Kristin Kobes Du Mez: Inside the Evangelical MAGA vote

NIALA BOODHOO: It's harder than ever to define what it means to be evangelical in America. But one thing remains pretty constant.

KRISTIN KOBES DUMEZ: The Trump support, the MAGA base, is very real inside these evangelical spaces and it's not accurate to try to separate them.

NIALA: Why one historian who grew up in the church says that vote is still key for Republicans. I'm Niala Boodhoo – from Axios, this is 1 big thing.

Super Tuesday is less than a month away…and the Iowa Caucuses are already a few weeks behind us. In Iowa, about half of caucus goers…were evangelical Christians. Why that matters?

SOPHIA CAI: That sets the tone for the rest of the primary.

NIALA: Axios national political reporter Sophia Cai is covering the 2024 election and was on the ground in Iowa.

SOPHIA: That's also why Trump had Evangelical pastors, and specifically Pentecostal, charismatic pastors, on the trail for him. One of them I met, Joel Tenney, who's a 27 year old pastor, he told me you cannot be a Christian and vote for a Democrat.

REVEREND JOEL TENNEY: The reason being, many of the Democratic policies are antithetical to the policies of Jesus Christ, which are hammered out in the Gospels, in his teaching.

NIALA: I called Reverend Tenney in Iowa.

REVEREND TENNEY: Our nation is on the brink of calamitous ruin. With Biden in office for another four more years, we will absolutely lose our country. And to a great degree, we've already lost our country. And that is the grievance that many Christians are vocalizing here.

NIALA: At Trump rallies like the one where Sophia met Rev. Tenney in Iowa, abortion was a central topic, alongside the 2020 election results.

SOPHIA: Repeating the falsehood that the election was stolen…that's something that, a lot of evangelical pastors who are very vocal in their support of Trump, will also tell you that they agree with.

NIALA: But evangelical voters are powerful well beyond Iowa. Professor Kristin Kobes Du Mez of Calvin University grew up in Iowa, and has an evangelical background – and she now studies that voting bloc. She says around 14 percent of all Americans fit into the category of white evangelical. And while that's down from a few years ago…

KRISTIN: It's not just raw numbers. We also have to look at mobilization. And Evangelicals vote at a much higher rate than many other Americans, and they tend to vote, kind of towing a party line. And so, they punch above their weight politically, and certainly within the Republican Party, that is very true.

NIALA: And that's especially important this year.

KRISTIN: The thing about the 2024 election is that, as in recent elections, we are looking at a razor thin margin, and particularly in a handful of states, including Michigan, where we are right now. And so within these battleground states, it is actually a very small number who will make a difference in terms of the next four years and perhaps far longer than that for our country.

NIALA: Kristin's a professor of history at Calvin and the author of the book Jesus and John Wayne, How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, where she argued President Trump represents the fulfillment of many white evangelicals' most fundamental values.

I myself am a Calvin University graduate and serve on its board of trustees… So while back on campus recently in Grand Rapids, Michigan – I sat down with Kristin to learn more.

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NIALA: Hi Kristin, welcome to 1 big thing.

KRISTIN: Thanks so much for having me again.

NIALA: Kristen, what defines an evangelical today?

KRISTIN: This is a perennial question. In fact, I just came from a class where we debated this the entire class period, so there's not one definition. What you'll see in terms of political survey data is some folks define evangelical by theological beliefs. Some people define evangelical by denominational affiliation, many define evangelical by self-identification. Do you identify as evangelical or as born again? Then we're going to put you in that category.

So evangelical leaders themselves will privilege the theological definition and the church attendance, the religious behavior, right? And they have long done so and they are continuing to do so. But what we also see is that it gets a little tricky when you try to say an evangelical is defined by their theology and they'll hold up things like conversionism, Born-again experience, or Biblicism, taking the Bible seriously, or the centrality of the cross of Christ, these sorts of things.

Now, the thing is that when you just look at theological beliefs, a lot of people fall into that category who don't in any way identify as evangelical, particularly, African-American Christians, right? And so it, it gets to be a difficult category because what does define evangelical? They aren't going to the same churches, they don't move in the same circles, their beliefs actually are quite different when you look at how those beliefs are applied, certainly on social issues, political issues, and so it is a very contested term.

NIALA: So how is this intersecting with politics right now?

KRISTIN: What was really striking is in the aftermath of the Iowa caucuses, we heard the exact same refrain that we did in 2016 from many evangelical leaders themselves,, saying that no, the numbers are not telling the truth, showing very solid evangelical support for Trump over all the other Republican candidates, saying that this is, Not accurate because it is not getting evangelicals right. You have to look at who's going to church. You have to look at their actual beliefs and you're just grouping all these people into the evangelical category who are not true evangelicals.

We heard that in 2016 and we are hearing it again. The problem is the data doesn't bear that out. We saw a dramatic increase in the Iowa caucuses among church going evangelicals in their support for Trump so that number has not fallen off, it is only strengthened, whether you define them by affiliation, by belief, or by any other category.

