ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Now you see evangelicals in Team Trump’s corner, now you don’t.
Donald Trump supporters got religion, sure enough. But to what end since they are not all on the same page?
“The split is between a subset of evangelicals best categorized as ’creedal’ believers — those who take their faith most seriously and who oppose Trump,” Yahoo News reporter Jon Ward writes. “Less devout Christians, often described as ’notional’ or ’cultural,’ are more open to the businessman and GOP front-runner. The majority of national evangelical leaders are on the side of creedal believers.”
Sound like 1976? Let’s hit the DVR rewind button.
It’s 1976 and Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter, a born-again Christian, wins the Democratic presidential nod, beating a Baptist preacher (Walter Fauntroy); a Methodist who preached segregation (George Wallace); a Baptist who tempered his segregationist rhetoric (Robert Byrd); and a Roman Catholic who married into the Kennedy clan (Sargent Shriver); and 10 other Democrats.
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Gerald Ford was the Republican competition via the Richard Nixon-Spiro Agnew scandals.
Influential evangelicals and the moral majority — including the Revs. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell — smiled alongside Team Carter all the way to victory day. After they realized a wolf stood amid their flock of sheep, they birthed the “Moral Majority,” and began paving the way for Ronald Reagan, and they paved it twice.
Today’s evangelicals aren’t following Donald Trump for the same reasons that earlier generations backed Mr. Carter and Reagan. The current evangelicals want to be part of a movement — and perhaps even more so, the “notional” and “cultural” believers, who identify with a personality but not necessarily with ideologies or orthodoxies, such as gender identity, abortion and political partisanship.
Face it, some Trump supporters identify with his Elmer Gantry-like crusading and brusk utilitarianism, while others seem ultrasensitive about his rhetoric regarding immigration, Islam and a new American way forward. Call it the clash of the cultural titans.
And remember this: He’s not trying to convert “creedal” believers but those who raise their hand to God and swear allegiance to Mr. Trump.
I’ll let you in on something else, too. Mr. Trump is like all politicians seeking the White House during a presidential election year. He is a traveling salesman.
• Deborah Simmons can be reached at dsimmons@washingtontimes.com.
• Deborah Simmons can be reached at dsimmons@washingtontimes.com.
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