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THE conservative evangelical Christians who helped send Donald Trump to the White House four years ago stayed with him in 2020. And even when Trump doesn’t get a second term, some conservative Christians see reason to celebrate in the results of his election. year.
White evangelical voters accounted for 23% of the vote nationwide and overwhelmingly favored Trump this fall, with about 8 in 10 supporting him, according to the AP VoteCast. Their support may not have been enough to re-elect the president, with Democratic candidate Joe Biden declared the projected winner in Saturday’s election, but evangelicals were still buoyed by his strong presence at the polls and the success of the Republican Party. in negative votes. Races
“There’s no question that we did our job,” Ralph Reed, the veteran Republican activist who founded the nonprofit Faith and Freedom Coalition, said of his fellow conservative Christians.
Like most fellow evangelicals, Reed left room for the president to achieve a victory even as that road seemed narrow on Friday. But he also highlighted the lackluster performance of Democrats in key congressional elections as a positive sign and suggested that religious conservatives might see an opportunity to work with a Biden administration moving away from the left.
“If President Trump falls short … it was a very impressive cycle for faith voters and for social conservatives in the Republican Party,” Reed said.
While many of Trump’s evangelical allies are white, the president’s campaign also worked to attract Latino voters, and the Republican Party saw signs of improvement with that demographic in several states. The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, a Latino evangelical pastor who has advised Trump, said those advances with Latino voters are one of the reasons evangelicals should view the election as “a victory” for their priorities.
“I would say, with due deference to our president, that if we fall short, it is not because of the evangelical agenda of life, religious freedom and biblical justice,” Rodríguez said. “It was more of a rejection of the personality.”
Looking ahead, Rodriguez said, “if we can reconcile the message and the messenger, I think the future looks pretty amazing.”
Among Latinos, 61% of evangelicals backed Trump, according to the AP VoteCast, far more than the 35% it received from Latinos overall.
The Biden campaign had attempted to take off parts of Trump’s evangelical base as part of its active faith-spreading operation. But Robert Jones, author of two books on white Christians, said there was no erosion of white evangelical support for Trump and the Republican Party in this election, and that applies to both men and women in that demographic.
“They absolutely supported their man,” said Jones, who oversees frequent polls of religious Americans as executive director of the Public Religion Research Institute, an independent nonprofit organization based in Washington.
Jones said that white evangelicals, thanks to their high turnout rate, continue to have an enormous influence on election results, both nationally and in certain states. Without their political commitment, Democrats would have made more progress this year in states like Texas and North Carolina, he said.
Of course, some of the president’s closest evangelical allies are not yet ready to acknowledge the prospect of a Biden victory. Trump vows to continue to challenge the outcome, promoting unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud in an effort to undermine public confidence in the process.
Texas-based megachurch pastor Jack Graham, a longtime Trump supporter, tweeted Thursday night that he is “praying that lies and cheating are exposed and (Trump) is fairly re-elected.” . Paula White-Cain, who serves as Trump’s personal pastor and White House religious adviser, led a prayer this week for the election and described hearing “a sound of victory.”
Another leading evangelical Trump supporter, Dallas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, noted that Al Gore and George W. Bush spent weeks challenging the results of the 2000 election before the Supreme Court ruled in Bush’s favor.
If Biden becomes president, Jeffress said by email, “Christians would have the same responsibility to him as they do to President Trump: They should praise his good policies, condemn his bad and pray for his success.
Even if defeated, Trump will remain a hero to evangelicals, Jeffress said, hailing him as “the most pro-faith president in American history.”
Another evangelical leader who backed Trump, meanwhile, raised concerns about the president’s repeated claims of voter fraud that are not supported by evidence.
The Rev. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, said in his daily commentary Thursday that while fraud has occurred in past elections, “making widespread charges of voter fraud without specific details that can be investigated, that it is quite dangerous to the United States as a nation. “
Mohler anticipated the possibility of a Biden presidency coinciding with continued control of the Senate by the Republican Party, which hinges on the outcome of what could be two runoff elections in Georgia in January. He expressed hope that a division of power between the Senate and the White House could thwart possible Biden policies that would concern evangelicals.
In a phone interview Friday, Mohler said that pro-Trump evangelicals had different motives for supporting a president who has so often strayed from his office traditions.
“There are those who see it as the answer to their prayers and others who see it as necessary in this political emergency,” Mohler said. “The idea of a Biden-Harris administration is unthinkable for many evangelicals.” – AP
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