Why Trump gets the ‘White Christian’ vote

Robert de Niro has been one of the more strident voices warnings about the danger of a Trump win in the American election. 

When he played the Jesuit Mendoza in the film The Mission some years ago, he made an enormous impact on me and many others. He came to embody a gritty courageous Catholic persona. In the same way that Julie Andrews would be forever Mary Poppins to some, De Niro is always Mendoza the Jesuit to others.

And although he has had the widest variety of roles, something of the existential authority of the Jesuit hangs onto his coat tails for me and perhaps many. I still hear the music of The Mission when I see him on the screen. So when De Niro pours his heart out about the coming election and warns anyone who will listen that Trump is the next Hitler, it’s hard not to feel some degree of alarm.

But in our post-truth society, everything depends on where you get your news from. 

So when turning to the newly baptised Russell Brand, one finds his YouTube channel, followed by over 7 million people, presenting an expose of the FBI who have just admitted in court, during a recent prosecution of Donald Trump, that the photograph of restricted documents presented to the press was faked by them. No one in the FBI has any idea how it happened.

Bounce from there to the Spectator podcast and a demagogic anti-Trump lawyer explains to the incautious conservative British public how when Trump used the word “bloodbath” recently, it was obvious to any member of the public that he was not speaking metaphorically but intended it literally – and is therefore an unmitigated danger and would act as a dictator presiding over a theocracy from day one.

So perhaps all we can really tell from Robert De Niro’s prophecy of Trump as Hitler 2.0 is what sources he gets his news from. And also, that the stakes are very high.

Apart from the wonderful if alarming phenomenon of Trump Derangement Syndrome, what bifurcations of American society describe the Biden-Trump conflict?

Race affects everything in America and the liberal left in America are very worried that there is a growing black vote for Trump. The Democratic party can usually take the black vote for granted.  But the stats also tell the story that the black vote for Republicans has doubled from 8 per cent to nearly 16 per cent in the last four years. Trump has loudly proclaimed that Black Americans fared better economically under his presidency with record-low unemployment.

But historically religion has played a powerful role in US politics. In one of the most divisive and divided democratic struggles in recent history, does the lens of religious rather than racial affiliation tell us anything about the issues? 

A recent Pew Research survey finds that most registered voters who are White Christians would vote for Donald Trump instead of Joe Biden if the 2024 presidential election were held today. 

Equally, more than half of White Christians think Trump was a “great” or “good” president and despite the relentless accusatory rage from the mainstream media, still decline to believe that Trump broke the law in an effort to change the outcome of the 2020 election.

In stark contrast, most registered voters who are Black Protestants or religious “nones” – those who self-identify as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” – would vote for Biden over Trump. 

The consensus in these groups was that Trump was a “terrible” president and that he broke the law trying to overturn the 2020 election results.

What can be made of the religious statistics? If we begin with the atheists it suggests a dualistic split. 87 per cent of atheists and perhaps even more astonishingly 82 per cent of agnostics plan to vote for Biden (and so obviously, against Trump. The anti-Trump vote is as powerful a factor as the pro-Biden vote.).

On the other side of the coin, if the number of all Christians is collated, 62 per cent will vote in favour of Trump and 35 per cent in favour of Biden. Among White Catholics the number of similar but larger; 64 per cent vs. 34 per cent.

White Evangelicals achieve an even higher level of support, with 74 per cent signifying that Trump was a great or good president.  

Why is this election looking as though it might divide so starkly along religious lines?

Perhaps because beyond the issue of abortion, which has such a significant impact in American society (and indeed the resonances of which have shaped our own draconian laws relating to exclusion zones around abortion clinics), the Democratic Left has endorsed the progressive cultural agenda.

This involves promoting identity politics, gender fluidity, taking the Islamic side against Israel and extending the reach of the Federal authorities. Apart from a few liberal Episcopalians and a handful of Quakers who grew up in the 1960s, these are generally regarded and experienced as hostile to Christianity.

 Even with this bifurcation between Christians on the one side and atheists and agnostics on the other, Trump is being wary about weaponising faith. He is, to say the least, an ambivalent figure in a religious context. More Cyrus the liberating Persian than aspiring to anything messianic, unless it is restricted to the task of “draining the swamp”.

His full-blooded warning of revenge on his enraged political enemies sits uneasily with Christian values.

And Trump Derangement Syndrome is a phenomenon all of its own.

Whatever the outcome in the autumn, we had all better hope that the American political pressure cooker has a safety valve.   

(Then-US president Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump attend Christmas Eve services at the National Cathedral on December 24, 2018 in Washington, D.C. | Photo by Olivier Douliery – Pool/Getty Images)

The post Why Trump gets the ‘White Christian’ vote appeared first on Catholic Herald.