How Trumpism Emulates Megachurches
Donald Trump supporters think it’s more important to be part of a movement than they care to analyze whether that movement will get them to the place they want to be.3/15/16
http://thefederalist.com/2016/03/15/how-trumpism-emulates-megachurches/Evangelicals are divided: Is Donald Trump the sign of the Apocalypse? Or the savior of American politics?
In South Carolina, Trump’s two biggest rivals, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, pulled in nearly 50 percent of the evangelical vote, according to exit polls. But to echo Trump’s words from his victory speech that night: When it comes to his rivals’ votes, we’re not supposed to “just add them together.” Taken individually, Trump’s 34 percent support among evangelicals beat Cruz’s 26 percent (+8), and Rubio’s 21 percent (+13). Think South Carolina’s an outlier?
What’s most astonishing about these results is that Trump, the man who can’t recall a single time in which he asked God for forgiveness for anything, is amassing evangelical support against two candidates whose values overlap scarily well with evangelical concerns. But notice that Cruz and Rubio bring in their fair share, too.
Clearly, these results should disabuse us of the notion that evangelicals are a monolithic voting bloc. As a demographic category, evangelicals do not behave uniformly enough to warrant painting such a sociologically narrow portrait of them. But what divides them?
Religious Commitment Predicts Political Choices
One theory is that “evangelical” is too broad a term to be electorally useful, and that we need to distinguish between genuine evangelicals and nominal evangelicals. Talk of “genuine” Christianity, though, can smack of theological elitism. Is there now some deeper test, beyond self-identification and professed affiliation, that a person must pass in order to qualify as a true believer?
Whether it sounds judgmental or not, there is evidence that differing levels of religiosity correlate with differences in political preference. In a piece promoting authoritarianism as the political variable that best explains Trump’s appeal, the political scientist Matthew MacWilliams notes something interesting about Trump’s evangelical support: “Regular, weekly church attendance…predicted a statistically significant and substantive opposition to Trump.”
The following graphic shows Trump’s support among respondents to a Reuters poll who identified as evangelicals and claimed to attend church at least once a week. Trump still does well, but his share of the overall evangelical vote overall diminishes when we filter for regular attendance.
It’s not just the 2016 election that bears this out. In the 2008 election, John McCain defeated Barack Obama 53 to 47 among Protestants. Yet a Pew Research Center report released two weeks before election day found that church attendance mattered greatly: among white evangelical Protestants who attended church less than once a week, McCain won 54 to 37, though among those reporting weekly attendance, McCain’s lead over Obama surged to an incredible 74 to 17.
While frequency of church attendance appears to be politically consequential, it doesn’t tell us what Trump’s evangelical supporters see in their candidate. For a parallel from the Christian world that most resembles both the leadership flair Trump projects as well as the unthinking fervor he generates in his followers, let’s consider the evangelical megachurch.
The Making of a Movement
Broadly defined, a megachurch is a congregation boasting 2,000 or more visitors per week. But just as “evangelical” does not designate a monolithic voting bloc, the category “megachurch” does not distinguish between large churches with the same theological priorities as smaller, orthodox churches and large churches whose priorities are more “seeker-sensitive” in nature.
These are the churches whose whose offer of a unique ecclesiastical experience amounts to state-of-the-art atmospherics, music chosen for its maximal emotive power, and promises of spiritual self-realization.
This analysis has megachurches of the second kind in mind. These are the churches whose substance is subordinated to style, whose offer of a unique ecclesiastical experience amounts to, above all else, a combination of state-of-the-art atmospherics (meticulously coordinated stage aesthetics, studio-quality audio-visual systems), anthemic music chosen for its maximal emotive power, and messaging promising spiritual self-realization.
Am I far off from describing a Trump rally?
Both the megachurch and the Trump movement generate a sense of belonging. Forget for a moment the characterization you often hear of a Trump supporter being filled with all-consuming rage; think instead of a Trump fan’s level of commitment. Megachurches induce allegiance in a variety of ways — offering a variety of programs, providing robust friendship networks for children and teenagers, ensuring convenience through flexibility of service times — but most notably through conveying the sense that those who sign on are a part of a movement that is making a lasting impact.
The megachurches I’m referring to don’t so much dismiss theology as they do severely minimize its role. By de-emphasizing, rather than altogether eliminating, the intellect, the megachurch retains a commitment to doctrine without letting doctrine steer its self-presentation. A study put out by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research explains: “Although the official theology espoused may be orthodox conservative Christianity, a variety of opinions and practices are tolerated in relation to women’s roles, sexuality, abortion, and political persuasions. In a cultural climate which emphasizes the self-construction of beliefs and spirituality, tolerance of a diversity of possible alternatives, unified under a common vision, is an asset.”
Although it might be jarring to hear that a movement in which a “variety of opinions and practices are tolerated” is being likened to Trump’s movement, the reality is that outside a few irresponsible policy proposals that have gained outsize influence due to their inflammatory nature (deporting 11 million people; banning Muslim entry), the Trump coalition is all over the place ideologically.
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