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Trump Got 81% of the Evangelical Vote in 2016. Meet the Conservatives Who are Working to Vote Him Ou
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Trump got 81% of the evangelical vote in 2016. Meet the conservatives who are working to vote him out. [businessinsider.com.au]:
- 81% of white evangelical Christians voted for President Donald Trump in 2016, but his support has been dropping in recent months.
- Pastor Doug Pagitt of Minneapolis is going on a bus tour across the country to convince fellow Christians not to vote for the president.
- Pagitt has gathered the support of more than 1,600 faith leaders to endorse Joe Biden with him.
- View more episodes of Business Insider Today on Facebook. [facebook.com]
In 2016, 81% of white evangelical Christians voted Donald Trump for president.
Pastor Doug Pagitt of Minneapolis wasn’t one of them, but four years later, he said he still feels partly responsible for allowing Trump’s rise to power.
“As someone who spent my professional life and my whole adult life working in the industry with white Christians, I realised that my DNA was all over this crime scene, just like everyone else’s,” Pagitt said.
Now, Pagitt is organising anti-Trump rallies in swing states through his organisation Vote Common Good, trying to convince his fellow evangelical Christians to vote against the president. He travels with former worship pastor Daniel Dietrich and other artists, workers, and volunteers.
They denounce the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant families from their children at the US-Mexico border and its stoking of racial tensions, among other actions they view as unchristian. So far, Pagitt has convinced more than 1,600 faith leaders to endorse Joe Biden with him.
Pastor Doug Pagitt has convinced more than 1,600 faith leaders to endorse Joe Biden over Donald Trump.
The pastor has long had progressive views. But for years, he hesitated to speak out, thinking politics and religion should stay in separate arenas.
That all changed after listening to Black church leaders leading up to the 2018 midterm elections.
“My Black preacher friends tell me, the people of our communities are so affected by the political systems in our world that we have to be engaged in both of those,” Pagitt said. “So I realised that I was using my own privilege to not have to be involved in politics.”
Now this is a full-time job for Doug, who relies on donors to pay for the expenses of his bus tour.
But convincing other white evangelicals to change their minds isn’t easy. Especially since the demographic has voted Republican for about 50 years, in part because of the party’s position on LGBTQ and abortion rights.
Younger generations are becoming more progressive, however. Forty-five per cent of millennial evangelicals favour same-sex marriage, nearly double the support from older generations.
Pagitt has been hosting rallies in swing states meant to persuade evangelical Christians to vote against the president.
“I think that many leaders don’t think it’s worth it to lose anyone from their church over politics,” Pagitt said. “And I want to remind them that they’re not going to lose those people. You’re going to lose an entire generation who watched you stay silent when there was a moment that you needed to rise up.”
But when it comes to abortion, the generations align more closely. The Supreme Court case Roe V. Wade has been galvanizing evangelicals since it legalised abortion nationwide in 1973.
Still, a recent Pew Research Centre poll found support for the president among white evangelicals has gone down from 81% to 78% in recent months.
Meanwhile, Biden is leading among every other nonwhite religious group, including Hispanic Catholics and Black Protestants, as well as all atheists and agnostics.
Pagitt’s message to voters is simple.
“We’re not asking Republicans to not be Republicans. We’re asking Republican voters to not vote for this Republican,” he said. “I think this is a singular response to a singular threat to the well-being of this country and this planet.”
Elsewhere, evangelical Christians are finding ways to reconcile their faith with a vote for Biden Conservatives Rich and Lena Eng of Wisconsin started hosting discussion groups for evangelical Christians to discuss political and social issues.
For evangelical voters Rich and Lena Eng in Wisconsin, deciding not to vote for a Republican candidate was a difficult at first. But it became easier as they weighed in their concerns.
“The totality of issues at hand, whether it be the economy, whether it be foreign policy, whether it be healthcare, immigration, race — all of those weigh somewhat on my heart too, in addition to abortion,” Rich Eng told Business Insider Today. “And in the broad, summation of all those together, I find that I can justify my vote for a vice president Biden, even though he is pro-choice.”
Rich and Lena met in college while working for Christian organisations. They now live in a suburb of Milwaukee.
“There was a time in my life that if you were a true Christian all you could do is be Republican Party,” Rich Eng said.
But in 2016, they couldn’t bring themselves to cast a ballot for Donald Trump, writing in other candidates instead.
The couple recently started a “faith in politics” discussion group at their home, where they invite evangelicals of all political views to discuss topics that can be taboo in the church. One recent discussion group focused on the Black Lives Matter movement.
“The long term vision is that the church can be the leaders of learning, how to bridge the divide in a way that actually solves problems,” Lena Eng said. “And in the process, redeem evangelicalism, the Christian faith as a faith that is one of love. I think that exemplifies how Jesus would want us to live.”
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