The Rest of the Story: White Christians and the Second Coming of Trump
Sharing my interview with Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Post and Chauncey Devega at Salon.
Dear #WhiteTooLong readers,
Has it really only been two weeks since we received the news that Donald Trump won the 2024 election?
In my day job, I’m regularly asked to join the fray of pundits providing election postmortems. Naturally, this first wave of analysis primarily focuses on which subgroups moved between the last major national election and the current one. And I’ve been asked for that kind of analysis by a range of media outlets, including MSNBC, NPR, the New York Times, and Salon here at home and The Times of London and Le Monde abroad.
But beyond all the hot takes of who was up and who was down compared to the last election, the clearest answer to why Trump will be returning to the White House is that white Christians, more than any other religious group, returned to the polls to put him there. That was the theme of my recent column at TIME, which was featured again last Saturday in their weekend newsletter, The Brief. If you missed it, you can read it in full here.
Below, I’m sharing two recent interviews with Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Post and with Chauncey Devega at Salon.
Wishing everyone stamina and peace of mind during this challenging time-
Robby
A Battle between Good and Evil | My Appearance on Jen Rubin’s Green Room Podcast
Here’s the description of the show: White Christian nationalism's influence on US elections reflects complex intersections of religion, race, and politics. Robert P. Jones examines how faith communities, particularly white evangelicals, show strong support for Trump while highlighting concerning trends in political polarization and extremist rhetoric. The discussion emphasizes the importance of local engagement and understanding in addressing these challenges to democracy.
The Ultimate Answer to Why Trump Won | My Conversation with Chauncey Devega at Salon
I also expanded on that analysis in an in-depth interview with Chauncey Devega at Salon. I’ve included an excerpt below.
It’s been a heavy week. Looking at all the dead heat numbers down the home stretch of the election, I was never optimistic that the country would unite to block the second coming of Trump. But like most, I was surprised at the sweep of the swing states, the likely outright win of the popular vote and the decisive losses in the Senate. I’ve been down and distracted, not because a particular party won but because a majority of Americans have handed power back to someone who not only fails the basic test of human decency but who has openly tried to overturn an election he lost in 2020 and subvert democratic norms.
On the professional front, I’ve been doing my own analysis of the election, writing to a great community of readers on my “White Too Long” Substack newsletter. My colleagues Jemar Tisby, Kristin Du Mez and Diana Butler Bass at
are holding a space for conversations about faith and the future of democracy. We held a live webinar with over 1,000 registrants two days after the election, and we’ll be taking the conversation on the road at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Atlanta on November 17. I’ve also gone on walks, reached out to friends and gone on long rides on my bike — something I started during COVID but feels vitally important again.On the one hand, we should all acknowledge that the pre-election polls were fairly accurate. They uniformly declared that the election was so tight, both at the national and state levels, that it was a coin toss. Pre-election polls are never good at — nor were they designed to be good at — predicting turnout, and by definition can’t account for late deciders. And while early numbers indicate turnout was reasonably high, we see that Trump supporters turned out in force. For example, while white evangelical Protestants are only 14% of the general population, the early exit polls indicate that they may have represented as many as one in five voters.
The biggest thing mainstream analysis refuses to comprehend is the continued power of a politics of racial grievance and religious nostalgia among white Christian Americans. Many pundits thought that a candidate who ran the most racist campaign since George Wallace in 1968 couldn’t possibly move above a ceiling that would keep them far short of a majority. But in this election, most people who consider themselves to be good white Christians flatly declared that white supremacy was, at a minimum, not a deal breaker for them. As has been the case every time Trump has run, eight in ten white evangelicals cast their vote for him, as did six in ten white Catholics and six in ten white non-evangelical Protestants. By contrast, 86% of Black protestants voted for Harris.
The answer to the question on so many Americans’ lips — "How did we get here?” — is straightforward. That answer won’t be found in the margins of which group shifted toward Trump between 2020 and 2024. It is right in front of us. White evangelical Protestants, along with other conservative white Christians, were the principal actors who baptized, defended, rehabilitated and sustained Trump’s candidacy. More than any other group, these white Christians, who once proudly called themselves “values voters,” have provided moral and religious cover for the immoral and the profane. Even a modest shift among white Christian voters would have denied Trump the Republican nomination and the presidency. So, the responsibility for Trump’s initial rise to power, his resurrection, and everything that is now coming sits squarely with white Christian Americans.
It is difficult to overstate the magnitude of the dangers that will come our way beginning January 20, 2025. Some will be public and dramatic, and others will happen behind closed doors, with delayed effects. In Trump’s closing message the day before Election Day, he boasted, “We stand on the verge of the four greatest years in American history.” But if Trump follows through on even a fraction of the things he has promised — purging the civil service, instituting mass deportations including internment camps, jailing or even executing his political opponents — we will instead be witnessing the beginning of an unprecedented weakening of American democracy. Whether our democracy will still be standing four years from now depends on our willingness to defend it and protect those most vulnerable well before Trump’s authoritarian policies reach most of us personally.
Recently on #WhiteTooLong and The Convocation Unscripted
And here’s the most recent recording of The Convocation Unscripted, where Kristin, Jemar, Diana and I digest the election results.
