Page is an American journalist, syndicated columnist, and senior member of the Chicago Tribune editorial board.
Black voters have traditionally been pivotal to the fortunes of the Democratic Party, but some recent polls have suggested that they are proving less bankable for President Joe Biden than in the past. Whether or not as many as 20% of Black voters have in fact deserted the Democrats, as some recent polls suggest, is a contested matter. But it’s probably fair to say that Democrats currently are in more of a defensive than a growth mode with that portion of the electorate.
But what of Donald Trump and evangelicals? Does the same apply?
Historically, what we used to know as the evangelical bloc has meant a lot to the GOP base, much like Black voters have been crucial to the Democratic base. But both of these truisms are looking less reliable this time around as we see churchgoing declining in America and more factions developing within a previously homogenous bloc. Abortion politics comes into play here too and Trump’s stance on the issue not only has been near impossible to pin down but also has appeared to many evangelicals to be a matter of political expediency, not sincere moral conviction.
That said, it’s also true that the idea of a single evangelical point of view is looking increasingly dated as cultural and political earthquakes have erupted inside the church just as they have within our current presidential race. Clearly, some of former President Trump’s statements in recent months have driven a wedge between his campaign and religious voters, particularly those all-important evangelicals,In April, for example, he said he believed abortion should be regulated at the state level, with very little interference from the federal government. His statements were met with strong backlash from the very same anti-abortion rights groups that had celebrated his appointment of the Supreme Court justices who helped write the landmark decision to overturn the Roe v. Wade ruling.
Trump’s head-spinning logic was impossible to follow. He took credit for the decision the three Trump-appointed justices helped make, but he then appeared to turn against its consequences, saying the states should make their own decisions about regulating abortion.
Trump’s new position infuriated the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America organization, which favors a federal ban on abortion nationwide and condemned Trump’s comments as a “morally indefensible position for a self-proclaimed pro-life presidential candidate.” That should hardly have come as a surprise.
The issue now for Republicans, and Trump, is whether it will matter. And there’s a growing sense within Trump’s presidential campaign that he actually can afford some erosion of the traditional Republican support coming from evangelicals. That’s because Trump’s most impactful base of support in the 2016 primary contest came from a rising group in the GOP whose impact has been largely unnoticed: Republicans who are thoroughly disinterested in churches, synagogues or other places of worship.
Ryan Burge, an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University and the research director for Faith Counts, has authored several books on church attendance including “The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going.”
“Nones” is Burge’s label for the “non-affiliated” or “none-churchgoers.” No religious affiliation has morphed from 5% of the population to nearly 30% over the past half-century, according to Pew Research Center.
“The data show that the former president’s support among this low-attender group is growing, which means that in the short term, even if Trump does alienate some religiously devout members of the religious right,” Burge wrote in Politico last fall, “he remains well positioned to secure the nomination.”
That came true, and, from there, the evidence of continuance is compelling. Take this statistic from Burge’s article: “In 2016, 39% of all Republican voters attended church less than once a year. In comparison, just 36% said that they attended religious services at least once a week.”
It’s reasonable to assume that in 2024, the number of churchgoing Republicans has declined even further. Significantly so. And thus, they matter less to the ever-expedient Trump’s campaign for president.
Dozens of books and other media have been produced to try to explain the unexpected bond between white evangelical Christians and Trump’s populist MAGA movement. Or so everyone has been thinking.
But it might well be that they are missing the bigger point.
There simply are fewer Republican evangelicals these days, and the MAGA crowd now is better able to get along just fine without them.
First posted 4/19, 2024. (C)2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.