Red State Christians
Understanding the Voters Who Elected Donald Trump
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
Donald Trump, a thrice-married, no-need-of-forgiveness, blustery billionaire who rarely goes to church, won more Evangelical Christian votes than any candidate in history on his way to winning the 2016 US presidential election. Veteran journalist Angela Denker set out to uncover why, traveling the United States for a year, meeting the people who support Trump, and listening to their rationale.
In Red State Christians, readers will get an honest look at the Christians who gave the presidency to the unlikeliest candidate of all time. From booming, wealthy Orange County megachurches to libertarian farmers in Missouri to a church in Florida where the pastors carry guns to an Evangelical Arab American church in Houston to conservative Catholics on the East Coast--the picture she paints of them is enlightening, at times disturbing, but always empathetic. A must-read for those hoping to truly understand how Donald Trump became president.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist and Lutheran minister Denker investigates why evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election in her enriching debut. During the run-up to the election, she explains, Christian nationalism "battled for pre-eminence with the universal... gospel of Jesus Christ" as Christians started to "look for anyone who would make them winners again." Republican evangelicals argued that Trump's former abuse of women could be overlooked if he ran on pro-life issues, and, according to Denker, they see his follow-through on campaign promises to nominate conservative judges to the Supreme Court as validation of their views. Denker studies a geographically diverse group, surveying Christians from Orange County, Calif.; Naples, Fla.; Cole Camp, Mo.; and Houston, Tex., among many others. While she finds many evangelicals supportive of Trump solely based on his pro-life stance, other mainstream Protestant voters in rural areas Denker visited "saw an underlying flow of economic boons and conservative governance" that would come with "running the country like a business." In a particularly illuminating section comprised of interviews in Appalachia, Denker details how Christians supported Trump because he could "restore national pride and patriotism," and that they "resonated with Trump's condemnation of kneeling NFL players, focusing on the idea of Trump as the paragon of national pride." Through attending sermons, interviewing churchgoers and students, and diligently recording her experiences, Denker etches a vivid and revealing picture of the moral bargains struck by evangelical Christian Americans.
