Reporters are noticing something new about Donald Trump's campaign. They often resemble religious revival meetings. The New York Times notes that while his rallies were once “improvised and volatile,” the finale is now more planned, solemn, and religious in tone. The final 15 minutes are filled with references to God, “evoking the evangelical altar call.”
Mr. Trump has great insight into his supporters and can clearly see what the data shows. White evangelicals, who make up about 14% of the population, accounted for about a quarter of voters in the 2020 election. And about three-quarters of them voted for Donald Trump. Even more surprising, 71% of white voters who attend a religious service at least once a month voted for Trump in the 2020 election. (By contrast, even similarly religious Black Americans voted for Joe Biden by a 9-to-1 ratio.) The key to understanding Trump's coalition is that he is a devout Christian; The strength of support for Trump among whites who claim to be
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This phenomenon must be contrasted with one of the most important changes in American life over the past two decades: America's dramatic and rapid secularization. As I write in my book, The Age of Revolution: Progress and Reaction from 1600 to the Present, the United States has long been an outlier among industrialized nations in that it remains deeply religious. However, the situation began to change around the 1990s, and since 2007, the number has decreased dramatically. As scholar Ronald Inglehart has shown, since that year, the decline in religion in America has been the greatest of the 49 countries studied. By some measures, the United States today is her 12th least religious country on earth. According to the 1990 General Social Survey, fewer than 10 percent of Americans had no religious affiliation. Now it's about 30 percent.
It is not easy to understand why this is happening, but perhaps part of the reason is that advances in science, reason, and skepticism have encouraged secularism in most wealthy countries. It's possible. But it may also have to do with certain choices American Christianity has made over the past few decades. James Davison Hunter, in his seminal book American Evangelicalism: Conservative Religion and the Disruption of Modernity, writes that evangelicals have adapted to an America where religious observance and piety have declined markedly. He points out that the number has increased. Old Protestant fundamentalism was full of warnings against sin, heresy, Catholicism, adultery, divorce, materialism, and deviation from strict Christian morality. However, preachers like Jerry Falwell made the religion more user-friendly and relaxed its doctrinal demands. Politics replaced religious doctrine.
In recent years, this process has expanded further, with people who consider themselves devout Christians translating their faith into almost entirely political terms by opposing abortion, same-sex marriage, and transgender rights. It is defined in This, in turn, led to a mass exodus of the Democratic Party from the church. According to Gallup, Democratic church membership was 46 percent in 2020, down from 71 percent two decades ago. “Americans are increasingly associating religion with the Republican Party, leading them to turn away from religion if they're not Republicans themselves,” University of Notre Dame scholar David Campbell told The Associated Press. . This phenomenon of appropriating and even weaponizing religion is not unique to America or Christianity. It can be found in Brazil, El Salvador, Italy, Israel, Turkey, India, and more.
Secularization may be inevitable, but it seems to coincide with a sense of loss for many. As The Atlantic's Derek Thompson poignantly argues, loss of faith and community may be at the heart of the loneliness many people are reported to be experiencing these days. . In my book, I quote political commentator Walter Lippmann, who presciently pointed out this problem in his 1929. Honor must be given because they may face grief and defeat. ”
“Into this vacuum will step populism, nationalism, and authoritarianism,” I write in my book. These modern political forces offer people a new faith, a new cause to which they can devote themselves beyond themselves. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán made this clear to Tucker Carlson in an interview last year: “There are things more important than 'me', more than my ego: my family, my country, my God. is”.
This is the great political challenge of our time. Liberal democracy gives people greater freedom than ever before, breaking down oppression and control everywhere: political, religious, and social. But as the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote, “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” Modern society gives us all wealth, technology, and autonomy. But for many, these things cannot fill the hole in their hearts that God and faith once occupied. It is dangerous to bury it in politics. But that seems to be the shape of things going forward.