NIALA: So is it accurate to say that there's a segment of the population that sees evangelical as a political label rather than a religious one?

KRISTIN: I would say even more so cultural, right? And cultural can entail religion, it entails a political, it entails a way of seeing the world and, and your own place in that world. So we might want to call it a kind of God and country identity, uh, that identifies. It identifies with Christian nationalism, identifies with traditionalism, however you want to define that, and really identifies politically.

NIALA: So given that, remind us, how did Trump appeal to this demographic to begin with?

KRISTIN: Early on, I think there, there were a lot of questions about was he really going to be pro life, was, you know, wasn't he recently a Democrat, can we trust him?

What you see is, through the 2016 primary season, as he made himself known to evangelicals, and as he really led with this anger and resentment and this, militancy that I will fight for you, and really stoking this, fear and anger that's what really drew a lot of evangelicals to him.

And back in 2016, we saw other candidates try to mimic that. Rubio tried and failed, Ted Cruz, the same thing, really tried and nobody could out Trump Trump. and so we really saw that solidify so that now when we're in 2024 he's a known quantity.

NIALA: So you mentioned Christian nationalism, and how it overlaps with white evangelicalism… How do we define Christian nationalism?

KRISTIN: You're asking me all the impossible questions here. This term also is very contested. But it's essentially the idea that America was founded by Christians and for Christians. And there's an implicit kind of white Christian in there, white Christian identity as well. And so Christian nationalism is the idea that Christians should have a greater say in defining this country's laws, and in directing this country's future.

NIALA: So the current Speaker of the House, Republican Mike Johnson, gave a speech in October when he won the speakership and you wrote in an interview that this shows us something about the long tradition of white evangelicals in this nation. I wanted to play a little piece of that speech right now.

MIKE JOHNSON: GK Chesterson was the famous British philosopher and statesman. And he said, one time America is the only nation in the world that is founded upon a creed. And he said, it's listed with almost theological lucidity in the declaration of independence. What is our creed? We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal. Not born equal. Created equal. And they are dowed by the same inalienable rights, with the same inalienable rights. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. That is the, that is the creed that has animated our nation since its founding that has made us the great nation that we are. And we're in a time of extraordinary crisis right now. And the world needs us to be strong. They need us to remember our creed and our admonition.

NIALA: Okay, so how should we understand this?

KRISTIN: A lot of American Christians think, yes, This should be a Christian nation. Yes, it's really good to have Christian values reflected in our nation's laws. And they can mean that in a way that entirely aligns with American democracy. And then there are folks who mean it in a much more specific and even coercive way. That it is Christian's duty to take control, and to force this, kind of alignment with their understanding, a very particular understanding of conservative Christianity. And when I look at Mike Johnson, I don't just look at who he's quoting. What I look at is his history. And And Mike he has a long history of being affiliated with a figure, David Barton, very famous in Evangelical circles, largely unknown outside of those circles, but has really laid the mythical, historical foundation for this Christian nationalism that we're seeing. And so when we look at Barton's, uh, teachings and when we look at organizations like Family Research Council and these networks in the Christian right, we can see more explicitly what they mean, and many do embrace an anti democratic impulse that suggests that the legitimate vision for our government, for this country is a right wing conservative Christian and other views are illegitimate.

NIALA: And how do we see this actually translate into policies?

KRISTIN: So when we look at surveys about people who believe that America was founded as a Christian nation, that our laws should reflect that, that we'd put in this kind of Christian nationalist bucket, we also see a whole lot of policy views that align, generally speaking, with those convictions. That would entail anti L-G-B-T-Q rights, anti-abortion, anti-immigration.

Also, we see a greater propensity to, higher comfort levels of, solitary strong leadership, markers of authoritarianism, higher levels of comfort with voter suppression. These are the kinds of things that we're looking at.

NIALA: I want to go back to what you said about Christians who are saying that this is part of their values and Christians saying this is coercive. Can you explain how that plays out, especially with Trump?

KRISTIN: Yeah. We really have to think about a kind of spectrum here, a spectrum of levels of commitment to Christian nationalism, a spectrum of levels of commitment to democracy. And so when you hear somebody like Trump speak about protecting Christians, protecting Christianity, about that he is there to fight for you, by you, when he's talking to conservative, white, Christian audiences, and so on…That sounds very anti democratic when we pair it with other things that he says and does. The problem is that when you use the term Christian nationalist, and lump anybody who thinks, yeah, I would like this country to reflect God's laws and my Christian values, you know, which American citizen doesn't want this country to, generally speaking, reflect their values or what they, what they hold as good and true, right? This actually can fuel resentment if we aren't very particular about how we're defining this term. We end up giving people the impression that they are being lumped with somebody like Trump or with other kind of anti democratic impulses when they really just want to bring their faith into public conversation.

But I will also say that: self-identified Christian nationalists themselves love this confusion. And they are trying to tell ordinary Christians that the rest of the country is against them that the liberals that the Democrats don't want them to have a voice, and that us versus them mentality is at the very heart of Christian nationalism, the idea that we are not all in this together, but that you are either with us or against us. If you are with us, you are with God. God is on our side. And anybody against us in any respect is on the side of the devil. And you will actually hear this kind of language that any critics are, are labeled very quickly demonic, Democrats are demonic, and the stakes are very, very high.

