{"id":310924,"date":"2020-08-21T15:21:35","date_gmt":"2020-08-21T19:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/?p=310924"},"modified":"2024-06-14T02:46:55","modified_gmt":"2024-06-14T06:46:55","slug":"how-will-white-evangelicals-vote-in-the-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2020\/08\/how-will-white-evangelicals-vote-in-the-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Faith in the ballot"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\n\t
\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tNation & World\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\n\t\t

\n\t\tFaith in the ballot\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\tHow white evangelicals tour the nation's capital and redeem a Christian America\t\t<\/p>\n\t\n\t\n\t

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\n\t\tMichael Naughton\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\tHDS Communications\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/address>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t

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Photo by Michelle Schapiro<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\t\n<\/header>\n\n\n\n

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As the 2020 presidential election nears closer, a key voting bloc for President Donald Trump remains white evangelicals. In a recent <\/span>Pew Research Center survey<\/span><\/a>, 82 percent of white evangelicals said they would vote for Trump this year. Nearly the same percentage backed him in 2016.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her new book, \u201c<\/span>Saving History: How White Evangelicals Tour the Nation\u2019s Capital and Redeem a Christian America<\/span><\/a>,\u201d Lauren Kerby, education specialist with the <\/span>Religious Literacy Project<\/span><\/a> at HDS and lecturer on religious studies, takes a close look at how white evangelicals tour the nation\u2019s capital searching for evidence that America was founded as a Christian nation.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/span>Kerby recently answered questions about her research and explained how white evangelicals shapeshift between roles of faithful patriots and persecuted outsiders, why the group continually reimagines the American story and their own place in it, and what it all means for the 2020 election.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q&A <\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Lauren Kerby<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

HDS:<\/strong> Can you discuss what interested you in this topic?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kerby:<\/strong> What interested me most about these tours was the chance to talk to ordinary people. We hear plenty in the media from white evangelical leaders and elites, but we don\u2019t often hear from the rank-and-file. I wanted to know what \u201cChristian America\u201d meant to a working mother in Iowa, to a retired nurse on the West Coast, to a school teacher from Florida. I was limited, of course, to people who chose to come on these tours in the first place, but it was still revealing. And what they said helped me to spot similar patterns of thought and speech in the wider white evangelical subculture in the kinds of media and products that ordinary white evangelicals consume. If we want to know why Christian nationalism is so persuasive to so many Americans, that\u2019s the level we need to be looking at.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These tours promised participants a trip to D.C. to see proof of everything that Christian nationalists claim about the Christian heritage of the United States. The online advertising alone was fascinating: it was all about how America\u2019s Christian history was being erased, and Christian Americans needed to step up and preserve it. The tour of D.C., of course, was how they could do so.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

HDS:<\/strong> For people unfamiliar with Christian heritage tours, can you describe what they are and describe some of the people you met \u2014 tour guides and tourists \u2014 while researching them?<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kerby:<\/strong> If you\u2019ve ever been to D.C., you\u2019ve probably seen most of the sites that Christian heritage tours would see. In many ways, they\u2019re like any other tour: they see Capitol Hill, the war memorials on the National Mall, Arlington National Cemetery, and so on. When I first started this research, one guide went out of her way to ensure I knew ahead of time that they didn\u2019t visit any churches! It\u2019s a Christian tour, but the Christianity comes out in the stories they tell about the sites and in the way they spotlight every reference to Christianity, even really minor ones. For them, it was a big deal to see something as tiny as a Ten Commandments icon in the tile floor of the National Archives vestibule. That was one more piece of evidence for America\u2019s Christian heritage, as they saw it.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I participated in nine of these tours, and the overwhelming majority of tourists I met were white, evangelical, and politically conservative. They came from all over the U.S., and most of them traveled in family groups. They were really kind and welcoming to me, I think especially because I was a young woman traveling alone. One group of women in their 70s tried really hard to set me up with one of their nephews, because he also liked history! <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The tour guides were also an interesting group. Even though they worked for different companies, their messages about Christian heritage were really similar, echoing claims made by David Barton and other leaders of the Christian Right. The women guides tended to be a little more reserved, while the men tended to take more of a fiery, prophetic tone. Sometimes it felt like a revival on the bus as they worked the crowd\u2019s emotions. People would clap or shout \u201camen!\u201d during the stories. But regardless of how each guide chose to lead their group, they were all passionately committed to this work as a means of serving God and country.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

HDS:<\/strong> You refer to this group as \u201cwhite evangelicals,\u201d not \u201cevangelicals.\u201d Can you say more about why the distinction matters?<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kerby:<\/strong> By now, it\u2019s old news that 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump. Non-white evangelicals, however, voted against him at a similar rate. Lumping all evangelicals together, as many outlets still do, erases non-white evangelicals. Even when theology is shared across these groups, the political behaviors I\u2019m interested in are distinct. So it\u2019s important to be specific about which subset of evangelicals I\u2019m talking about, and even then, it\u2019s worth noting that white evangelicals are themselves an internally diverse group. There\u2019s enough commonality that we can make generalizations, but there will always be exceptions. <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other reason I emphasize this group\u2019s whiteness is because I\u2019m talking about their historical relationship to the United States, and race is inextricable from that. White supremacy in the United States means that white evangelicals have enjoyed privileges and safety not granted to non-white communities, evangelical or otherwise. And one of the most distinctive features of Christian heritage tours is the way they highlight white Christians in American history and exclude everyone else. I want to draw attention to that with my word choice, because it shows the entanglement of Christian nationalism with white supremacy. When tourists say \u201cChristian America,\u201d they mean white evangelical America. It\u2019s much narrower than it sounds.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

HDS:<\/strong> You describe the stories that white evangelicals tell about themselves in relation to the nation falling into two narrative arcs \u2014 the insider and outsider narratives. Can you explain what you mean by that?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kerby: While I was in D.C., I noticed these two distinct \u2014 and contradictory \u2014 stories that guides and tourists told about Christianity in the U.S. In what I call the insider narrative, they claim that America is a Christian nation and that they, as Christians, are the rightful leaders of the nation. They argue that American law, for instance, is based in biblical law, and that the founders intended that Christianity would occupy a privileged position in government.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But they also tell stories about how the nation has abandoned its covenant with the Christian God, causing the United States to experience decline in morality and military power. This is what I call the outsider narrative: a story in which Christians are persecuted and victimized by a secular establishment that wants to erase the nation\u2019s Christian heritage and keep conservative Christians and their values out of government.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond the context of D.C., these two narratives are patterns for how white evangelicals talk about their relationship to the United States. Together, they form a jeremiad, the prophetic call for repentance and return to a past righteous state. And it\u2019s worth noting that one of the most famous slogans of the 21st century follows this exact pattern: Make America Great Again.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/span>HDS:<\/strong> In the book you write about how white evangelicals have created four roles for themselves in regard to the history of the nation: founder, exile, victim, and savior. You say they move easily among these four roles and this flexibility is a source of political power for the group. How so?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“I\u2019m really hoping we don\u2019t have a \u2018basket of deplorables\u2019 kind of moment this fall. But if we do, it will be a windfall for Trump. And we can do better than that.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Kerby:<\/strong> An essential part of political strategy is how you position yourself in the story you\u2019re telling. Are you the scrappy underdog? Are you the avatar for tradition? Are you a sympathetic victim? Depending on the circumstances, you\u2019ll probably benefit more from one position than another.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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