Same song, second verse

The data is still getting sorted, but evangelical Christians appear to have overwhelmingly voted for a second term for Donald Trump. Both The Washington Post and CNN report that 82% of white evangelicals voted for him.

In the aftermath of Trump’s first election in 2016, the often referred to figure of 81% of evangelicals who voted for him lived in infamy among the intelligentsia. That figure was the source of endless essays, Twitter (now X) threads, documentaries, books, and think pieces by certain high-profile evangelicals and secular critics of evangelicalism. All rallied around and inveighed against so-called evangelical corruption and the apparent searing of the evangelical conscience.

We can be almost certain that another round of recriminations will commence, considering the percentage is, for now, exactly one point higher than in 2016. I’m sure those prepping the columns are hydrating and doing calisthenics as I write.

My response to the criticism of evangelicals who voted for Trump may garner some surprise. If I can be so blunt, no one cares—and nor should they—what the commentariat thinks about evangelicalism anymore.

Not only would the strategy to continue this approach be ineffective now, but if anything, the data reveals that evangelicals didn’t take those criticisms seriously from the start. Legitimate criticisms about Christian nationalism or Christians justifying, ignoring, or downplaying Trump’s vices got lost in what seemed like endless hectoring and unfair character assassinations of evangelicals who preferred a Trump White House to the alternatives.

What we have seen, however, is how the vast majority of evangelicalism’s critics refuse to speak out against the progressivism of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. This fact reveals that some of the prophets of evangelicalism were never prophets. They were only partisans using the rhetoric of prophets. To spend four years howling about so-called evangelical corruption while giving progressivism a pass is not courageous. It is called controlled opposition.

If you are an evangelical thought leader and spent little to no time over the last four years speaking out against the secular progressivism of President Biden, no rank-and-file evangelical in the pew cares what you think anymore. Evangelicalism’s critics have not always been wrong in the criticism they have issued, but they have been condescending and inconsistent. The results of this election testify to the total collapse of elite institutions and high-profile opinion-makers dictating the thoughts and actions of everyday Americans. The American people, including a lot of evangelicals, are simply done living by the permission structures of those who think they are better than everyone else.

Conservative Christians are exhausted and frankly annoyed at the recriminations. After a while, people grow deaf to them. There is a reason that 82% of white evangelicals voted for Trump this year, and if all the explanations that evangelicalism’s critics come up with are reduced to accusations of racism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and nativism, then that shows even more the disconnect the accusers have in understanding how everyday evangelicals think.

There are highly rational reasons why evangelicals voted for Trump: They preferred his economy, his immigration policy, his foreign policy, his personnel, his opposition to gender ideology, his judicial appointments, his pro-religious liberty agenda, and his promise to dismantle the federal bureaucracy. Even flawed as he is (and yes, Donald Trump remains highly flawed, which we should never downplay or excuse), evangelicals voted for a government that more closely aligns with their values than the Biden administration did or a potential Harris administration would. The fact that millions of Americans and evangelicals looked at Trump’s baggage and still preferred his administration to the Democrats is not Donald Trump’s fault.

So, go ahead and throw out your “Christian nationalist” epithets all you want. Call us hypocrites, sellouts, theocrats, etc., etc. Indict the supposed seared conscience all you want. People aren’t listening, and frequently using those terms will only confirm the growing irrelevance of those who invoke them. What evangelicals will do is dismiss, ignore, and move on. After all, the sanctimonious use of those labels comes across as tone-deaf and partisan insults meant to countersignal one’s membership within elite society. If we stop caring about what those individuals think (as we should), we can experience the freedom of letting our conscience and the true motivations of our hearts belong to God and Scripture, not the dictates of man.

We must also consider that looking back, not only were the past eight years of criticism ineffective, but eight years later, there was a net increase in evangelical support for Donald Trump. This means evangelicals were not even listening to begin with. This must mean evangelicals are either irredeemably corrupt and suffused with every civic vice imaginable, or these voices have failed to understand evangelical political psychology.

The scale of Trump’s victory is a moment for self-reflection for the media and for the Democrats. Let me suggest it is a moment of self-reflection for those about to spend another four years haranguing their co-religionists and making the same tired criticisms of evangelicals that evangelicals will no longer give additional time caring about.