Trump supporters swell evangelical pews. Is it faith or politics?

After years of stagnancy, the number of white Evangelicals surged from 25% of the adult U.S. population in 2016 to 29% in 2020, according to a Pew Research survey.

But this growth was fueled almost entirely by white supporters of former President Donald Trump, who began to embrace an evangelical identity after he was elected and accounted for the subgroup’s 6-point increase nationwide. Those who dropped the label, including the online movement of “#exvangelicals,” accounted for only a 2-point decrease.

“We can’t impute causality as to why the people who became evangelicals became evangelicals,” Gregory Smith, associate director of research at Pew, told the Deseret News. “But we can say, among Trump opponents, almost no one became evangelicals.”

Some evangelical leaders have decried the enthusiasm with which white Evangelicals have embraced the former president, wondering if the term itself has already come to simply refer to the Republican Party’s largest and most critical voting bloc. But others say the recent surge cannot be ascribed solely to party politics or the popularity of Mr. Trump.

“I think it’s pivotal that, no matter what your political affiliations are, not to approach this blindly, but to ask deep, resounding questions about morality and truth and justice,” says Dr. Corné Bekker, a theologian and pastor.

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As a theologian within the richly varied subcultures that make up evangelical Protestantism, Corné Bekker devotes much of his thinking to the theme of Christian renewal.

It’s the primary lens through which he helps train a new generation of evangelical theologians and ministers, says Dr. Bekker, the dean of the School of Divinity at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The school’s doctoral programs employ a methodology that aims to “renew and revitalize” evangelical congregations across the country, while a “renewal theology” provides the primary context in which they study church history and the tenets of orthodox Christian faith.

“In my work with pastors these days, there seems to be a true reawakening happening,” he says. “And within the evangelical movement as a whole, there is this kind of desire for God to break into our world and empower Christians to share the good news, which we believe would facilitate not only personal transformation, but societal transformation towards a more just, compassionate world.”