Since Donald Trump burst onto the political scene in 2016, there is one group among which he has maintained consistent and unwavering support – white evangelicals. While votes from the faith community have been invaluable to Trump’s political goals, some have also lamented the subsequent effect politics have had on distorting the true meaning of the term “evangelical.” Indeed, in our divisive political times, evangelicals are seen – at least in the mainstream media – as being almost synonymous with President Trump.
“Evangelicalism went from being America’s most controversial religious movement to its most reviled one,” writes the Vardaman Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor University, Thomas S. Kidd, in a feature piece at Desiring God. Trump’s election, Kidd said, has “generated an often-acrimonious debate among scholars about whether embracing “Trumpism” was an aberration for white evangelicals, or instead, a natural outgrowth of what the movement always has represented.”
As ever, the media has happily labeled all evangelicals as Trump supporters. This, along with an inability to define what being an “evangelical” truly means in the context of our current cultural climate, has caused a “crisis with acute political ramifications,” according to Kidd.
The problem, Kidd argues, goes far beyond political jostling. Rather, there is…
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