If Trump were a liberal, would liberal Christians resist him?

The overwhelming support of white evangelicals for Donald Trump has puzzled and dismayed many Christians, including some in the white evangelical world. Why would conservative evangelicals embrace someone whose life is so at odds with Christian values, especially when there were many other Republican candidates who had more solid credentials both as evangelicals and as conservatives? When evangelical organizer Tony Perkins was asked this question, he explained that evangelicals were tired of being “kicked around” by liberals like Barack Obama and glad that finally that there was “somebody on the playground willing to punch the bully.” In other words, white evangelical Christians felt under siege and were looking for somebody to land a few punches on the perceived enemy, however wildly those punches were thrown.

It turns out Perkins’s assessment from inside the movement aligns closely with that of historians John Fea and Seth Dowland. Their articles in this issue explore how the politics of fear and resentment shaped the 2016 campaign (see Fea’s article) and how anxieties about race and whiteness have shaped evangelical identity (see Dowland’s article).

The merger of evangelical Christianity with Trump’s agenda appears so thorough that some evangelicals who oppose it are ready to abandon the label. Earlier this year, columnist and Republican policy analyst Peter Wehner, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, declared that he would no longer describe himself as an evangelical because the term is so identified with racism, misogyny, and contempt for government that it undermines a Christian witness to Jesus. For him, the evangelical alliance with President Trump offers a cautionary tale about the danger of allowing a narrow political agenda to eclipse and finally define one’s religious identity.