Donald Trump faces a biblical battle to retain evangelical voters, as some turn away from the Republican base to vote for Kamala Harris despite her liberal views.
Trump has traditionally enjoyed strong Republican support among white evangelical voters, even selling evangelical-themed Bibles.
Polls suggest that about 8 in 10 white evangelical voters voted for him in the 2020 election, and two in 10 voted for Joe Biden.
Biden did better among evangelicals of all faiths, however, winning about a third of those voters.
Now, groups like Evangelicals for Harris have run ads and Zoom calls in an attempt to argue that she is the best choice for this election despite serious policy disagreements.
Donald Trump faces a biblical battle to retain evangelical voters as some turn away from the Republican base to vote for Kamala Harris despite her liberal views.
Trump has traditionally maintained strong Republican support among white evangelical voters, even going so far as to sell Trump-themed Bibles.
“I’m tired of seeing meanness, bigotry and recreational cruelty as the worldly witness to our faith,” said the Rev. Lee Scott, one of those evangelicals. “I want transformation, and transformation is a risky business.”
Harris continues to face an uphill battle among religious Christian voters: About six in ten “born again” or “evangelical” voters have an unfavorable view of Harris.
Among white evangelicals, that figure rises to eight in ten who view it negatively, and only 33 percent of the entire religion say they view it positively.
Scott, a Presbyterian pastor and minister, says he is taking a big risk with the Democratic candidate.
“The easiest thing for us this year would be to keep our heads down, go to the polls, keep our vote secret and go about our business,” Scott said on a Zoom video call. “But right now, I just can’t do that.”
Scott lives in Butler, Pennsylvania, the same town where a would-be assassin shot former President Donald Trump in July.
He said the attack and its impact on his community pushed him to speak out against Trump and the “vitriol” and “acceptable violence” he normalized in politics.
Trump has courted intensely white conservative evangelicals since his arrival on the political scene almost a decade ago and has promoted The reversal of Roe v. Wade and imploring Christians to go out and vote for him.
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Although white evangelicals vote heavily Republican, not all of them have a guaranteed seat in the Republican Party, and in a close race, every vote counts.
However, a senior figure in conservative Christian politics has expressed concern about Trump’s recent positions on issues such as abortion and in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Albert Mohler, a 64-year-old Southern Baptist leader based in Kentucky, made the comments this week, warning that the candidate’s inconsistency could be his downfall.
The comments came in response to Trump’s recent remarks on Truth Social, where he said his administration would be “great for women and their reproductive rights.”
In April, the 78-year-old refused to back a national abortion ban, saying it should be up to each state to decide. In 2020, he said he wanted to overturn federal protections for the procedure and would support a near-total ban.
In an interview with The New York TimesThe president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary explained why this, along with Trump’s statements saying his administration would require insurers to cover IVF, could alienate loyal voters.
“Trump is in grave danger,” Mohler told host Astead W. Herndon on the newspaper’s The Run-Up podcast.
“(He) is basically daring the pro-life movement to turn against him,” he added of the comments on Truth Social.
Presbyterian farmer and pastor Lee Scott pets one of the cows at his family’s farm, Laurel Oak Farm, in Butler, Pa., Friday, Sept. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)
Southern Baptist leader Albert Mohler, 64, of Kentucky, made the comments this week, warning that the candidate’s inconsistency could be his undoing.
The Rev. Dwight McKissic, a Baptist pastor from Texas who spoke on the Evangelicals for Harris call, said he saw “no moral superiority of one party over the other,” citing the GOP’s decision to “abandon the commitment to ban abortion with a constitutional amendment” and soften its stance against same-sex marriage in its party platform.
Although he has historically voted Republican, McKissic said he would vote for Harris, who he said has more character and qualifications.
“I certainly don’t agree with her on every policy issue,” said Scott, who identifies as an evangelical and is ordained in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.). “I’m pro-life. I’m anti-abortion. But at the same time, she has a pro-family platform,” citing Harris’ education policies and her promise to expand the child tax credit.
Vote Common Good, a similar group led by progressive evangelical pastor Doug Pagitt, has a simple message: Political identity and religious identity are not a package deal.
“There’s a whole group that feels very uncomfortable voting for Trump,” Pagitt said.
“We’re not trying to change their minds. We’re trying to work with them once they’ve changed their minds to act on them.”
They are focusing on black Protestants and Latino evangelicals, especially in key states.
The groups are reaching out to Catholics and mainline Protestants across the Rust Belt and to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Arizona and Nevada. Butler’s colleagues are working with Jewish and Muslim groups.
The comments came in response to Trump’s recent remarks saying his administration would be “great for women and their reproductive rights” and that the government or insurers would cover IVF.
In April, the 78-year-old declined to back a national abortion ban, after previously taking credit for overturning Roe v. Wade.
The groups Catholics for Harris and Interfaith for Harris are beginning to get going. Mainline Protestant groups like Black Church PAC and Christians for Kamala are also campaigning for the vice president.
But the chorus of evangelicals who find it inconceivable to vote for a Democrat remains strong.
Trump-supporting evangelical worship leader Sean Feucht ridiculed the existence of Evangelicals for Harris on X: ‘HERETICS FOR HARRIS rings so much truer!’
The Rev. Franklin Graham, a longtime Trump supporter, questioned one of the group’s ads and its use of images of his late father, the Rev. Billy Graham.
“Liberals are using everything they can to promote candidate Harris,” he wrote on his public Facebook page, which has 10 million followers.
But the project to shore up support among Democratic evangelical voters goes beyond partisan politics: it gets to the core of what evangelicalism means.
The term evangelical itself is confusing and has become synonymous with the Republican Party, says Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University.
“There are probably more people who are theologically evangelical,” Burge said, “but they’re not going to accept that word because they’re not voting for Trump or they’re moderate or liberal.”
For many, evangelicalism has largely been defined in racial and sociopolitical terms, and by endorsing Harris, Rah hopes to “show that there are other voices in the church besides the religious right and Trumpian evangelicals.”
Latasha Morrison, a Zoom speaker for Evangelicals for Harris, told the AP that as a Black woman, “I never associated myself with the word ‘evangelical’ until I started attending predominantly white churches.”
For years, her anti-abortion views led her to vote Republican, but now the Christian author and diversity trainer says, “I feel like women and children have better opportunities under the Harris administration than under the Trump administration.”
Meanwhile, Trump continues to back away from support for national restrictions that could prove a hurdle for Republicans struggling to win back key groups — such as suburban women — who have drifted away from the GOP in recent years.
Yet he remains eager to take credit for overturning Roe v. Wade, despite shifting abortion authority to the states.
“States will decide by vote or by law, or perhaps by both. And what they decide should be the law of the land,” Trump said in April of abortion rights. “Now, it’s up to the states to do the right thing.”
