The Allegiance of White American Evangelicals to Donald Trump

Exchange ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-163
Author(s):  
Kenneth Bieber ◽  
Jaco Beyers
Keyword(s):  
Christian Faith ◽  
Presidential Candidate ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Political Values ◽  
Evangelical Christians ◽  
Christian Mission ◽  
White American ◽  
Political Expediency ◽  
White Evangelicals

Abstract This article discusses why American evangelical Christians, particularly white evangelicals, have granted overwhelming support to Donald Trump, first as a presidential candidate in 2016, and then as president since his inauguration in January 2017. The loyalty afforded to him by this voting bloc results in an abandonment of the values and priorities of the greater Christian mission, exchanging faithful discipleship for political expediency. While this demographic of voters does not explicitly renounce the Christian faith or their belief in the authority of Scripture, the concerns exhibited in their fidelity to President Trump as a monarchical figure stand in contrast to both biblically-based evangelicalism and historic American political values.

scholarly journals Donald J. Trump, the White Evangelicals, and Martin Luther: A Hypothesis

2018 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-30
Author(s):  
Jacques Berlinerblau
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Presidential Candidate ◽  
Collective Consciousness ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Reality Show ◽  
Interesting Possibility ◽  
White Evangelicals

At first consideration, it would appear that Donald Trump would be the least likely Republican presidential candidate to win the votes of conservative white Evangelicals. And yet the thrice married, crude-talking, religiously unsophisticated, reality show star who has been accused of sexual assault won 81% of the white Evangelical vote in the 2016 presidential election. This essay explores the remote but interesting possibility that some of Martin Luther’s ideas about the “Christian Prince” may have seeped into the collective consciousness of today’s Evangelicals. Luther’s tractate “On Secular Authority: How Far Does the Obedience Owed to it Extend?” meshes interestingly with how white Evangelicals conceptualize their support for President Trump.

scholarly journals Don’t Republicans Tweet Too? Using Twitter to Assess the Consequences of Political Endorsements by Celebrities

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 144-160
Author(s):  
Jan Zilinsky ◽  
Cristian Vaccari ◽  
Jonathan Nagler ◽  
Joshua A. Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Candidate ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Decision To Stay ◽  
Presidential Election Campaign

Michael Jordan supposedly justified his decision to stay out of politics by noting that Republicans buy sneakers too. In the social media era, the name of the game for celebrities is engagement with fans. So why then do celebrities risk talking about politics on social media, which is likely to antagonize a portion of their fan base? With this question in mind, we analyze approximately 220,000 tweets from 83 celebrities who chose to endorse a presidential candidate in the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign to assess whether there is a cost—defined in terms of engagement on Twitter—for celebrities who discuss presidential candidates. We also examine whether celebrities behave similarly to other campaign surrogates in being more likely to take on the “attack dog” role by going negative more often than going positive. More specifically, we document how often celebrities of distinct political preferences tweet about Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton, and we show that followers of opinionated celebrities do not withhold engagement when entertainers become politically mobilized and do indeed often go negative. Interestingly, in some cases political content from celebrities actually turns out to be more popular than typical lifestyle tweets.

Who Wants to Make America Great Again? Understanding Evangelical Support for Donald Trump

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele F. Margolis
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Electoral Behavior ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Conservative Politics ◽  
United States Today ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
White Evangelicals ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractWhite evangelicals overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump in the 2016 election, producing extensive debate as to who evangelicals are, what it means to be an evangelical in the United States today, and whether the electoral results are surprising or not. This paper offers empirical clarity to this protracted discussion by asking and answering a series of questions related to Trump's victory in general and his support from white evangelicals in particular. In doing so, the analyses show that the term “evangelical” has not become a synonym for conservative politics and that white evangelical support for Trump would be higher if public opinion scholars used a belief-centered definition of evangelicalism rather than relying on the more common classification strategies based on self-identification or religious denomination. These findings go against claims that nominal evangelicals, those who call themselves evangelicals but are not religious, make up the core of Trump's support base. Moreover, strong electoral support among devout evangelicals is not unique to the 2016 election but rather is part of a broader trend of evangelical electoral behavior, even when faced with non-traditional Republican candidates. Finally, the paper explores why white evangelicals might support a candidate like Trump. The paper presents evidence that negative partisanship helps explain why devout evangelicals—despite Trump's background and behaviors being cause for concern—coalesced around his presidential bid. Together, the findings from this paper help make sense of both the 2016 presidential election and evangelical public opinion, both separately and together.

From King Cyrus to Queen Esther: Christian Zionists’ discursive construction of Donald Trump as God’s instrument

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-137
Author(s):  
Sean Durbin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Evangelical Christian ◽  
White Evangelicals ◽  
Christian Nationalism ◽  
The Way

When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential elections with the help of 81 percent of self-identified white evangelicals, liberal commentators, relying on folk-conceptions of religion that privileged concepts like morality and belief, struggled to understand how someone who seemed to lack both could garner such support. Since then scholars have provided various explanations, relating to Christian nationalism evangelical appeals to authoritarianism, and straightforward racism. This article aims to expand this discussion by analyzing the way that evangelical Christian Zionists have supported Trump by rhetorically identifying him as God’s instrument on account of his support for Israel and withdrawal of the United States from the Iran Nuclear Deal. In addition to analyzing the process by which Trump is constituted as God’s instrument, the article also demonstrates more generally how religious discourse functions as a legitimating discourse for those who seek to gain, or maintain, positions of power.

scholarly journals Local demographic changes and US presidential voting, 2012 to 2016

