How Trump Has Transformed Evangelicals

Donald Trump and American evangelicals have never been natural allies. Trump has owned casinos, flaunted mistresses in the tabloids, and often talked in a way that would get him kicked out of church. In 2016 many people doubted whether Trump could win over evangelicals, whose support he needed. Eight years later, a few weeks away from the Iowa caucuses, evangelical support for the former president and current Republican frontrunner is no longer in question. In fact, there are now prominent evangelical leaders who have come to believe that Trump is “God’s instrument on Earth,” says Tim Alberta, a staff writer at The Atlantic and author of the new book The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.

How did evangelicals shift from being reluctant supporters of Trump to among his most passionate defenders? How did some evangelicals, historically suspicious of politicians, develop a “fanatical, cult-like attachment” to Donald Trump? And what happened to the evangelical movement as some bought into Trump’s vision of America and others recoiled?

Alberta is a political reporter and also a Christian himself. After a dramatic and unexpected conversion, Tim’s father became a pastor at a prominent church in Michigan, which means Alberta grew up playing at the church, inviting dates to Bible study. He remains a believer. But he has watched with concern over the last few years as a lot of worship services have started to sound like “low-rent Fox News segments,” as he puts it—and as his own father, before his death, began justifying some of Trump’s behavior. In this episode of Radio Atlantic, I talk to Alberta about the alliance between Trump and evangelicals, and what it means for the church he loves.

Listen to the conversation here:

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The following is a transcript of the episode:

Hanna Rosin: The Iowa caucuses are coming up in just over a month, and despite the primary challengers, it’s very likely that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee.

Now, a lot has changed since 2016, when Trump first ran. Back then, one of the biggest questions he faced was whether he could win over evangelical Christians.

After all, he was a casino owner, used to hang out at the Playboy Mansion, and he was on his third wife. If he preached anything, it was the gospel of wealth.

Trump needed evangelicals back then and, eventually, they held their noses and voted for him.

Now the dynamic is very different. In this election, evangelical support is no longer a question. In fact, so popular is Trump that some evangelical leaders have come to think of him as a kind of messiah, the leader they have always been waiting for.

I’m Hanna Rosin, and this is Radio Atlantic. And today: how Trump has transformed the evangelical movement.

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In the early 2000s I was a beat reporter for The Washington Post, and my beat was evangelicals. George W. Bush was president, and he was a self-declared born-again Christian. And I watched his relationship with evangelicals up close, but that’s nothing like what we have today.

Many evangelical leaders now have an intense devotion to Trump that I find mystifying.

So today on the show, we have Tim Alberta to help explain it. Tim is a staff writer at The Atlantic who just wrote a book called The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.

Also, Tim’s dad was a pastor, which meant Tim grew up in the Church.

So when I say that I grew up in the Church, I mean literally physically grew up inside the church. My mother was