in our government,” Trump said. “We will protect God in our public square. … I will protect content that is pro-God.”
Trump promised to create a federal task force to combat the “persecution of Christians in America” and “the toxic poison of gender ideology”, saying that “God created two genders, male and female”.
Trump’s rallies take on the symbols, rhetoric and agenda of Christian nationalism, which typically includes the belief that America was founded to be a Christian nation and seeks to privilege Christianity in public life.
Trump has endorsed an edition of the Bible that includes US founding documents and the lyrics to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.”
“This is a Bible specifically for a kind of white evangelical audience who see themselves as the rightful heirs of the country,” Jones said, citing a PRRI Survey 2023 in which about half of white evangelicals agreed that God intended America to be a promised land for European Christians.
Trump campaign events have the feel of a worship service. The former president shared a “God Made Trump” video portraying him in messianic terms. Jones said Trump builds on the messianic theme with statements like: “They’re not after me, they’re after you. I’m just getting in the way.”
But Mark DeVine, a Southern Baptist pastor and seminary professor from Birmingham, Alabama, wrote in the online newspaper American Reformer that conservative Christians support Trump because “elected Democrats and unelected bureaucrats who serve Democrats” have an “evil” agenda on issues. ranging from abortion, gender, borders, pandemic lockdowns that have kept churches closed.
“Trumpers want to protect themselves, their children, their communities and the nation they love from the totalitarian assault now being unleashed on them where they live, work, study, play and worship,” he wrote.
At the rally in Ohio, some said they believed the nation or its founding documents, such as the Bill of Rights, had Christian origins, although historians dispute such claims.
Some Trump supporters have expressed hope for a more Christian America.
Thomas Isbell of Greensboro, North Carolina, who has set up vending booths at Trump rallies across the country for years, said his “God, Guns and Trump” T-shirts are his best sellers.
“It’s a Christian country,” he said, adding that if he were president, he would only allow public worship by Christians.
“We will not build a temple for any other god in our land,” he said.
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AP visual journalist Jessie Wardarski contributed.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through AP collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. AP is solely responsible for this content.