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (50) ◽  
pp. 25023-25028 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth J. Hill ◽  
Daniel J. Hopkins ◽  
Gregory A. Huber
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Demographic Change ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Presidential Candidate ◽  
Demographic Changes ◽  
Regression Analyses ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Election Results ◽  
Do So

Immigration and demographic change have become highly salient in American politics, partly because of the 2016 campaign of Donald Trump. Previous research indicates that local influxes of immigrants or unfamiliar ethnic groups can generate threatened responses, but has either focused on nonelectoral outcomes or analyzed elections in large geographic units, such as counties. Here, we examine whether demographic changes at low levels of aggregation were associated with vote shifts toward an anti-immigration presidential candidate between 2012 and 2016. To do so, we compile a precinct-level dataset of election results and demographic measures for almost 32,000 precincts in the states of Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington. We employ regression analyses varying model specifications and measures of demographic change. Our estimates uncover little evidence that influxes of Hispanics or noncitizen immigrants benefited Trump relative to past Republicans, instead consistently showing that such changes were associated with shifts to Trump’s opponent.

scholarly journals Book Review | Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Donald Trump ◽  
Evangelical Church ◽  
White Evangelicals ◽  
Ongoing Support

In Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump, John Fea, professor of history at Messiah College, has written a fine and all too necessary book that helps explain how we have reached this moment when Christianity Today calls for the impeachment and removal of a sitting president while the broader evangelical church embraces the same leader. A thoughtful, gentle guide for the perplexed, Fea is writing directly (though not exclusively) to fellow “white evangelicals” who share his befuddlement at the overwhelming, fervid, and ongoing support their religious compatriots offer to Donald Trump.

Singapore political spats imply future pressures

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Succession Planning ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Candidate ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Political Narrative

Subject Singapore politics update. Significance Singapore’s minister for home affairs and for law, Kasiviswanathan Shanmugam, took to social media on October 8 to rebut criticisms made by opposition figure and 2011 presidential candidate Tan Cheng Bock. The spat relates to the government’s decision to limit the latest presidential election to ethnic Malay candidates only. The decision has been viewed by government critics as a means of barring Tan from running next time. Impacts The recent political turbulence in Singapore will not affect the country’s economy. Criticisms of the presidential election will not affect daily policymaking: the presidency is largely symbolic. Lee will visit US President Donald Trump on October 23, which will move Singapore’s political narrative on from domestic spats. Questions about succession planning in the governing party are likely to loom increasingly large in coming years.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
J. Russell Hawkins
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Racial Segregation ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
The Political ◽  
Biblical Exegesis ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Family ◽  
White Resistance ◽  
White Evangelicals

The introduction outlines the two major arguments of The Bible Told Them So. First, the book argues that many southern white evangelicals who resisted the civil rights movement were animated by a Christian faith influenced by biblical exegesis that deemed racial segregation as divinely ordered. A complete understanding of southern white resistance to civil rights requires wrestling with this unique hermeneutic. Second, The Bible Told Them So argues that segregationist theology did not cease with the political achievements of the civil rights movement. Instead, in the years after 1965, segregationist Christianity evolved and persisted in new forms that would become mainstays of southern white evangelicalism by the 1970s: colorblind individualism and a heightened focus on the family.

Experiencing vicarious rejection in the wake of the 2016 presidential election

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-194
Author(s):  
Heather M. Claypool ◽  
Alejandro Trujillo ◽  
Michael J. Bernstein ◽  
Steven Young
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Presidential Candidate ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Social Pain ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Before And After

Presidential elections in the United States pit two (or more) candidates against each other. Voters elect one and reject the others. This work tested the hypothesis that supporters of a losing presidential candidate may experience that defeat as a personal rejection. Before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, voters reported their current feelings of rejection and social pain, along with potential predictors of these feelings. Relative to Trump supporters, Clinton (losing candidate) supporters reported greater feelings of rejection, lower mood, and reduced fundamental needs post-election, while controlling for pre-election levels of these variables. Moreover, as self–candidate closeness and liberal political orientation increased, so too did feelings of rejection and social pain among Clinton supporters. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding human sensitivity to belonging threats and for the vicarious rejection literature.

scholarly journals Trump and Muslims: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Islamophobic Rhetoric in Donald Trump’s Selected Tweets

SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 215824402110041
Author(s):  
Mohsin Hassan Khan ◽  
Farwa Qazalbash ◽  
Hamedi Mohd Adnan ◽  
Lalu Nurul Yaqin ◽  
Rashid Ali Khuhro
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Presidential Candidate ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Political Sphere

The emergence of Donald Trump as an anti-Muslim-Islam presidential candidate and victory over Hillary Clinton is an issue of debate and division in the United States’ political sphere. Many commentators and political pundits criticize Trump for his disparaging rhetoric on Twitter and present him as an example of how Twitter can be an effective tool for the construction and extension of political polarization. The current study analyzes the selected tweets by Donald Trump posted on Twitter to unmask how he uses language to construct Islamophobic discourse structures and attempts to form his ideological structures along with. The researchers hypothesize that Islamophobia is a marked feature of Trump’s political career realized by specific rhetorical and discursive devices. Therefore, the study purposively takes 40 most controversial tweets of Donald Trump against Islam and Muslims and carried out a critical discourse analysis with the help of macro-strategies of the discourse given by Wodak and Meyer and van Dijk’s referential strategies of political discourse. The findings reveal that Trump uses language rhetorically to exclude people of different ethnic identities, especially Muslims, through demagogic language to create a difference of “us” vs. “them” and making in this way “America Great Again”.

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