More Americans 'view Christianity negatively' — and it may be Trump's fault

17 June 2024

Although it remains to be seen how much support presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump will receive from independents and swing voters in the November election, he continues to be extremely popular with his hardcore MAGA base. And a key part of that base is far-right white evangelicals.

Trump is by no means universally loved within Christianity, and he has his share of detractors who identify as Catholic or Mainline Protestant.

But his bond with white evangelical voters is as strong in 2024 as it was in 2020.

In a June 17 column, the Washington Post's Shadi Hamid laments that Trump's alliance with white evangelicals is giving many voters a "negative" opinion of Christianity.

"Despite an effort to overthrow an election and a bevy of criminal charges," Hamid explains, "Donald Trump has managed to solidify and even expand his support among core demographics…. The voters most loyal to the former president are white evangelicals. More than 80 percent backed him in the 2020 elections."

"Evangelical," Hamid emphasizes, has become both a political identity and a religious identity — and the "unsettling" result will be "more intense political polarization around religion."

Hamid explains, "Evangelicalism, in short, has become about shared political convictions…. Now that white evangelicals are so disproportionally and unapologetically Trump-supporting, the share of Democrats who view Christianity negatively is likely to remain high or perhaps even increase."

Shadi Hamid's full Washington Post column is available at this link (subscription required).

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