You’re probably tired of hearing the Pew statistic that 81% of white evangelicals who voted in 2016 voted for Donald Trump. (Joe Carter’s early clarifications of the statistic are helpful.)
As I have written elsewhere, I believe it is incumbent on the 81% to explain why they supported a candidate who so publicly disregards and even opposes basic biblical values. (There have been some attempts at this, albeit unsatisfying ones.) It’s not that people always vote all their values or in their own best interest (and a limited two-party system makes voting values tricky for many, myself included), but the disconnect between the professed tenets of classic evangelicalism and the words and actions of Trump is remarkable.
John Fea, a historian and evangelical at Messiah College, offers an explanation in his just-released Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump (Eerdmans, 2018):
“For too long, white evangelical Christians have engaged in public life through a strategy defined by the politics of fear, the pursuit of worldly power, and a nostalgic longing for a national past that may have never existed in the first place. Fear. Power. Nostalgia. These ideas are at the heart of this book, and I believe that they best explain that 81 percent.” (6)
That’s the thesis of the book, which I will be reviewing here in the coming weeks. “This book,” Fea says, “is the story of why so many American evangelicals believe Donald Trump” (10).
In the meantime you can read more about the book here.
Words on the Word 