In both popular culture and empirical analysis, many Trump supporters identify as evangelical Christian, with 81% of self-identified white evangelical Christians choosing to vote for Trump in the 2020 election by a Gallup poll. But what is it about this demographic bloc that appeals to Trumpsim? It is not solely the white identity, as 41% of voters who identified as white voted for Biden in 2020 in a Roper/Cornell poll. Nor is it solely the Christian identity, but the culture of and rhetoric used by conservative American evangelical communities that invites populist leaders. The history of conservative Christianity in America and the cultural aspects emphasized in their communities make this particular bloc predisposed towards populist leadership.

There are a few things I would like to make very clear before continuing. First of all, Christianity and Christians themselves are not predisposed towards populism, fascism, xenophobia, or anything that Trump likewise practices and espouses. In fact, Christ’s teachings in the New Testament overwhelmingly emphasize loving all neighbors regardless of identity or past actions and welcoming the “other.” Additionally, there are many other self-identified Christians who do not support Trump, including but not limited to Christian liberals and Black Christian groups. So the nature of this correlation is not due to some inherent nature of Christianity, rather a specific aspect of the culture of a certain sect of Christians in America.

Second, the use of the term “evangelical” is contested and has changed over time. Originally the term was coined to describe Christians who placed sharing Christianity with the world as one of their highest responsibilities to their faith. Now, the term is often used by both Chrsitians and media to describe American conservative Christians, which is merely a subgroup of evangelicals. For the purpose of this article, I will try to avoid using the term “evangelical” outside of its strict definition to avoid confusion with theological concepts (except for when referenced sources refer to the term), and I will refer to this cultural group as “American conservative Christianity.”

The anti-establishment nature of populism and Trump’s self-depiction as a political outsider or supposed truth-teller speaks to the history and formation of conservative Christianity in America. Originally from various established Protestant denominations, many conservative churches in America have been founded from extensive splintering. As groups of people felt that the church authority did not speak to them, they simply went out and started a new church. This phenomenon has become so widespread in America that a term has been coined for this particular type of Christianity, known as “grassroots churches,” unaffiliated with any particular group. This history of consistently rejecting religious elites in favor of a church supposedly more focused on the people is eerily reminiscent of populism’s signature anti-elite rhetoric and the drive to make a government more for the people. A group with a history of being skeptical with religious authority in large did not find it such a stretch to also be skeptical of established political authority. Since populists derive power from “a heterogeneous, amorphous, and largely unorganized mass of followers,” the American Christian right, fitting all of these with its spread-out grassroots nature, is ripe for populist pull (Weyland, “Why Democracy Survives Populism”).

Conservative Christian rhetoric also frequently paints Christians, past and present, as a persecuted group. While this may have been true of the Jewish communities in the Old Testament and early churches in the first few hundred years after Christ, it is certainly not true now in America. Christianity has long dominated the social and political sphere of American life, and continuing through our present other religions have been limited or even persecuted in favor of forcing Christian values as American values. However, many modern conservative Christians in America still emphasize and identify with these underdog communities. Because the communities the Bible tells of were in fact minorities at their time, much emphasis is placed on their struggle for freedom and life in both the Old and New Testament. However, many modern conservative Christians still wish to believe that this remains true and refuse to translate the contexts, so the populist concept of representing the ordinary downtrodden appeals to those who wish to believe they are persecuted.

Militant rhetoric against those not Christian also abounds in conservative American Christian culture. Phrases like “putting on the armor of God,” referring to the Bible as a “sword,” and referring to Christians as “soldiers” evoke an antagonistic stance against those who practice and represent values that differ from those of conservative Christianity. Many conservative American Christians also believe that in order to be a “true Christian” one must have a “born-again experience” of being called to Christianity by God and/or speaking in tongues and public performances of connection to God. These groups will also often exclude other Christian churches that do not emphasize these aspects, marking a territory of the truly righteous people of God and those who fall short (see here for a detailed description of conservative evangelical Christian cultural practices). The concept of an “us and them,” the chosen people and those who reject Christianity is already built into conservative Christian beliefs and emphasized in such militant rhetoric, echoing the moralistic approach populists take to politics (according to Jan-Werner Müller, What Is Populism). In his rise to power, Donald Trump was able to harness this rhetoric and spin it from a religious sense into a parallel political sense. By feeding into and expanding the “otherism” in American conservative Christianity, Trump was able to build a powerful base to support his bid for power.

All of these cultural factors that have built up in the American Christian right for decades have made it a fertile ground for populists to collect a strong base of supporters. And, in 2016, Trump successfully mobilized this cultural group into propelling him into the presidency. His populist campaigning and governing was and continues to be a widely-agreed upon threat to American democracy, successful not in spite of his populist tendencies, but because of their allure to the culture and rhetoric of the American Christian right.