A porn actress says she had sex with Donald Trump, only a few months after his wife gave birth to a son. A former Playboy model says she had an affair with him, too. And yet according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted March 7-14, both white mainline and evangelical Protestants continue to approve of Trump as president at higher levels than other religious groups.
Why are white Christians sticking so closely to President Trump, despite these claims of sexual indiscretions? And why are religious individuals and groups that previously decried sexual impropriety among political leaders suddenly willing to give Trump a “mulligan” on his infidelity?
Our new study points to a different answer than others have offered. Voters’ religious tenets aren’t what is behind Trump support; rather, it’s Christian nationalism — their view of the United States as a fundamentally Christian nation.
To explore the link between Christian nationalism and Trump support, we examined data from the fifth wave of the Baylor Religion Survey. Fielded soon after the election, from Feb. 2 through March 24, 2017, this survey is a national, random sample of 1,501 American adults with telephones and is weighted to estimate population parameters. This data set is unique in its size, time of collection and the measures it contains.
To measure Christian nationalism, we combined responses to six separate questions that ask whether respondents agree or disagree with these statements:
- “The federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation”
- “The federal government should advocate Christian values”
- “The federal government should enforce strict separation of church and state” (reverse coded)
- “The federal government should allow the display of religious symbols in public spaces”
- “The success of the United States is part of God’s plan”
- “The federal government should allow prayer in public schools”
We also examined many other common explanations of support for Trump, including economic dissatisfaction, an index of attitudes on gender, an index of anti-black prejudice, a measure of respondents’ attitudes toward illegal immigrants and an index of views toward Muslims.
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