Ever since the 1980s and the Moral Majority, evangelicals have been loyal to the Republican Party, giving their votes in return for promises on abortion, family, and other arenas of policy which promised them protection for their churches and their priorities.

Ben Domenech

/images/quoteimage/al-sharpton-14285.jpg

Evangelicals catapulted George W. Bush back to the White House.

How do the same evangelicals who incessantly force-feed us their morals and family values manage to overwhelmingly support someone like Donald Trump?

Ana Kasparian

Family Age Who

Why do evangelicals support Trump? It could be because he amplified his religious messaging on the campaign trail by saying that women who get abortions should be punished and that he's not in favor of same sex marriage.

Ana Kasparian

Women Men Marriage

What's sometimes called the 'browning' of the American Catholic church is very much on the minds of many U.S. bishops - and the pope. Unlike evangelicals who have stayed strong in their support of President Trump, the USCCB knows that it cannot afford to lose their Hispanic and African American population because of a weak stance on racism.

Anthea Butler

Time Who Weak

McCain courted in 2008 what I would call 'fringe' evangelicals, in part because evangelicals were skeptical of his commitment to values voters. McCain's embrace of Palin came after having to scuttle endorsements from John Hagee and Rod Parsley, charismatics who believed in Armageddon and fiercely supported Israel.

Anthea Butler

Men Art Age

Trump's blatant racism and demonization of Muslims, Mexicans, and immigrants also serves as a foil for white evangelicals. By othering these groups, Trump allows evangelicals to persist in their belief that white Anglo-saxon Protestantism is the default for true American Christianity and is best suited to lead America as a 'Christian Nation.'

Anthea Butler

White Van Us

Voting for Trump will either hasten the return of Jesus, according to evangelical belief, or to allow evangelicals to regain political power in the White House. Either way, it is a win-win situation.

Anthea Butler

Power Win-Win Win

Trump has benefitted indirectly from a strong belief of evangelicals that the two terms of Barack Obama has led the country to the brink of destruction. Obama was bad enough in their eyes; having the Clintons back in the White House would be the end.

Anthea Butler

Yes Would White House

Trump, despite his divorces and 'worldly lifestyle', appeals to evangelicals because he is wealthy, powerful, and pays them lip service. They support him because they are tired of losing the culture wars and are addicted to the perks of power.

Anthea Butler

War Power Life

In the past, candidates' performances of 'Christianity' have been strong points for voters, but Trump's ascendancy with evangelicals has eviscerated that expectation. Evangelicals, like other voters, can be very pragmatic about the issues they want addressed by the leadership they support.

Anthea Butler

Leadership Wit Want

Trump, despite his shallow depth of biblical knowledge, plays into both the apocalyptic end-time fears of evangelicals and their nostalgia for a 'small town' America.

Anthea Butler

Time Knowledge Fear

These 21st-century 'teavangelicals,' who represent a considerable segment of the Republican party, are vastly different from their 19th-century forebears. Nineteenth-century evangelicals were concerned with societal ills such as temperance, slavery, the rise of industrialisation and suffrage.

Anthea Butler

Teen Men Art

There is not one particular moment that can account for the shift from the social issue concerns of 19th-century evangelicals into the state of American evangelicalism today. Some historical moments are telling. The rise of biblical criticism in the 19th century forced evangelicals to make choices about what they believed about the gospel.

Anthea Butler

Mom Men Art

Mr. Trump and Mr. Osteen are mirrors of each other. Both enjoy enormous support among evangelicals, yet they lack a command of biblical scripture. Both are among the 1 percent.

Anthea Butler

Teen Van Us

Evangelicals have, for decades, believed that the country was more conservative than not, more Christian than not. The bipartisanship on religious liberty and the civic faith of the country was conducive to that. Now they've woken up to a reality in the Obama years that this was a polite fiction.

Ben Domenech

Faith Art Years

Ever since the 1980s and the Moral Majority, evangelicals have been loyal to the Republican Party, giving their votes in return for promises on abortion, family, and other arenas of policy which promised them protection for their churches and their priorities.

Ben Domenech

Family Art Ya

Evangelicals can't be closely identified with any particular party or person. We have to stand in the middle, to preach to all the people, right and left.

Billy Graham

Art Wit Van

Evangelicals too often fall short in their actual teachings about Judaism.

Elliott Abrams

Van Too Ten

The shelves of many evangelicals are full of books that point out the flaws in evolution, discuss it only as a theory, and almost imply that there's a conspiracy here to avoid the fact that evolution is actually flawed. All of those books, unfortunately, are based upon conclusions that no reasonable biologist would now accept.

Francis Collins

Would Wed Void

Catholics and evangelicals need to remain allied, and in solidarity, against the increasingly aggressive secularism of our age.

Gary Bauer

Age Van T

Although they are unfailingly gracious, evangelicals are not so good at respecting professional boundaries.

Hanna Rosin

Elites want to cut taxes and stop government regulation of business. Evangelicals want to make America a Christian nation. And alt-right voters want to purge the rights of minorities and women.

