Donald Trump Doesn't Fit the Perfect Evangelical Model. That Works to His Advantage - Vanity Fair

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Author Tim Alberta explains why conservative churchgoers are so devoted to the former president—and how a steady diet of outrage is further radicalizing the flock.

By Brian Stelter

December 7, 2023

US President Trump center bows his head during a prayer while surrounded by US Vice President Mike Pence right faith...

Inside the Hive host Brian Stelter explores the fracturing of the evangelical church with Tim Alberta, an Atlantic staff writer and author of The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory (an excerpt of which ran Monday on the Hive). Alberta, the son of an evangelical pastor, charts the church’s rightward trajectory and embrace of Donald Trump, who is seen “as a protector, as almost as a mercenary figure” in a political war.

“[Trump] may not share their views, he may not sit in the pews with them, he may not read the good book like they do, but in some way, that’s his superpower,” Alberta says. “He is free to fight in ways that are, you know, unrestrained, unmoored from biblical virtue. And that relationship with Trump has obviously evolved over the last eight years. What started as this very uneasy alliance for a lot of evangelicals with Trump has now morphed into this situation where, look, desperate times call for desperate measures. The barbarians are at the gates and we need a barbarian to keep them at bay. So when Trump openly flirts with authoritarianism and talks about sort of the power that he will wield to not only defeat his enemies, but to defeat your enemies and that he will be your retribution against them—yes, I mean I think there are lots of, of evangelical Christians who are kind of die-hard Trump supporters who hear that in an explicitly religious, sort of, us-versus-them, good-versus-evil context.”

Not only are evangelicals being radicalized by their information diet, but there is a “disproportionality crisis,” says Alberta. “If you go to church on Sunday morning, you are going to be in the word with your pastor for, you know, 30 minutes, maybe 40, 45 minutes, and you sing some songs, and you say the prayers, and then you are out in the world for the rest of the week,” he says. “And for most of these folks, as they’re out in the world, they are marinating in talk radio, in cable news, in social media—all of this information that is aimed at making them angry, fearful, hostile.” They may hear about Jesus’s teachings, such as loving one’s neighbor, “on Sunday morning for 45 minutes, but then for 4, 5, 6, 10 hours during the week, you’re hearing the exact opposite,” he adds. “And it’s that ratio being so far out of whack that I think is really at the heart of the crisis here.”