The political power of white Evangelicals; plus, Biden and the Black church

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2024

⏱️ 44 minutes

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Summary

For decades, Evangelicals have propped up Republican presidents. And while church attendance has fallen across the board, Evangelicals are still making waves politically; they just helped deliver Trump a historic win in the Iowa caucus. But the political bent of Evangelicals begs for closer inspection because white Americans who align with Trump are more likely to start identifying as Evangelical, even if some of them no longer sit up in the pews. NPR Political Correspondent Sarah McCammon joins the show to dig into host Brittany Luse's question: are Evangelicals now a religious group or a political one?

Then, after calls for a ceasefire interrupted President Biden's speech at Mother Emanuel AME Church, many people denounced the protest saying that it was not the right time or place. But Brittany wonders; if not there, then where? She sits down with Dr. Anthea Butler, religious scholar and chair of the department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, to dive into the roots of political activism within the Black church. They also look at the complicated relationship between Democrats and the Black church.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message come from SAP Concur, a leading brand for integrated travel expense and invoice management solutions.
0:09.0	With SAP Concur solutions, you'll be ready to take on whatever the market throws at you next. Learn more at concur.com.
0:17.0	Hello hello. I'm Brittany Loose and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR,
0:24.8	a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. As the presidential race gets rolling, both the Democrats and Republicans are looking to a higher power for support.
0:46.4	On one end we see the Democrats making those predictable and in my opinion enterprising rounds to black churches. More on that later.
0:56.3	But then there's the Republicans and that's where I want to start.
1:00.5	This week former President Trump won the Iowa Republican Caucus in a history-making landslide
1:06.7	Thanks in part to the white evangelical vote
1:11.1	Now evangelicals have been an engine for the Republican Party for decades and
1:16.3	today white Americans who align with Trump are more likely to identify as
1:21.3	evangelicals and yet at the same time church likely to identify as evangelical.
1:22.8	And yet, at the same time, church attendance
1:26.1	has gone down.
1:27.4	So I want to explore this maybe blasphemous question.
1:31.9	Are evangelicals a religious group or a political one?
1:38.2	I'm joined today by NPR political correspondent Sarah McCameth. She's reported on the cultural and
1:44.3	political power of Evangelical Christians in America and she joined me from the
1:48.9	campaign trail in the freezing depths of New Hampshire.
1:53.5	Sarah, welcome to it's been a minute.
1:55.4	Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
1:56.8	Oh my gosh, my pleasure, my pleasure.
1:58.6	He heading into the Iowa Caucus,
	...

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