Why Some Evangelicals Refuse To Acknowledge That Trump Has Lost The Election
Even as his positiongrowsincreasingly isolated, President Donald Trump is not walking alone in his suspended state of disbelief about the results of the 2020 election. He is being propped up, as he has for years, by his loyal evangelical Christian fans.
While someevangelical leadersand institutions have congratulated President-elect Joe Biden on his win, there is a large segment of the group that is staying mum on the issue ― or clinging to the Trump campaign’s unproven claims of widespread fraud.
The president’s closest evangelical advisers are split between those who are actively promoting the election fraud narrative, those who are subtly suggesting to their followers that there was fraud, and those who are silent, according to John Fea, a history professor at Messiah University who has been blogging about these Trump allies.
Fea told HuffPost he doesn’t know of any of these “court evangelicals” ― his label for the modern equivalent of the religious courtiers who once surrounded kings ― who have openly rejected the voter fraud claims. The ally who got the closest to publicly acknowledging the election results was Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress. In a Nov. 7 Fox News op-ed, Jeffress wrote that Biden “appears” to be the president-elect, unless Trump wins his legal challenges. That op-ed made headlines and, after it became clear that Jeffress’ stance was not shared by his peers, the pastor tweeted a condemnation of “false media reports” that he’d broken with the president. Over the last few weeks, Jeffress, who spent the past four years vigorously defending some of Trump’s most controversial policies, has been largely silent about the election on Twitter.
Some of Trump’s close evangelical allies have suggested they are waiting for the “truth” to be made known about the election ― including Franklin Graham, son of the late evangelist Billy Graham; Paula White, Trump’s spiritual adviser; and Tony...
