"There is also this incorrect narrative that evangelicals held their nose and voted for Trump. But there is really no evidence for that. White evangelicals support Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric and his anti-black rhetoric and all those related racial grievance issues. They were breathing comfortably and freely when they pulled the lever for Trump in both 2016 and 2020."
@seachanger@CosmicTraveler You may find Robert P. Jones’ three books illuminating about what’s driving white evangelical political choices for the past few decades, as reported to PRRI pollsters. There’s a lot of talk about how it’s only about abortion, but the answers given by wide evangelicals to questions about racial matters and immigration show that at the very bottom of it all is racist reaction, out of which the anti-abortion movement was spawned.
@seachanger@CosmicTraveler As someone who grew up in the same white evangelical culture in which Robert P. Jones grew up, both of us as Southern Baptists, I find his take on white evangelicals and their racial motivations very accurate.
@seachanger@CosmicTraveler I’m well aware that a lot of voters who claim that they vote exclusively against abortion actually poll right along with white evangelicals in their attitudes towards racial issues and immigration. When Paul Weyrich created the coalition of white evangelicals and Catholic bishops that formed the religious right, he explicitly stated that he chose to focus on abortion because it hid the racist origins of this coalition.
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@seachanger@CosmicTraveler Empirical studies and polls show that a lot of people who claim that they vote exclusively on the basis of abortion share the attitudes of white evangelical voters about racial and immigration issues. The three books that Robert P. Jones has now written do a very good job of demonstrating that point.
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@seachanger@CosmicTraveler Thanks for what you've shared. I'll post a few more thoughts about this topic later today and will @ you so that you'll see what I've posted.
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