Three out of five Americans profess a Christian faith. Most of them, numbering about 140 million, or 42 per cent of the US population, belong to Protestant denominations, of which the largest group is the 16 million Southern Baptists. The largest single Christian group, however, amounting to about one in five Americans, is the 70 million Catholics.
Joe Biden is a self-described “Irish Catholic” who attends Mass, although some priests have said they would refuse to give him Holy Communion. His re-election campaign is backed by pro-abortion lobby Planned Parenthood; he is himself “pro-choice” and was bitterly opposed to the overturning of Roe v Wade.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, has described himself as Presbyterian. His former wife Ivana had a Catholic funeral in 2022. His wife Melania is a Slovenian Catholic who had her rosary blessed by Pope Francis during an audience in 2017; afterwards she said that she was “humbled by the honour” of meeting him.
The last time Biden and Trump faced off against each other, in 2020, Catholics narrowly preferred Biden over Trump (who visited churches just 14 times when president) by a margin of 51 per cent to 47, while Protestants favoured Trump over Biden by a much wider gap, 62 per cent to 37. Current polling indicates that preference has shifted – in Trump’s favour.
Trump’s appeal to white Protestant voters, many of whom feel prosperity has passed them by and that America is becoming unrecognisable – which is the essence of the MAGA (Make America Great Again) creed – led to the New York real-estate developer and former reality-TV star persuading 73 per cent of them to vote for him, compared to 26 per cent for Biden, a lifelong politician born poor in the Pennsylvania rust belt.
Trump’s popularity among Christians also owes a great deal to the radical shift in the complexion of the Republican Party. Once the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan, which promoted respectable orthodoxy, the party has undergone radical change. The global financial crisis of 2008 led to the rise of a Tea Party faction, who demanded strictly limited government, lower taxation and the severe restriction of immigration.
The flagship achievement of Trump’s first four-year term was the appointment of three judges, which led to a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Of these, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett are Catholics, bringing the total of Catholic Supreme Court justices to six.
The first action by the newly constituted court was to overturn the court’s 1972 verdict in Roe v Wade, which declared the medical termination of pregnancies to be lawful in all states. “For 54 years they were trying to get Roe v Wade terminated and I’m proud to have done it,” declared a triumphant Trump.
It all adds up to Trump’s support among white evangelicals remaining overwhelming. He beat former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the White House in 2016, when they divided 78 per cent to him, 22 per cent to Clinton, and improved upon that in 2020, when four out of five (80 per cent) voted for him.
Yet Trump is an unlikely hero for Christians. Their traditional devotion of patriotism, family, sexual propriety, law and order, the armed forces, and respect for others’ feelings is contradicted by Trump’s brash persona.
Twice divorced, he is a serial adulterer who in the middle of the 2020 campaign boasted about liking to grope women, and he has been found guilty of rape by a jury in a New York civil court. After continuing to slander his victim, he currently owes her $83 million in damages; he bought the silence of two women with campaign funds. He was recently found culpable in a New York criminal court of fraudulently exaggerating his wealth to banks from whom he borrowed money, while minimising his wealth to the Inland Revenue Service, landing him a fine of $450 million.
Not only that, but Trump currently faces 91 federal criminal charges, among them inciting rioters to storm the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, plotting to over turn his 2020 election defeat, and removing top secret documents from the White House. If found guilty, he could be sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, though there is little appetite to see a former president behind bars, and there is almost no chance of his being incarcerated.
While some suggest that his appeal to Christians relies upon the doctrine of forgiving a sinner who repents, remorse is not evident in Trump’s behaviour. More plausibly, his willingness to appoint a raft of conservative judges and take up arms in the “culture wars” against progressives is reason enough for many in the Southern states’ Bible belt to vote for his re-election. His appointment (advised by Catholic legal supremo Leonard Leo) of three conservative Supreme Court judges was decisive in the overturning of Roe v Wade.
However, this victory for some Christian Americans provoked anger among those who believe legal abortion had become an established right for women. Polling shows that 62 per cent of Americans think abortion should be legal in all or most cases, with 57 per cent disagreeing with the Supreme Court’s judgment, and 43 per cent strongly disapproving.
The abortion debate is sharply partisan. Pew Research reports that of those who describe themselves as Democrats or left-leaning Independents – 49 per cent of Americans – 82 per cent say they disapprove of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade, with nearly two-thirds saying they strongly disapprove. Of those who describe themselves as Republicans or right-leaning Independents – 40 per cent of Americans – 70 per cent approve of the Court’s decision, with nearly half saying they strongly approve. Significantly, 62 per cent of women condemn the Court’s decision, with 47 per cent strongly disapproving. Men divide almost equally.
There was an immediate backlash at the ballot box against the Court’s decision. Every president in recent memory, save George W Bush after the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, has been roundly defeated at their first mid-term elections. The same was expected in Biden’s first significant electoral test in 2022, when it was widely predicted that Democrats would be swept away by a mighty Republican wave.
Pro-choice supporters urged others to register their anger at the polls and instead of shellacking, Biden enjoyed a mere wrist slap. Ten states – some of them Republican bastions like Alaska, Arizona, Kansas and Montana – voted to pass laws guaranteeing that abortions would remain legal within their borders.
New York magazine ran a cover story headlined “Abortion Wins Elections”, suggesting the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade would continue to put pro-life Republican candidates at risk of defeat. Supporters of Roe expressed fears that a return of Trump to the White House would lead to the unpicking of other major planks in the progressive consensus that has dominated America since the 1960s, such as same-sex marriage.
Biden warned in his State of the Union address on 7 March that, come November, women would continue to punish Republicans who condoned the overturning of Roe v Wade. Whether Trump and others who promote the agenda of the Christian Right will disprove Biden will be critical in deciding who wins the White House.
Photo: US President Donald Trump is applauded by former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Chuck Schumer (far right) during Trump’s inauguration ceremonies at the US Capitol, Washington, DC, 20 January 2017. (Photo credit PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP via Getty Images.)
Nick Wapshott is an author, journalist and broadcaster.
This article originally appeared in the April 2024 issue of the Catholic Herald. To subscribe to our award-winning, thought-provoking magazine and have independent and high-calibre counter-cultural Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world click here.
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