But White evangelicals haven’t always been so closely associated with the political right. The German publication Deutsche Welle asked, “Why does rejecting abortion matter more to [evangelicals] than any other issue?”ADADToday, many evangelicals identify as pro-life, yet abortion appears to be less salient than many claim. As I argue in “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation,” over the past half-century, conservative evangelicals have reoriented their views to champion strong masculine protectors who fight for faith, family and nation. A 2015 survey found that a majority of White evangelicals “believe that immigrants threaten traditional American customs and values”; in 2017, Pew Research Center found that compared to other Christian groups, more evangelicals see Islam as a threat. By November 2016, large numbers of White evangelicals shared Trump’s nationalism, Islamophobia and nativism.

Source: Washington Post January 22, 2021 19:52 UTC