Former President Donald Trump needs white evangelical Christians to turn out in force if he is to win the election. But as a Southern Baptist pastor in Texas who wants him to defeat Kamala Harris in November, what I heard at this week’s presidential debate leads me to conclude that Trump risks alienating evangelical voters by heeding bad advice.
Evangelicals have long voted for Republicans, motivated by commitments to life, family values and religious freedom. But several recent Trump statements — presumably heeding guidance from non-evangelical campaign advisors — run counter to most evangelical Christians’ views.
The large majority of evangelicals think abortion is the taking of a human life and should thus be illegal. Evangelicals are grateful for Trump’s role in ending Roe v. Wade, sending questions of abortion legality back to the states, but their pro-life commitments don’t end there.
That’s why we’re troubled by Trump’s statement that his administration will be “great for women and their reproductive rights,” embracing Democrats’ euphemism for abortion-on-demand. In this week’s debate, he said there would be no nationwide abortion ban on his watch, after endorsing nationwide legality of chemical abortions in the first debate.
Evangelicals are also known for focusing on the family, believing that families are essential for the nurturing and protection of children, who fare best with a married father and a mother. That commitment extends to how evangelicals view immigration policy, with 92 percent of Trump-voting evangelicals saying that immigration policies should “protect the unity of the immediate family.”
The “largest deportation operation in American history” that the former president touted in the debate, however, would separate families on a horrifying scale. Evangelicals want secure borders, to be clear, but not the mass deportation of up to 20 million people.
Of course those who commit violent crimes must be deported (if ever allowed out of jail). But the reality — which evangelicals know, because many of our churches include immigrants — is that the vast majority of immigrants have never committed violent crimes. We don’t appreciate the insinuation that most immigrants are criminals.
There’s simply no way to deport 20 million individuals without deporting millions of non-violent parents of U.S. citizens. In my state of Texas alone, the deportation of all immigrants without legal status would lead to nearly 1 million U.S. citizen children growing up without a mom, dad or other family member.
Trump acknowledged in a recent interview that “as soon as we grab...a woman with two children, three children [who] shouldn’t be here, but [who’s] a nice woman” there will be media pressure for him to stop. But he has concluded such separation of a mother from her children is “hard” but “we have no choice.”
He seems to forget that separating children from their mothers at the border — albeit on a smaller scale than what “mass deportation” would imply — was the rare first-term Trump policy that most white evangelicals opposed. Prominent Trump-supporting evangelicals such as Franklin Graham, Ralph Reed and Bob Vander Plaats called it, respectively, “disgraceful,” “heartbreaking” and “cruelty.”
Finally, evangelicals have always stood for religious freedom, which includes offering refuge to those denied religious liberty abroad. Seventy-two percent of evangelicals believe the U.S. has a moral responsibility to accept refugees fleeing religious persecution, most of whom are persecuted Christians.
Trump’s pledge to suspend all refugee resettlement “on day one” leads some evangelicals to wonder if a vote for him is a vote against the persecuted church.
To be clear, few evangelical voters will run into the arms of Kamala Harris. As she made clear in the debate, on each of these issues — life, family values and religious freedom — she’s less aligned with evangelicals’ views overall than Republicans.
But if recent rhetoric from Trump on these issues leads enough evangelical voters to elect “none of the above,” it will be decisive.
According to exit polls, while Trump received roughly 80 percent of the white evangelical vote in both 2016 and 2020, the white evangelical share of the overall electorate declined from 26 percent to 22 percent. Hundreds of thousands of evangelical voters sat out in 2020, and Joe Biden went to the White House.
If Trump wants to direct his trademark “You’re Fired!” to Kamala Harris, he must first do so to any advisors foolishly telling him that to win he must embrace abortion rights, become be so “tough” on immigration that he separates families and keep out persecuted Christians.
If he listens to Christians, he can win — and ultimately be a champion for life, families and religious freedom.
Tim Moore is the senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Leander, Texas.
