Race, Not Faith Decided the Evangelical Vote

On November 4, Christianity today reported this statistic:

65% of white Americans with evangelical beliefs plan to vote for Trump
10% plan to vote for Clinton

62% of African/Hispanic/Asian Americans with evangelical beliefs plan to vote for Clinton
15% plan to vote for Trump

Exit polls show the final number was closer to 81% for white evangelicals voting for Trump when all was said and done (it was 88% in Georgia). I think we can reasonably expect that the outcome for Black Asian and Hispanic evangelicals likewise came closer to 75-80% for Clinton. If someone has an actual exit poll on black evangelicals, I’d love to see it.

What this should say to bible-believing Evangelicals everywhere is one simple thing: there is at least an 80% chance that your vote was informed more by the color of your skin than a carefully formulated evangelical worldview. Actually I think the number is much higher since generational culture is also a significant factor.

If you voted for Trump and you just can’t figure out how a Christ-following Evangelical could sleep at night voting for Clinton, don’t. Go ask any 4 out of 5 black evangelicals and they’ll tell you. And don’t even think about saying that minority evangelicals possess a less orthodox or biblical or Spirit-filled faith than you. Their worldview is just as “biblical” as yours. But their vote couldn’t be more different. And don’t say that you’re the rare bird that carefully thought through the issues and found God’s favorite candidate. Because you probably didn’t. That may be hard for you to hear, but it is the most statistically likely reality. Actually, it is the reality to one degree or another for ALL of us. Culture and background and the beliefs of those around us play an invisible but immutable role in which candidates and media outlets and basic narratives we essentially trust, and which ones we don’t.

Really this race-based division of political values in the church should be a sobering realization of just how little our Christian beliefs inform our politics. We talk as though they do, but only because it makes us feel morally superior. In fact it is our tribe and clan, not the heart of God, which tells us who to vote for more often than not. For us in the ministry world, it is what we call a failure of discipleship. Or if evangelicalism were a factory, I’d say our quality control department really sucks.

All this should also cause reflection for millennials like myself who could never fathom a Trump vote. Because if it had been up to 18-25 year olds, Mr. Trump would have gotten exactly 23 electoral votes. And that has far more to do with our cultural beliefs than our religious convictions.

So where do we go from here?

First, we can stop saying “I just can’t believe a good Christian could vote for _____.” Because clearly lots and lots of “good Christians” voted for both candidates. I also think we can TALK. We can talk to people who voted differently and try to listen. I’m not saying I think voting for Trump or Clinton was an equally valid. I’m not saying this choice we’ve just made won’t lead to the emboldening of hate crimes, deepening division, and harmful policies which hurt vulnerable people. On the contrary, I think that scenario is likely. And I pray I’m wrong. I may never be able to excuse the choice (painful as it was) that so many of my family and friends made on Tuesday.  But I am saying that listening humanizes and invites people to move beyond disembodied rhetoric to real people their real stories. And in that space, people can disagree with every fiber of their being without doing violence to each other.

One of the best embodiments of this I’ve seen personally came yesterday from one of our ministry’s board members—a Trump voter—who called me yesterday. He told me that although he voted for Trump it was the hardest vote he has ever cast. He also told me that he was sorry that things didn’t go the way I had hoped and he understood I must be feeling very disappointed. He told me he grew up in a place where everyone thought the same way and now he was being challenged by his African American friends and his 20-something kids to broaden his perspective. He invited me to share my perspective with him so that he could continue to learn and grow. He expressed love and acceptance for me without requiring me to change my views. I told him how much I appreciated him saying those things. I told him I also wanted to keep talking and understand more about his perspective on faith and politics.

Not once did we excuse or validate the other’s vote. Not once did we say, “oh yeah, I totally get how you could vote for that person.” But we did agree to get lunch, to talk, to press in on each other’s beliefs and assumptions, and to just be friends. That’s the only way forward I can see here: to recognize that our culture and upbringing typically play a more pivotal role in our opinions and platforms than our religious beliefs... to name our biases... and to keep inviting each other to think deeper and to seek God’s actual heart not just for our society but for the real people who live here: for your LGBTQ family members, and racist friends, and that hard-working farm community off the highway, and the entitled millennials your friends gripe about, and the scared Latino kids your daughter goes to school with.

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I don’t ever want to gloss over the seriousness of the decision we have just made as a nation. I’m not going to tell you “it’s going to be okay.” It very well may not be okay. But I can tell you that I’m going to keep asking questions and trying to understand. I’m not going to retreat to my group of likeminded friends. I’m going to keep loving people, not as symbolic representations of a political worldview but as people; messy, crazy, lovely people just like me.