As the largest constituency in the GOP, white Evangelical Christians have more or less dictated a lot of party policy in its platform for quite some time. But in all of the years that they have controlled the GOP, they have yet to nominate an Evangelical, buy the true definition of what that means, for the Presidency. The closest they've come is with the Vice-Presidency, though by what has been considered a "standard" definition of Evangelical Orthodoxy, Sarah Palin might be the only GOP VP candidate who fits with that definition.
The Republican party's leadership "flirts" with Evangelical Christians. Some of them actually belong to Evangelical congregations or have connections somewhere in that faith tradition so they know how to push buttons and motivate voters. The bottom line has been the GOP's ability to keep opposition to abortion rights and the judicial goal of overturning Roe v. Wade in the platform despite growing opposition to doing that from other segments of the party. As long as that is in place, it is not difficult to convince Evangelical voters to go along with policy or positions that, in many cases, fall outside the boundaries of their orthodoxy. But "being against abortion" has been the mantra.
Jerry Falwell and the "Moral Majority"
Falwell was the agent who officially linked the GOP to many American Evangelicals. Among Falwell's brand of Independent, Fundamental Baptists, voting in "secular" elections was considered a dependence on "worldly power" and there were segments of that group that dropped their support for Falwell when he pushed into the party and supported Reagan's candidacy for President. The incumbent President Jimmy Carter was also a Baptist, but had been marked as a "liberal" by Falwell and his group because Carter had been among a group that left a church because it would not baptize African Americans or allow them to become members. They established the Plains Baptist Church which was open to integration.
There is a separation among Evangelicals between those who have been branded as "liberal" and those who are "conservative" which does run along political fault lines. It can be discerned, in all of the rhetoric from sermons and writings in books that integration was the issue which defined whether or not an Evangelical church, especially among Baptists and Pentecostals in the South, was liberal or conservative. Being in favor of integrated schools was a bad thing, but integrating churches was messing with God's holy order. Carter, who was and has remained a doctrinally and theologically conservative Southern Baptist, was branded "liberal" because he belonged to an integrated church and favored integrated schools. Abortion, in the late 70's, was still up for discussion.
It took a while for the impact of bringing the moral majority and Falwell's brand of Evangelical into the GOP fold. As their presence led the party to become more focused on social issues and less focused on Barry Goldwater conservativism, it began to lose members from among those who tended to be less fundamental and conservative in their faith. After the Reagan presidency, that's where the fault lines developed in the GOP. And that's where the foundations started tearing apart, producing the rift between social conservatives and economic conservatives that continues to exist. Ironically, it would be the social conservatives who pushed the nomination of the world's most immoral, evil, wicked politician as their party standad bearer in 2016.
Few White Evangelicals From Which to Choose
Jimmy Carter was a Southerner from Georgia, a Sunday school teacher, salt-of-the-earth kind of guy who was uncomfortable and somewhat awkward in political settings, but whose mixture of southern accented conversation comfortably contained the jargon of those who are lifelong members of Southern Baptist churches and have a strong faith undergirded by the Bible's narratives. Ronald Reagan, a divorced former Hollywood actor and non-church-goer, was awkward and uncomfortable talking about Christian faith. When he was asked by a reporter if he was "born-again," a term that Carter had used which initially confounded the media because of their ignorance of it, Reagan had to ask exactly what that meant before he answered the question.
But in spite of those obvious differences, Reagan picked up a majority of the white, Evangelical vote, though the 56% that the exit polling showed he received was not enough to best Carter's 65% support from people who considered themselves to be "born again Christians.' The percentage of white Evangeicals voting Republican would eventually grow much larger, but even though Carter still got a higher percentage of church-goers overall, the support from Falwell and the "Moral Majority" was enough to get Reagan elected.
Democrats Don't Seem to Mind Nominating Evangelicals
The only three identifiable Evangelical Christians, by church membership, doctrine and theology and regular church attendance, elected to the Presidency since World War 2 were all Democrats, and ironcally, like Carter, all Southern Baptists. Harry S. Truman was from Missouri, not exactly a Southern state but he had been baptized upon his conversion experience into the membership of Benton Boulevard Baptist Church in Independence at age 18. He later joined First Baptist Church of Grandview, and was a regular church-goer for the rest of his life, though he claimed that he did not always live up to the expectations of his faith.
And in addition to Carter, who was the second Evangelical President since World War 2, there was Bill Clinton, also a southerner and a lifelong Southern Baptist. As a child, attending Sunday school at the First Baptist Church in Hope, Arkansas, he was baptized and became a member of the Park Place Baptist Church in Hot Springs, Arkansas at age 9. During his years as Arkansas governor, he belonged to Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock where he played saxophone in the church orchestra.
During that same period of time, since World War 2, all but one of the Republican nominees and office holders have been members of liberal, mainline Protestant churches except Reagan, who was never identifiably a member or attender of any church, and Nixon, who was a Quaker, a very theologically broad, open and mostly liberal branch of Protestant Christianity. Eisenhower was raised Mennonite, but was not baptized into the membership of any church until 10 days after his inauguration, when he joined the National Presbyterian Church, an extremely liberal congregation belonging to the extremely liberal PCUSA. Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush were members of the liberal Episcopal Church, U.S.A. George W. Bush, raised Episcopalian, is a member of the liberal United Methodist Church and once declared that he believed the "three great world religions", Christianity, Judaism and Islam, were all "pathways to God."
