Sensational Baptist opinion editorial: Last Call For Aging White Evangelicals

[link:https://baptistnews.com/article/last-call-for-aging-white-evangelicals-the-political-marriage-to-trump-will-collapse-what-then|

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The coalition of Trump and conservative, white evangelicals is fueled by simple desperation. They need one another, and they know it.

For those watching from a distance, this relationship has all the appeal of a “Last Call” hookup. Like Kenan Thompson’s character, we just want to make them stop. “They’re selling their souls,” we say, “He’s playing these religious rubes like Paganini on a Stradivarius.” But both parties are acting in their own best interest, and they will keep it up as long as humanly possible.

But that might not be very long. As I have said, aging white evangelicals may be powerful, but they are also a people most to be pitied. Like John the Revelator’s devil, they are filled with “great wrath” for they know their time is short. Only 25 percent of younger evangelicals hold a “very favorable” opinion of Trump, compared to 55 percent of older evangelicals. Only 24 percent of religiously unaffiliated voters sided with Trump in the 2016 election, and this group grows with each election cycle, while evangelical numbers are dropping. Aging white evangelicals are fighting like there’s no tomorrow because … there isn’t

Trump promised to carry water for aging white evangelicals by giving their leaders unparalleled access to the White House; appointing pro-life, anti-gay jurists throughout the federal court system; and moving the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem while behaving as if the Palestinians didn’t exist.

Most significantly, Trump promised to staunch the stream of refugees and immigrants flowing into the United States. According to the Pew Research Center, the foreign-born population of the United States was just under 10 million in 1970. By 2017 it was over 44 million and growing faster than the native-born population. In 1970, 68 percent of American immigrants came from Europe and Canada; these predominantly white regions now produce less than 14 percent of new immigrants, while 78 percent come from Mexico, Latin America and Asia. Since 1980, immigration from predominantly black countries has increased fivefold.

If new arrivals from “shithole countries” shared the aging white evangelical admiration for Trump, wall-building wouldn’t be such a passionate concern. But they don’t. Though recent immigrants tend to be socially conservative, they sense that the president wants them gone.