In 1920, 43 percent of Americans were members of a church; by 1960, that figure had jumped to 63 percent. In 1976, the year that evangelical Sunday school teacher Jimmy Carter was elected president, fundamentalist pastor Jerry Falwell decided it was time to stoop to worldly matters and go on a series of âI Love Americaâ rallies across the country to decry the decline of American morality.
What constituted that decline, in Falwellâs mind, was the 1971 case Green v. Connally, which had determined that âracially discriminatory private schools are not entitled to the federal tax exemption.â Falwell had founded just such an institution, Lynchburg Christian School, and believing in his God-given American right to exclude African Americans, he teamed up with Paul Weyrich, a religious political activist and co-founder of the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, who had long been searching for an issue around which to forge a Christian voting bloc. Together, they reframed the debate, creating a playbook for a defense of white supremacy. âWeyrichâs genius lay in recognizing that he was unlikely to organize a mass movement around the defense of racial segregation,â argues Randall Balmer, an Episcopal priest and historian of American religion at Dartmouth College. âThat would be a tough sell. With a sleight of hand, he recast the issue as a defense of religious liberty.â
Iâm not sure exactly when my family got the idea that we were at war with larger American culture. But I know that at some point our lessons about Godâs love became peppered with the idea that we were engaged in spiritual warfare, inhabiting a world where dark forces were constantly attempting to sever us from the will of God. The devil was real, and he was at work through âgayâ Teletubbies and pagan Smurfs, through Dungeons & Dragons, through the horrors of MTV. At one point, my parents forbade TV altogether, and disconnected the stereo system in my car. We still loved Uncle Robert, but believed that the AIDS heâd contracted was a plague sent by God, just as we believed that abortion was our national sin, for which the country would likewise be held accountable. We awaited the Rapture, when Christians would be spirited away and Jesus would return to deal (violently) with the mess humans had made of things. Over time, and even before the introduction of Fox News, whatever nuance we might have seen in the culture evaporated into a stark polarity.
Zooming out, that cleaving was by design: It created a powerful us-versus-them mentality that mobilized the Christian base fiscally and politically. We were Christian soldiers, and the weapons we had were our votes and our tithes. âThe persecution trope is a hell of a fundraising pitch,â says Charles Marsh, a professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia. âFor evangelical activists and leaders, many of whom run nonprofits or rely on charitable contributions, that is the most direct and successful way to captivate conservative Christians.â
In his promises to Christians and his overt nationalism, Trump uniquely equated American salvation with American exceptionalism, asserting that to be great âagain,â America had to come down on the right side of those very wedge issues that the religious right felt would be their reckoning. Even more, he affirmed and evangelized the belief that it is not only acceptable but actually advisable to grant cultural dominance to one particular religious group. âThe white nationalism of fundamentalism was sleeping there like a latent gene, and it just came roaring back with a vengeance,â says Thornbury. In Trumpâs America, â âreligious libertyâ is code for protection of white, Western cultural heritage.â
By creating a narrative of an evil âdeep stateâ and casting himself â a powerful white man of immense generational wealth â as a victim in his own right, Trump not only tapped into the religious rightâs familiar feeling of persecution, but he also cast himself as its savior, a man of flesh who would fight the holy war on its behalf. âThereâs been a real determined effort by the left to try to separate Trump from his evangelical base by shaming them into, âHow can you support a guy like this?â â Jeffress tells me. âNobodyâs confused. People donât care really about the personality of a warrior; they want him to win the fight.â And Trumpâs coming to that fight with a firebrandâs feeling, turning the political stage into an ecstatic experience â a conversion moment of sorts â and the average white evangelical into an acolyte, someone who would attend rallies with the fever of revivals, listen to speeches as if they were sermons, display their faithfulness with MAGA hats, send in money as if tithing, and metaphorically bow down, again and again, at the altar of Donald Trump, who delivers the nation from its transgressions.
âAs Christians, do you feel like youâre under attack in this country?â I ask.
âYes,â my mom says adamantly.
âWhen did you start feeling that way?â
âThe day that Obama put the rainbow colors in the White House was a sad day for America,â my aunt replies. âThat was a slap in Godâs face. Abortion was a slap in his face, and here weâve killed 60 million babies since 1973. I believe weâre going to be judged. I believe we are being judged.â
âGenesis gives you the description of how God wanted life to go,â my mom says. âIt gives you the Scripture.â
âIt also says that light was created and then the sun several days later,â I point out.
My mom frowns. âAre you going to say that you know how the world was created more than God?â