Then there's Trump. Prior to running for office, he claimed to have been "Presbyterian" but family members say that's in name only, without much substantiation. He still has not made anything that Evangelicals can identify as a "profession of faith," in fact publicly denying that he has ever done anything requiring forgiveness. His "spiritual advisor" (his words) is Paula White, a self proclaimed "prophetess" in the Word of Faith tradition, a Charismatic offshoot that most Evangelicals consider completely heretical and idolatrous. The vast majority of Evangelicals also do not recognize women as pastors or "prophetesses." So there's that.
The GOP Has Rejected the Evangelicals Who Have Sought Nomination Since 1980
The irony of the whole GOP nomination process in 2016 was that several Evangelical Christians were in the original GOP field before Trump emerged as the front-runner. They included two Southern Baptists--Senators Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham along with Florida Senator Marco Rubio, whose background is Catholic, but who frequents a large, Southern Baptist megachurch near his home. The party of "faith and family values" picked a twice divorced, publicly proclaimed adulterer, strip club and gambling casino owner, business fraud, pathological liar and overall con artist over the Evangelicals, and at least three devout, practicing Catholics in the field. Did they see their character as being worse, or have they abandoned the values that brought Evangelicals into the party.
I would submit that, apart from using abortion and now the issues surrounding the rights of LGBTQ persons as political footballs to gather votes and for election purposes, the GOP was never the party of "faith". True conservativism has a hypocritical appearance of respect for religion, but Christian values and the pursuit of money do not work together well. I would also say that the nomination of Donald Trump, in and of itself, was a very clear statement about the values held by the GOP and it is quite obvious they lack any consistency or compatibility with those of Evangelicals, or any Christians, who take their faith seriously.
Cruz and Graham, while members of churches that belong to the Southern Baptist convention, have not demonstrated much personal conviction or character related to their faith when it comes to their political posture or position. Their political positions are not very compassionate or caring when it comes to people's needs, they're both rich men supporting selfish politics. Even so, both would have been a better choice than Trump if the Evangelical connection to the GOP had been seriously considered.
The most bizarre episode in this whole political scenario was the nomination of Mitt Romney in 2012. Romney is a Mormon who demonstrates a reasonable committment to his religious beliefs. There are multiple Evangelical sources which carry a lot of theological and doctrinal authority who have dissected the Mormon doctrines and beliefs and have declared Mormonism a heretical cult on grounds of Biblical evidence. There are several conservative Evangelical apologetics ministries that have built an entire career on exposing the false claims and distorted theology of Mormonism.
But it was the weight of Evangelical support for Romney, when the race for nomination came down to two candidates and his opponent was former Southern Baptist pastor and Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee. Huckabee has become much more of a politician from a character perspective than a pastor, and Romney, while also occasionally being more politician than man of faith, had few real political differences other than Romney's less strident and much more lenient view of Roe v. Wade. But Evangelical support gave Romney the edge in the nomination. The former Falwell bastion of empire, Liberty University, gave Romney their stage at convocation.
The Power of the Presidency, Not the Power of the Cross
The direction of Evangelical support toward a Mormon, and then toward a debauched playboy adulterer and liar points to the conclusion that Evangelicals in politics are after the power of the Presidency, not the power of the cross. Maybe prayer is still involved in trying to resolve humanity's problems for some Evangelical Christians who haven't sold out like this, but those who have lent their name and influence to the GOP have made the choice. They aren't after revival. If Mormonism is a cult, in Evangelical belief, then a Mormon President isn't going to bring a Christian revival to the US. And an unrepentant adulterer and pathological liar who waves his fist in God's face and declares himself to be the essential element of resolving humanity's problems isn't going to bring it either.
That's not to say that Huckabee, Cruz or any other Evangelical who might, one day, succeed in getting elected is God's man for the purpose of bringing a spiritual revival to this country. Spiritual revival is going to come from the church, not the government. The nation is better off in the hands of a President who depends on his own faith for guidance and strength and gets his rest and renewal from it than it is from someone who uses their faith as a vehicle for gaining political power.
Response 9/I9/202I
Though some of his apologists insist that George W. Bush fit the definition of Evangelical because of his claim to a personal spiritual conversion experience, I point out that's not just an Evangelical characteristic but is also a Wesleyan distinction common among Methodists. Bush has continued to keep his church membership in UMC congregations that side with the liberal faction of the church promoting the ordination of LGBTQ persons to the clergy. If you ask an Evangelical pastor if Methodists are Evangelicals, he'd say "no."
Clinton's experience, on the other hand, is very typically Evangelical. He was reached by the church through its children's ministry program, pre-school, vacation Bible school, Sunday school. He had a conversion experience at age 9. If you read biographical or auto-biographical work on Clinton, it wasn't just that he knew the language. He knew when he'd gotten away and he knew how he had to go back. And like most people who know when they're not "right with God," he tried to postpone repentance to a more convenient time. But he came back. Carter teaches Sunday school and has left a long, long record of straight-up Evangelical belief and theology out in the open. He matured, like you'd expect of any Christian, crossing over into the kind of acceptance of people where they are, that is the faith trajectory of Christianity. He's not a "militant" Evangelical, but he is Evangelical.
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