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I have been studying the Sermon on the Mount recently. In it, Jesus provides a blueprint for how to live the Christian life. For example, he calls for us to love out enemies, to turn the other cheek, not to judge our brothers, to store up for ourselves treasures in heaven and to turn from serving Mammon (or money). It’s pretty clear that Donald Trump doesn’t behave the way God commands us to in the Sermon on the Mount. So, why do Evangelicals support Trump in such large numbers? According to a Pew September 2020 poll, Biden was favored by registered voters by 52% to 42%, but Trump was favored by white evangelical protestants by 78% to 17%.
There are a number of explanations. First, and by far the simplest, is the fact that the vast majority of white evangelicals have reliably supported Republicans for many years. In the four presidential elections beginning in 2004, white evangelicals voted for Bush by 78% to 21%, for McCain by 74% to 24%, for Romney by 78% to 21%, and for Trump by 81% to 16%.
But that factoid raises more questions than it answers. Why are white Evangelicals such reliable supporters of the Republican Party? Bill Moyers wrote in 2012, “The Republican party platform of 1912 did not contain a single reference to God. The word faith appeared once, in the phrase “faith in government.” A century later, the 2012 Republican platform contains ten references to God and nineteen to faith — as in phrases like “faith-based organizations,” and ‘faith communities.’” Even as recently as 1972, the Republican Party platform did not contain a single reference to God or religious issues.
Three discrete events which led to the Republican Party becoming the party of right-wing Christianity. First, there was the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. Second, in 1979, the Reverend Jerry Falwell created the “Moral Majority.” Finally in 1992, Pat Buchannan’s delivered his famous “Culture War” speech to the Republican National Convention. In that speech he said, “My friends, this election is about more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe, and what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as was the Cold War itself, for this war is for the soul of America.” In Pat Buchannan’s mind, as well as that of most Republicans, Democrats were the party of abortion on demand, homosexual rights and radical feminism. This cultural agenda was also a religious agenda. The defining elements of the Republican Party were no longer the size of government and deregulation, but the threat to American society of the liberalism of the Democratic Party (frequently called radicalism or socialism).
By 2016, these cultural (religious) differences between the parties can be found in their party platforms, presented below. Both platforms led with economic issues, but both also addressed cultural issues, albeit somewhat differently, as laid out below:
The 2016 Political Platforms of the Republican and Democratic Parties
| Subject | Republican | Democratic |
| The Courts | A critical threat to our country’s constitutional order is an activist judiciary that usurps powers properly reserved to the people through other branches of government. Only a Republican president will appoint judges who respect the rule of law expressed within the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including the inalienable right to life and the laws of nature and nature’s God, as did the late Justice Antonin Scalia. | We will appoint judges who defend the constitutional principles of liberty and equality for all, and will protect a woman’s right to safe and legal abortion, curb billionaires’ influence over elections because they understand that Citizens United has fundamentally damaged our democracy, and believe the Constitution protects not only the powerful, but also the disadvantaged and powerless. |
| LGBT Issues | Traditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a free society and has for millennia been entrusted with rearing children and instilling cultural values. We condemn the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Windsor, which wrongly removed the ability of Congress to define marriage policy in federal law. | Democrats applaud last year’s decision by the Supreme Court that recognized that LGBT people—like other Americans—have the right to marry the person they love. |
| Climate | The environment is too important to be left to radical environmentalists. They are using yesterday’s tools to control a future they do not comprehend. The environmental establishment has become a self-serving elite, stuck in the mindset of the 1970s, subordinating the public’s consensus to the goals of the Democratic Party… The central fact of any sensible environmental policy is that, year by year, the environment is improving. | Democrats share a deep commitment to tackling the climate challenge; creating millions of good-paying middle class jobs; reducing greenhouse gas emissions more than 80 percent below 2005 levels by 2050; and meeting the pledge President Obama put forward in the landmark Paris Agreement, which aims to keep global temperature increases to “well below” two degrees Celsius and to pursue efforts to limit global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius. W |
| Religion | We pledge to defend the religious beliefs and rights of conscience of all Americans and to safeguard religious institutions against government control. | Nothing |
| Abortion | We assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed. | We will support sexual and reproductive health and rights around the globe. |
Devil’s Bargain. Above all, the Republican Party, led by Donald Trump, promised to create a Supreme Court which would support religious liberty, limit gay rights (especially gay marriage) and fight abortion. And Trump has delivered. The average age of conservatives on the high court is 59.2, and the three justices appointed by Trump are 54, 56, and 49. These conservative justices can be expected to dominate the Court for two decades or more. How they will actually rule on critical issues is unclear. The most important cases which will come before the court in the next three years are not about abortion or gay rights but about the threats to our democracy.
At least a score of states are enacting laws to reduce access to the polls. Between the off-year elections in 2022 and the Presidential election in 2024 some of these laws will face challenges that could lead to the Supreme Court considering these laws’ constitutionality. How the Court rules might determine whether one party or the other dominates the next twenty years; perhaps, more important the Court’s ruling could enshrine the Republican Party challenging election results after every losing election and lead to diminished faith in our constitutional system. The Court’s previous decision hints at what it will decide in future cases.
Nicole Mueksch, writes in the University of Colorado Boulder Today, “On July 1, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court voted to uphold two contentious laws in Arizona that impose restrictions on voting: one that required election officials to discard ballots cast at the wrong precinct and another that prohibits people from collecting ballots and delivering them to polling places. The move paves the way for states to pass more rigid voter laws that many fear will restrict participation from minority groups.”
“In his majority opinion, Justice Alito provides a five-part test for plaintiffs in future cases. To prevail, plaintiffs must now provide evidence that (1) the burden on minority voters is severe, (2) the limit on voting was not widespread in 1982 when Congress penned the “results test,” (3) the law produced a significant racial disparity in practice, (4) voting across the state’s entire electoral system is not open, and (5) the state’s justification for the law is unwarranted.”
In practice, says law Professor Doug Spencer, “… this five-part test will be nearly impossible for plaintiffs to satisfy in the future, no matter where they live. In particular, because voting has become more accessible in every jurisdiction across the country since 1982, plaintiffs will have a hard time satisfying prongs three and four. But the final prong is perhaps the most important. So long as a state claims to have a good reason for limiting the right to vote, plaintiffs will lose. It doesn’t matter if the state’s justification is flawed, or if the state’s law isn’t actually congruent with the justification. So, for example, a state only needs to argue that it is trying to combat voter fraud and it will win, even if there is no evidence of voter fraud and even if the state’s law (e.g., dropping off a ballot in a neighboring precinct) has no relationship to fraud.” (italics added).
If Spencer is right, virtually all of the voting restrictions being passed by Republican-controlled legislatures will be supported by the Supreme Court. What is unclear is what the Court will think about the new laws concerning election oversight. According to Pew, “GOP legislators in at least 14 states have enacted 23 new laws that empower state officials to take control of county election boards, strip secretaries of state of their executive authority, or make local election officials criminally or financially liable for even technical errors, according to Protect Democracy, a left-leaning Washington, D.C.-based voting rights nonprofit.”
This politicization of election oversight bodes ill in a time when (1) Republicans have adopted a strategy of challenging election results and (2) state legislatures have given every indication that they are ready, willing, and able to overturn election results without any serious evidence. Depending on the Supreme Court to uphold democracy does not inspire confidence. It is a smart bet that wherever Republicans lose in 2022 and 2024 there will be both legal challenges to the election results and more importantly, GOP-led legislatures determining that these challenges are valid, and that election results can be overthrown. What will happen to American democracy then?