WASHINGTON (RNS) — A new survey shows a sharp racial and religious divide over whether the actions of President Trump are encouraging white supremacist organizations.
Three-quarters of black Protestants say Trump’s behavior and decisions are emboldening white supremacists while slightly more than a quarter of white evangelicals agree with that view. Overall, more than half of Americans — 54 percent — say this is the case.
The findings, released Monday (Oct. 29), are part of Public Religion Research Institute’s 2018 American Values Survey, which addressed U.S. views on issues such as the presidency, the #MeToo movement, immigration and police brutality.
The survey comes days after a massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue by a gunman with apparent anti-immigrant animus and a racially motivated shooting in which a white gunman killed two black people at a Kroger supermarket in Jeffersontown, Ky., after trying unsuccessfully to enter a predominantly black church.
Meanwhile, the Defense Department readies for a migrant caravan’s approach toward the U.S.- Mexico border that Trump has called an “invasion.”
PRRI found that majorities of the religiously unaffiliated (69 percent), Hispanic Catholics (68 percent), non-Christians (64 percent) and Hispanic Protestants (63 percent) say the president is encouraging white supremacists, compared with fewer than half of white mainline Protestants and white Catholics (43 percent each). Evangelicals — and, to a lesser degree, white Catholics — also voted for Trump by wide margins in 2016 and many continue to…
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