The political and economic power of white evangelicals

Make Me Smart

Marketplace

News, Business

4.6 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2024

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today we’re talking about a key voting bloc in this year’s elections: white evangelical Christian voters. In 2016 and 2020, they helped Donald Trump rise to power. NPR’s Sarah McCammon, author of “Exvangelicals,” discusses why evangelicals continue to back Trump, her personal journey leaving evangelicalism and the economic systems built around the evangelical movement.

We’ll also talk about the Maryland bridge collapse and the state of U.S. infrastructure. Plus, Neil King Jr., author of the memoir “American Ramble,” answers the Make Me Smart question.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

- “‘You gotta be tough’: White evangelicals remain enthusiastic about Donald Trump” from NPR

- “How younger voters will impact elections: What is happening to the white evangelical vote?” from Brookings

- “Why White Evangelicals Stuck with Trump” from the University of Chicago Divinity School

- “Latinos Will Determine the Future of American Evangelicalism” from The Atlantic

- “Bridge Collapse in Baltimore Puts an Election Year Spotlight on Infrastructure” from The New York Times

- “Elon Musk’s Starlink Terminals Are Falling Into the Wrong Hands” from Bloomberg

We want to hear your answer to the Make Me Smart question. You can reach us at makemesmart@marketplace.org or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey Marketplace listeners, you know around here we like to think you're never too young to learn about the economy and financial basics.
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0:26.4	That is Greenlight dot com slash million. Hello everyone I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart where none of us is as
0:39.7	smart as all of us. I'm Kyle Rizdahl. Tuesday the 26th of March is what my calendar says.
0:46.1	Thanks for joining us on a Tuesday.
0:48.4	It's one show on topic, which is what we do around here.
0:50.9	So we're going to talk in no particular order, religion, politics, American
0:56.7	society, our national fabric, and now what happens?
1:00.8	Evangelical Christian voters, their support for the right side of the
1:04.3	political spectrum, a bunch of other stuff. Yeah, especially their support of
1:08.4	Donald Trump, which has been a really key demographic in his rise to power and you know in this upcoming election
1:16.0	and here to talk with us about why evangelicals in particular white evangelicals are still sticking with Trump, is NPR's national political
1:25.7	correspondent Sarah McCammon, who has a unique perspective on this.
1:30.3	She, and we've talked about this before, like me, was raised in an evangelical Christian environment,
1:37.0	church, schools, all the things that later left it, and she witnessed the relationship between Trump and white evangelicals
1:46.0	sort of as it was developing while she was reporting on the 2016 election.
	...

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