Jay Michaelson* of the Daily Beast writes:
A new study by Public Religion Research Institute—based on surveys taken before Charlottesville—showed that only 65 percent of white evangelicals have a favorable view of Trump. That’s still a huge majority, of course, but it’s down from the 80 percent who voted for him, and the 78 percent who approved of his job performance in a poll taken in April.
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To be sure, white evangelicals are still far more pro-Trump than other groups. For example, asked by PRRI whether Trump should be impeached, 79 percent of white evangelical Protestants said no, compared with 63 percent of mainline Protestants, 61 percent of white Catholics, and 45 percent of religiously unaffiliated Americans.
But Trump’s widely condemned responses to Charlottesville—first blaming “many sides” then backtracking, then doubling down on his original comments and adding that there were “fine people” marching alongside Nazis and white supremacists—have caused sharply divergent responses among Christian leaders.
(*Disclosure — I’m Jay’s spouse)
The drop in support will be worth continuing to track over the coming months.
A similar assessment, “Evangelicals Are Divided on Trump After Charlottesville,” from the Atlantic:
Tony Suarez, one of the (President’s Evangelical) advisory council members, said the pressure to quit has been intense. Over the last few days, he said, he’s gotten more than 1,000 messages via phone, text, and email calling him everything from “a hypocrite to a protector of neo-Nazism to supporting white supremacy.” Suarez, a pastor who serves as the executive vice president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, condemned the attacks in Charlottesville, calling “the racism and hate being spewed by the alt-right and white supremacists … an insult to Christianity and our country.”
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Even those who are steadfastly standing by Trump, like Suarez, recognize the fractures this president has caused among Christians. “We need to rebuke the partisan politics that have come into the church, and remember that before we were ever donkeys and elephants, we belonged to the lamb,” he told me. “It’s done. He is our president for the next three years, or longer. That’s not changing. Let’s come together and bring healing to our nation, because the only hope for this world is the church.”
Opinion pieces in USA Today, the LA Times, the New York Times and elsewhere post-Charlottesville are arguing that evangelical leaders who stick with Trump are “squandering their moral authority” (USA Today) and “show(ing) their true racist colors” (LA Times). However, only one member of Trump’s Evangelical Council — Rev. A.R. Bernard of Brooklyn — has quit the Council. So things appear to hold steady. But behind the scenes, America’s evangelical leaders may not be as lockstep as they have seemed.