USSC Associate Professor Dr David Smith joins a panel on ABC Radio National about the relationship between evangelical voters and former President Donald Trump. Dr Smith cites data indicating that evangelical voters “don’t see him as an exemplary Christian. They see him as someone who will defend them from persecution and who will accomplish certain policy aims.”
Dr Smith situates the emergence of Donald Trump as an attractive political figure to evangelicals within “a broader conservative culture in the United States” that predates Trump’s first term.
“This association between evangelical Christianity, nationalism, conservatism, what we have come to call ‘red state America’, isn’t new at all.”