NIALA: In a moment – more with professor Kristin Kobes Du Mez on evangelical voters in America…this is 1 big thing.

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NIALA: Welcome back to 1 big thing from Axios – I'm Niala Boodhoo.

Calvin University Professor Kristin Kobes Du Mez has a Midwest evangelical background, and went on to study religion, politics and history. Today, she says Trump can count on overwhelming evangelical support in 2024.

Kristin – we were just talking about the us vs them mentality in Christian Nationalism…but isn't there an us vs. them in Christianity generally, to be fair?

KRISTIN: I think that, you know, there is an us versus them dynamic, I mean, in any formal religious tradition or many formal religious traditions. I think if you look back historically, you can also see visions of Christian America being seen as invitational, as kind of, holding Christians up to higher ideals, things like love of neighbor, of compassion, of, even things like equity, that there are many ways that this can be used.

And then there are times, and certainly historically speaking, when it is very exclusivist, and when it is used to divide one from the other. One thing I will say, too, about this particular strand of Christian nationalism that we're seeing today is they are very invested in defining their very narrow and right wing vision of Christian America as default Christianity. And so what we'll see in these spaces is some of, um, their most ruthless attacks are actually aimed against fellow Christians. Fellow Christians who are disrupting this narrative, whether it's fellow conservative Christians who are not towing the line politically, or other Christians who are challenging these views from a theological and biblical basis. There's no space for that. That kind of messes with this agenda of depicting this as you are either with us or against us, with God or against God.

NIALA: And - as a Christian - you've experienced this, right?

KRISTIN: I have. I have. I certainly have experienced this myself. I think it's been, most apparent and most brutal in some cases to see the kind of attacks against real insiders. And so if you follow folks like, Russell Moore, who's, who was pushed out of his leadership position in the Southern Baptist Convention, figures like Beth Moore, a very popular Southern Baptist Bible teacher who is no longer Southern Baptist. The attacks on these folks have been really ruthless, right? And these, here we can see that this is not a theological difference at all, right? These are theologically conservative, theologically orthodox by any measure, right, of conservative Christianity, but they did not fall in line politically, right?

Spoke out against MAGA politics, or inside church dynamics out against abuses of power or sexual abuse and therefore they have been defined outside of the fold and have to be discredited or even destroyed.

NIALA: You said there are people who are capitalizing on the confusion here. So for those who want to engage in conversation or understand or bridge those gaps between voters, how do they go about that?

KRISTIN: We should be having some better conversations around religious liberty, letting conservative Christians know that no, the rest of the country is not out to persecute them. It's not out to, you know, silence their voices – that they are very much a part of a flourishing pluralist society. I think it's also would be very good for Christians who are troubled by what they're seeing to speak to that and to work inside their spaces to talk about the importance of preserving a democratic system, which means compromise is necessary, which means you and your group will not always get their way.

And for a long time there has been an agreement that Democracy is a good thing, by and large. You don't always win, but it protects all of us. And only recently I've started to see some very explicit rejections of that, calling democracy idolatry, saying that it's God's law, not man's law, that we need to respect. Now any Christian might be sympathetic, generally speaking to that, but, really taking a close look. Are we committed to democracy? And that's frankly a conversation that I think that we all need to be having and that conservatives need to be having among themselves.

NIALA: Kristen Kobes Du Mez is a professor at Calvin University and author of Jesus and John Wayne, How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. Thank you so much, Kristin.

KRISTIN: Oh, good to be with you. Thanks for having me.

NIALA: One last note on all this. I've noticed that evangelical leaders are making themselves more and more present online, and sharing their politics along the way. I asked Axios' Sophia Cai for her quick take.

SOPHIA: You see pastors, especially during COVID, during these years where a lot of states and state governments were telling churches to abide by social distancing restrictions, at some point, probably asked to close their churches. A lot of Trump supporting pastors kept their churches open and used that as a way to grow their following in person and online.

And because they also moved online, they realized that, whereas, Trump needed, you know, in 2016, 2015, he needed people like Paula White, these bigger names to spread his support. Now he just has, lesser known, but still like fairly influential pastors who are very much online, who are preaching through Instagram, on Facebook, on YouTube.

These are the pastors that he's also counting on, to spread that evangelical support. And so I think that's one way that, you know, generationally, things have changed.

NIALA: Sophia Cai is a national politics reporter at Axios

And that's it for this week's edition of 1 Big Thing. Our team includes Supervising Producer Alexandra Botti and Sound Engineer Jay Cowit. Alex Suigura composed our theme music. Aja Whitaker-Moore is Axios' Executive Editor, and Sara Keuhalani Goo is Axios' Editor in Chief.

Please text me feedback or story ideas anytime at 202 918 4893 - or email podcasts @ axios.com.

I'm Niala Boodhoo. Thanks for listening, stay safe, and we'll see you back here next Thursday.