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Trump delivered on Supreme Court promise, but his pandemic response cost him support among Christians

The nomination of Amy Coney Barrett in the White House Rose Garden was supposed to be a triumphant moment for a long-standing alliance between Republican presidents and conservative Christians.

On Sept. 26, evangelical leaders sat in the rows behind Barrett’s family. Catholic leaders from the University of Notre Dame, where Barrett teaches, filled more seats. Other attendees included members of conservative advocacy groups that grew out of the Moral Majority movement initiated by evangelicals.

A prominent segment of that faith group had worked for decades to build enough political influence to advocate effectively for right-leaning appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court. Barrett would be Trump’s third such appointment.

“For white evangelicals, who have become largely single-issue voters, this is the moment they have been waiting for,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a presidential politics researcher from the University of Houston. “They want to see the court turn, and they want, in particular, for Roe v. Wade (and the constitutional right to abortion) to be overturned. This changing seat is the key to that.”

President Donald Trump walks with Judge Amy Coney Barrett to a news conference to announce Barrett as his nominee to the Supreme Court on Sept. 26 in Washington.
President Donald Trump walks with Judge Amy Coney Barrett to a news conference to announce Barrett as his nominee to the Supreme Court on Sept. 26 in Washington.

The nomination event Sept. 26 gained widespread public attention for a different reason.

At least 14 people in attendance – including the president – tested positive for COVID-19 within two weeks of the celebration, according to USA TODAY reporting. Few wore masks or adhered to federal guidelines for social distancing. At least 34 cases have been linked to the White House outbreak, including people who visited for different events.

Instead of showcasing what Trump delivered for conservatives of faith, the Rose Garden gathering was a snapshot of his crumbling support among swing Christian voters. Numerous polls, including figures released Monday, show that as people’s confidence in Trump’s pandemic response declined so did the percentage who said they would vote for his reelection.

“The picture of contrast at that event is notable,” said Andrew Lewis, a political science professor from the University of Cincinnati who wrote a book about conservative Christian politics. “They are not taking precautions for people in the room and their family members, which is in stark relief to the potential for a Supreme Court decision to protect the lives of the unborn.”

At first, Christian approval for Trump’s pandemic response mirrored the 2016 election turnout.

In late March, 81% of white evangelicals said he was doing a good or excellent job of managing the coronavirus crisis compared with the 77% who voted for him in 2016, according to surveys by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center and the group’s study of validated votes. This spring, 62% of white Catholics approved of Trump’s pandemic response compared with 64% who voted for him four years ago.

By early August, ratings of Trump’s pandemic decisions had slid 11 percentage points among white evangelicals and 16 points among white Catholics.

In the two weeks before the Rose Garden event, according to a poll released Monday by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), white Catholic support of the president's coronavirus response registered its lowest point this year: 40%.

Reduced confidence in Trump’s pandemic leadership could influence how some Christian voters cast their ballots.

In early August, 83% of white evangelical Protestants said they would vote for Trump, but that dropped to 78% by early October, according to Pew surveys. Support slipped even more – from 59% to 53% among white mainline Protestants and from 59% to 52% of white Catholics.

President Donald Trump holds a Bible up June 1 outside St. John's Church across Lafayette Park from the White House.
President Donald Trump holds a Bible up June 1 outside St. John's Church across Lafayette Park from the White House.

Experts in politics and religion said the Rose Garden event symbolizes why Trump's support among white evangelicals remains strong even as it erodes among other conservative and moderate Christians.

For evangelical Protestants, whose religious identity is tightly woven with politics, abortion is a top voting issue, but for other Christians, including some who lean Republican, abortion does not poll as a priority in this election. Since the spring, that could be driving a split among Christians about whether the president has handled the pandemic sufficiently to protect all lives. White Catholics have become an increasingly important swing vote in presidential elections.

If Trump’s support among conservative Christian voters drops more, Rottinghaus said, it would be “a difficult path for him to win the White House back.”

Election influence

Polls show that white, non-Hispanic self-described evangelical Protestants account for about one-quarter of all registered voters in the USA. For decades, the group has strongly supported Republicans.

They are the nation’s largest voting bloc by faith, race and ethnicity.

White evangelical voters are key to GOP candidates in national elections, but their influence is waning as America’s demographics shift.

White Christians from all branches of the faith accounted for nearly 6 in 10 registered voters in 2008 but less than half today. The slide is primarily driven by young Americans who say they are not religious.

Over the past decade, a growing number of white Catholics have described themselves as independent or Republican. Since the 2004 presidential election, political analysts said, this group holds particular influence over the outcome in swing states.

Nonwhite Christians have remained about one-fifth of registered voters in the past decade and are more likely than white families from the same faith traditions to vote for Democrats. That makes them a small target and less interesting to GOP strategists.

Polls show that a majority of nonwhite voters, regardless of faith, supported Democrat Joe Biden throughout the spring and summer with little variation.

The success of Trump’s campaign could hinge on the decisions of white Christians – and how they weigh his pandemic leadership against other issues.

History and identity

The contrast between staunch white evangelical support for Trump and the slipping support from white Catholics is tied to the evolution of each group’s political identity.

For decades, to be a white evangelical has been to be Republican.

“It really goes back, at least in the modern era, to 1948 when the Dixiecrats walked out of the Democratic convention,” said Marty Wiseman, a retired professor of history at Mississippi State University who led the John C. Stennis Institute of Government.

The delegates from Southern states, most of whom were white evangelicals, opposed the party adding a civil rights plank to the platform. Until that point, the American South – where the majority of white evangelicals lived – had voted solidly Democrat.