Heather Cox Richardson

It was funny that rank-and-file evangelicals were ahead of all the leadership. They saw for decades conservative Republicans had made promises to them on issues that were important to Christians and conservatives when they were running for office. But when they won, they didn't keep those promises.

Jerry Falwell, Jr.

Evangelicals and conservatives are voting as Americans and are voting to save our nation to control immigration, to stop terrorism, to bring jobs back to the country.

Jerry Falwell, Jr.

I think that Gov. Huckabee is one of us. I know that a lot of the other candidates try to talk like evangelicals, but he's actually one of us. He believes like we do on all the issues, which energizes me as a voter.

Jerry Falwell, Jr.

In particular, the emerging call from our nation's evangelicals to protect God's creation is substantial.

Jim Clyburn

Through the 1980s and '90s, evangelicals sought to turn back the forces of secularization. Groups like the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition pressed for laws recognizing Christianity's unique place in American life, including laws that would allow prayer in public schools and Christian displays in public places.

Josh Hawley

What a crazy coincidence that the teaching of Christ sees to be so compatible with late-era capitalism, suburban isolation, rampant consumerism. And so I am not ever surprised when I see evangelicals contort themselves to justify supporting Donald Trump.

Josh Tillman

True, the apostles did not expressly say that people will be saved only if they repent, believe, and confess. But most evangelicals assume - with good reason - that this is what the apostles implied.

Lewis B. Smedes

Catholics and evangelicals should be troubled by Mrs. Clinton's hidden agenda to influence and alter the tenets of Christian and Catholic orthodoxy.

Mercedes Schlapp

Evangelicals always assume that humor and faith are contradictory. It's OK to smile, to be nice, but not frivolous.

Mike Yaconelli

In Uganda, I am surrounded, unfortunately, by evangelicals; I can't bear it. Every night I hear the chants of Baptists urging people to be born again.

Mira Nair

I think evangelicals would do better if they concentrated less on bolstering the formal authority of the Scripture - which I certainly would want to affirm - and more on displaying how biblical texts can shape lives in salutary ways, how they are fruitful texts, how they are texts one can live according to.

Miroslav Volf

I believe most evangelicals know that defeating Obama is at heart of our country's future.

Newt Gingrich

I think what you'll find is overall, overwhelmingly, evangelicals would prefer me to Barack Obama.

Newt Gingrich

One of the things that evangelicals do really, really well is to make giving a joyous, social enterprise. Too often, the world sees giving as a burden, a sacrifice, when in fact it's more like an opportunity to help others and oneself at the same time.

Nicholas Kristof

The mission of Patrick Henry College was to attract and cultivate academic stars from the ranks of home-schooled evangelicals, then send them off on graduation day to 'shape the culture and take back the nation,' in the words of a common home-schooling rallying cry.

Nina Easton

A desire to rescue secular America from fallen grace has driven conservative evangelicals at least since the 1970s, when Jerry Falwell formed the Moral Majority as a vehicle for conservative Christians to muscle their way into national politics.

Nina Easton

Our post-denominational age should be the perfect time for a Mormon to become president, or at least the Republican nominee. Mormons share nearly all the conservative commitments so beloved of the evangelicals who wield disproportionate influence in primary elections.

Noah Feldman

The age of the Earth is a hotly debated issue among evangelicals. Old Earthers believe, like most scientists, that the universe is billions of years old. Young Earthers measure the age of the universe in terms of thousands of years.

Norman Geisler

Evangelicals have largely misinterpreted Aquinas, and they have placed on him views that he did not hold.

Norman Geisler

A lot of evangelicals have grown accustomed to feeling used by the political process. Every politician appeals to us, every one wants to hear us out during the campaign, but then things change once they get into office.

Paula White

I am a practicing Catholic, not an evangelical Christian, but in 2016 I stood with millions of evangelicals who decided that Donald Trump would be the best person to fight for our religious liberty.

Rachel Campos-Duffy

Evangelicals overwhelmingly voted for Ronald Reagan - not because he was the most religious candidate, but he possessed the quality evangelicals felt like was most important, and that is leadership.

Robert Jeffress

A lot of the evangelicals supporting Donald Trump aren't expecting that he's going to start holding Bible studies in the Oval Office. They just want somebody who's going to solve problems.

Robert Jeffress

By supporting Reagan, evangelicals were not supporting womanizing or divorce, but they were endorsing Reagan's policies.

Robert Jeffress

I think you can see a clear link between certain kinds of Christian nationalism and support for Trump. Then, I also think that Trump is benefiting from the weakening of religious participation. He's winning evangelicals who aren't in church.

Ross Douthat

It is only in the fundamentalist religions that women are relegated to second class. Radical Evangelicals, Muslims, and Jews all have the same view of women.

Sally Quinn

There are something like 300 anti-genocide chapters on college campuses around the country. It's bigger than the anti-apartheid movement. There are something like 500 high school chapters devoted to stopping the genocide in Darfur. Evangelicals have joined it. Jewish groups have joined it.

Samantha Power

Economic libertarians and Christian evangelicals, united by their common enemy, are strange bedfellows in today's Republican party, just as the two Georges - the archconservative Wallace and the uberliberal McGovern - found themselves in the same Democratic Party in 1972.

Steven Pinker