Prayer Gap
Does it seem odd to you that a very large percentage of Evangelical Christians support Donald Trump for President?
Evangelical Support for Trump. According to the Pew Research Center 85% of White Evangelical Protestants supported Trump for President in 2020. After the Iowa caucuses in January 2024, an article in the Guardian indicated that Evangelicals made up 53% of Trump’s supporters in 2024 Iowa polling. The article goes on to say:
Support for Trump among Evangelical Christians can be chalked up to “transactional politics,” said Anne Nelson, author of Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right.
Their support may be puzzling on the surface – Trump, a philandering and corrupt adulterer twice divorced who is not particularly religious, would seem an unlikely candidate for wide support from the devout.
But behind the scenes, leaders in the Evangelical movement, including influential members of the Southern Baptist church, struck a deal with Trump in 2016.
In exchange for the support and endorsements of church leaders, Trump would afford Evangelicals institutional power in his administration. Through an Evangelical advisory board, they would help set social policy and do whatever they could to end the legal right to abortion.
Leaders in the church, in exchange, crafted a message that would make Trump more palatable to members. To Evangelicals, “Trump was not a man of God,” said Nelson. “He was an instrument of God, like King Cyrus, the Persian king in the Bible.”
The bargain held: Trump won the support of Evangelical voters and then delivered to them a Supreme Court that overturned Roe v Wade, erasing nearly 50 years of legal precedent that guaranteed the right to abortion.
The “transactional” analysis of why Evangelical Christians overwhelmingly support Trump makes sense. However, a big something else is going on too.
Christian Nationalism: According to PEW, 81% of White Evangelicals are Christian Nationalists, a political ideology that seeks to embed Christianity into the national identity of the United States.
Christian Nationalists in the U.S. proclaim that God has chosen the United States to manifest Christian values, and the U.S. government should enforce a specific interpretation of Christianity on society through legal and political means.
Christian Nationalists are usually authoritarians, with a preference for strong leaders and centralized power structures to enforce Christian values and norms. This clearly clashes with Democratic principles and individual freedom.
Christian Nationalists typically support Putin in Russia, who has implemented a form of Christian Nationalism, except with Russia as also a nation chosen by God.
Christian Nationalists oppose separation of church and state and advocate for the integration of Christian beliefs into all aspects of public life, including education, government, and media.
And finally, typically, Christian Nationalists are cultural conservatives, adhering to traditional gender roles, family structures, and socio/economic and environmental norms. This means opposing abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, action to address climate change, and socially and environmentally responsible business.
Christian Nationalists view Donald Trump as their vehicle in the United States and he enthusiastically embraces that view.
The Prayer Gap: Evangelical Christians talk to God – a lot. They pray – a lot. And they believe that God responds to them. In some cases they hear his voice. Evangelical Christianity is based on a personal acceptance of Jesus as Savior and a personal relationship with God.
So, let’s try a thought experiment. How many people are prayed for Donald Trump to win the 2024 and are praying for Trump/MAGA Republicans to win the midterms in 2026.
According to a recent Pew study, approximately 15% of adults in the U.S. were White Evangelical Christians and 85% of them supported Trump in 2020. That amounts to somewhere around 25 million White Evangelicals support Trump.
A very large majority of these Evangelical Christians communicate with God often.
They pray for what they want for themselves, for their families, for their communities, and for their country. They prayed for Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election and they are praying for Trump/MAGA Republicans in 2026. They pray for the imposition of Christian Nationalism in the U.S. Let’s be conservative and estimate that 15 million White Evangelicals are praying for Trump and the MAGA Republicans at least twice a week. That’s 30 million prayers every week.
Given Trump’s denial of the 2020 election, which he lost by more than 7 million votes and his instigation of the January 6, 2021 insurrection and the many actions he and his supporters have taken since his 2024 election in support of authoritarianism, praying for victory for Trump and MAGA means praying against Democracy.
That means that, conservatively, we have the Christian Nationalists praying 30 million prayers against Democracy every week. The number could be much higher. Some Evangelicals pray many times a day.
How many people do you think are praying for Democracy? How many prayers for Democracy do we have every week? I bet Democracy is doing well if it gets as many as a million prayers a week. It might be significantly less.
That means we have a big prayer gap. Support for Democracy faces a significant prayer deficit. So, the next question is: Does this matter? I believe it does. To reduce that prayer deficit is one of the main reasons to launch and grow a Pray for Democracy/Act for Democracy Campaign.