More white evangelicals joined the Republican Party after the Supreme Court deemed racial segregation of public schools unconstitutional in 1954. They felt even less welcome among Democrats when the party supported civil rights changes in the 1960s and when a Supreme Court decision recognized abortion as a constitutional right in 1973.

At the end of the 1970s, the Rev. Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority, a movement that sought to turn conservative evangelicals into an organized voting bloc focused on ending abortions. Unlike other prominent evangelicals of the era, he argued that faith and politics had to be blended. The Republican Party welcomed the influx of voters and catered its platform to them, strengthening the link between evangelicals’ religious and political identities.

Backed by 32 choreographed singers in red, white and blue, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, pastor of the 17,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va., presides over an "I Love America" rally at Legislative Plaza in Nashville on Oct. 15, 1979.
Backed by 32 choreographed singers in red, white and blue, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, pastor of the 17,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va., presides over an "I Love America" rally at Legislative Plaza in Nashville on Oct. 15, 1979.

That same history is not seen among Americans who belong to mainline Protestant or Catholic traditions. The groups have tended to lean Democratic, but polls show that both have remained divided politically. Though they have organized around particular policy issues – such as Catholics who advocate to abolish the death penalty – they have not built ties with a singular political party.

All that history and those identity politics play out in responses to the pandemic. Beyond being a public health issue, the coronavirus has become a strategic tool and talking point for both parties.

Role of government

The development of churches also informs political sensibilities and responses to the pandemic.

In American Protestant traditions, people are in charge of their own salvation and their own interpretation of the Bible. White evangelicals, in particular, attend independent churches without the hierarchical structure seen in mainline traditions.

Lewis, the professor from Ohio, said those religious views have historically led white evangelicals to prefer limited government. Translated to GOP speak: Social problems are best solved by individuals taking responsibility, not by expanding a government "nanny state."

“For American Catholics … there is less emphasis on the individual and more focus on community life, providing different sorts of impulses for how they approach politics,” he said.

In Catholic tradition, serving “the body of Christ” – the entire community – sometimes requires personal sacrifice. The hierarchical structure of the church reinforces the idea that institutions are important tools for good. Parishioners rely on the expert opinions of the pope, bishops and other ordained church leaders to make sense of the Bible rather than being encouraged to make their own interpretations.

Those differing attitudes show up in polls asking people about their adherence to public health orders and whom they trust to give them advice about the pandemic.

White evangelical Protestants are the Americans least likely to wear masks, but 63% say they do so in public, according to the PRRI survey in September. Seventy-eight percent of white Catholics and Americans overall say they wear masks at all times in public.

The evangelical leaders at the Rose Garden nomination event for Barrett are among the conservatives who staunchly defended the president’s lax approach to pandemic precautions.

Contrasting with evangelical attendees, the Rev. Paul Scalia admitted his decision not to wear a mask contradicted the requirements of the Catholic parish where he preaches.

The public reaction to Catholic leaders of Notre Dame not wearing masks at the event contrasts with the evangelical response. Among other criticisms and demands, Notre Dame students called for their president to resign. He apologized.

Less than a day after returning to the White House from the hospital where he was treated for COVID-19, Trump again compared the coronavirus to the flu and incorrectly claimed it is “far less lethal.” Researchers say COVID-19 kills people at least five times as often as the flu.

“Are we going to close down our Country (for the flu)?” the president said on Twitter this month. “No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid.”

Life as sacred

The mounting tally of deaths from COVID-19 could weaken the president's support among some Christians, depending on how their faith defines “life issues.”

Fundamentalists – such as evangelicals and some conservative Catholics – prioritize unborn children for protection because they are seen as the least able to defend themselves.

Barrett – who asserted that her personal faith will not influence her judicial decisions – is a Catholic and a member of a conservative wing that shares a strong anti-abortion stance with evangelicals.

Catholics have been divided for decades about abortion, according to polls. The official church position is to oppose them.

Most Catholics – as well as mainline Protestants – take a more holistic view of life as sacred than evangelicals do.

The secular phrase “social justice” originates from Catholic “social teachings.” The doctrine calls believers to action on matters of human dignity and common good in society, stretching from conception to natural death.

That wider view of life as important could drive differences in who considers the pandemic a voting issue.

Religion, politics and public health have intersected during the coronavirus pandemic.
Religion, politics and public health have intersected during the coronavirus pandemic.

About 60% of the country says the coronavirus pandemic is a “critical” issue in the presidential election, including 58% of white Catholics and 55% of white mainline Protestants, according to the PRRI poll released Monday. More Hispanic Catholics (72%) and Black Protestants (79%) say it is.

Thirty-five percent of white evangelical Protestants say the pandemic is critical. They are the only group polled by PRRI in which a majority say abortion is a critical issue and the only group not to list the pandemic as a top-three concern.

Jason Shelton, a sociology professor at the University of Texas-Arlington who co-wrote a book about the political views of faithful Americans, said people who don’t prioritize the coronavirus might change their vote.

“My neighbor told me she was going to vote Democratic for the first time in her entire life,” Shelton said. “Clearly, a lot of folks are feeling the weight of the future of the country like they have not seen in the course of their lives. And they could be voting in a way they have never voted before.”

Although white Catholics might continue to slide to the left, Robert Jones of the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute said he would be surprised if anything in the final weeks before Election Day could shift the white evangelical vote away from Trump.

“Rank-and-file evangelicals are really strongly supportive of the president,” he said, reflecting on favorability ratings over the past year. “Impeachment didn’t move it; 215,000 dead Americans didn’t move it. It really is remarkable to see the allegiance.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump delivered on court, but coronavirus cost him Christian support