What White Christians Have Wrought
Beyond the postmortem, my deeper post-election reflection at TIME.
Dear #WhiteTooLong readers,
Well, it’s Monday. Although we have had the devastating news about Donald Trump’s reelection for four days, I’ve been struck by feeling like today, the beginning of the first week after Election Day, feels like the beginning of a new era.
In some ways, of course, we know what to expect from Trump. He’s always used the bullhorn rather than the dog whistle. But he’s become more extreme, and he will have more power. We already know the Republican Party will hold both the presidency and the Senate, setting the stage for a deluge of right wing judicial appointments. But it also looks very likely that they will also gain a majority in the House of Representatives. And the conservative U.S. Supreme Court, stacked with Trump appointees, has given Trump new preemptive assurances of immunity for virtually anything he does as president. There will be few federal checks on power—the very foundation of democracy—this time around.
I was happy to spend some time not thinking about the election this weekend. I went to see my friend Macky Alston’s beautiful documentary film, Acts of Reparation, at the Double Exposure film festival this weekend; cheered on my son’s high school soccer team in the state semi-finals; hung some acoustic panels to improve the sound quality in my office; and went on a long bike ride with a friend in Rock Creek Park.
But I’ve also continued to spend time trying to make sense of what we’ve just experienced. This weekend I did interviews with the Times of London and The New York Times (which should be out later this week). And I was asked by TIME to write a deeper reflection—not just an analytical postmortem—about the election. I’m sharing that below.
Warmly,
Robby
P.S. If you’re in the Atlanta area, The Convocation Unscripted team (me, Jemar Tisby, Kristin Du Mez, and Diana Butler Bass) are bringing the Faith & Democracy Tour to St. Luke’s Episcopal Church next Sunday, 11/17 at 5pm ET. We hope you’ll join us. Details here.
What White Christians Have Wrought
(The following is an excerpt from the full column at TIME.)
Like other social scientists and scholars, I’ll spend the next weeks and months scouring pre-election data, the exit polls, and the first wave of post-election surveys trying to understand how a majority of American voters chose to return Donald Trump—a twice-impeached convicted felon and adjudicated sexual abuser who incited a violent insurrection when he lost the last election—to power.
Because elections are won and lost at the margins in a deeply divided nation such as ours, most of that analysis will rightly focus on which subgroups (like Latinos and young men) shifted most significantly away from the Democratic Party’s winning 2020 coalition. But that focus, while strategically important, will obscure the deeper peril facing our nation. Authoritarianism, when it blossoms, emerges from the deeper soil at the center.
Namely, we must talk about how thoroughly Christian nationalism has infected mainstream white Christianity…. Overall, PRRI’s pre-election American Values Survey found that more than two thirds (68%) of white Christians favored Trump over Harris—a mirror image of the rest of the country, including Christians of color (33%), followers of non-Christian religions (30%), and the religiously unaffiliated (28%)….
(Read the full piece at TIME.)
…Nearly a century ago, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi movement coopted the German Evangelical Church. Today we are seeing similar uses of the Orthodox Christian churches in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the Catholic Church in Viktor Orbán’s so-called “illiberal democracy” in Hungary—contemporary models both Trump and white evangelical leaders have praised.
Over the last decade, many white Christians have not just selfishly supported a dangerous, narcissistic man who promised to restore their waning influence; they have now willingly blessed the advent of a new American fascism that threatens our democratic future. They are principally responsible for Trump’s rise and return to power—and for everything that is coming for all of us in its wake.
(Read the full piece at TIME.)
Related and Upcoming
Here is one of my last pre-election posts, highlighting Trump’s promises to his white Christian supporters.
I also want to share this webinar I did with my colleagues at
, , , and . You can watch on YouTube or listen as a podcast. Links are in the post below.