How Trump Has Transformed Evangelicals

Radio Atlantic

The Atlantic

News, Society & Culture, Politics

4.3 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 December 2023

⏱️ 40 minutes

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Summary

How did evangelical Christians shift from being reluctant supporters of Trump to among his most passionate defenders? How did some evangelicals, historically suspicious of politicians, develop a “fanatical cult-like attachment” to Donald Trump? And what happened to the evangelical movement, as some bought into Trump’s vision of America and others recoiled? A few weeks before the Iowa caucuses we talk to Tim Alberta, a staff writer at the Atlantic and author of the new book The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. Want to share unlimited access to The Atlantic with your loved ones? Give a gift today at theatlantic.com/podgift. For a limited time, select new subscriptions will come with the bold Atlantic tote bag as a free holiday bonus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	At the crossroads of artistic insight and intellectual curiosity we find the edge of reason
0:07.0	dive into the heart of artistic inspiration rooted in Enlightenment thinking and discover how contemporary creators are holding a mirror up to society to reflect who we are, where we've been, and where we're headed.
0:20.0	Join me, Jeff Chang, at the Edge of Reason, a new limited podcast from Atlantic
0:25.6	Rethink, the branded content studio at the Atlantic, and Howzer and Worth. The Iowa Caucasus are coming up in just over a month and despite the primary challengers it's very likely that Donald Trump
0:45.4	will be the Republican nominee. Now a lot has changed since 2016 when Trump first
0:51.0	ran. Back then one of the biggest questions he faced
0:55.0	was whether he could win over evangelical Christians.
0:58.0	After all, he was a casino owner,
1:01.0	used to hang out at the Playboy Mansion, and he was on his third wife.
1:05.8	If he preached anything, it was the Gospel of Wealth.
1:10.4	Trump needed evangelicals back then,
1:13.0	and eventually they held their noses and voted for him.
1:16.5	Now the dynamic is very different.
1:20.7	In this election, evangelical support is no longer a question. In fact, so popular as Trump,
1:28.1	that some evangelical leaders have come to think of him as a kind of Messiah, the leader they have always been
1:34.7	waiting for. I'm Hannah Rosen and this is Radio Atlantic. Today, how Trump has transformed the evangelical movement.
1:45.0	In the early 2000s, I was a beat reporter for the Washington Post,
1:52.0	and my beat was evangelicals.
1:55.0	George W Bush was president and he was a self-declared born-again Christian.
2:01.0	And I watched his relationship with evangelicals up close, but that is nothing like what we have today.
2:09.0	Many evangelical leaders now have an intense devotion to Trump that I find mystifying. So today on the
2:17.4	show we have Tim Alberta to help explain it. Tim is a staff writer at the
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