For more than three decades, conservative white evangelicals have been a dominant force within the Republican Party, shaping presidential primary contests and turning out to vote for the eventual nominee. This year, though, the relationship is coming undone, as the party — with the votes of a not insignificant number of conservative white evangelicals — is poised to nominate Donald J. Trump.
For a constituency that has made conservative religious values, sexual purity and Bible-driven policy the cornerstone of its politics, Mr. Trump — the twice-divorced, foul-mouthed businessman who praised Planned Parenthood’s health services and nonchalantly gave Caitlyn Jenner permission to use the women’s room in Trump Tower — seems an odd choice.
The religious right faces a reckoning, not just because members of its ranks supported, enabled or acquiesced to Mr. Trump. His success means religious and political leaders must figure out how a religious movement entangled itself in partisan politics and ended up being marginalized by the party it embraced.
The evangelical-Republican alliance, while certainly formidable and enduring, has suffered from growing tensions. Chief among them are inflexible ideological litmus tests on certain issues, such as abortion and gay rights, while internal disagreements over political issues like immigration, as well as core theological concerns, were shrugged off.
For more than 30 years, religious conservatives have been a loyal and, crucially, a predictable voting bloc for the Republicans. This resulted in a lasting deal for Republican candidates: Pledge fealty to the “Christian nation,” promise to ban abortion and (at one time) same-sex marriage, and evangelicals will form an essential and reliable segment of your voting base.
Evangelicals have forgiven past favored candidates for their sins. Ronald Reagan deviated from the movement’s standards on divorce, but he was adept at using religious language, such as “shining city upon the hill.” George W. Bush had an imperfect past, but was redeemed, in evangelical eyes, through religious salvation. In 2004, as 78 percent of white evangelicals voted for George W. Bush, they made up 36 percent of the Bush vote.
Enter Mr. Trump, the candidate who prides himself on unpredictability. His lack of familiarity with the Bible has been a frequent target of ridicule. He publicly declared himself to be against abortion in 2011, when he first toyed with a run for president. While Mitt Romney’s change of heart on abortion — which he dutifully and repeatedly addressed — gave him the flip-flopper label, Mr. Trump has so far repelled any similar branding.
Mr. Trump also gambled on two dynamics that were already altering the evangelical-Republican relationship. First, he recognized how the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage marked the end of the road for one of the religious right’s major issues. He declined, for the most part, to weigh in on the religious right’s new formulation on gay rights, which is to frame it as an issue of religious freedom for conservative Christians.
Mr. Trump has frequently proclaimed that when he is president it will be acceptable to start “saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again!” as if the so-called war on Christmas is the sum total of the movement’s religious freedom concerns.
Second, Mr. Trump exploited the evangelical divide on immigration. In doing this, he was following the lead of Republican officials who have ignored the argument by evangelical leaders that welcoming immigrants is a biblical imperative.
Perhaps these pro-immigration evangelicals might have forgiven a candidate who met their requirements on social issues but who backpedaled on his support for immigration reform. But Mr. Trump’s misogynistic and racist language drove these evangelicals away from him.
Deliberately or not, Mr. Trump may be the perfect candidate for an evangelical subculture that has increasingly become enamored with the prosperity, or health and wealth, gospel. In trying to build a singular religious faction that agreed on some core issues (like abortion), the Republican Party has courted that subculture, even though many evangelicals consider prosperity theology to be heretical. Mr. Trump acts more like a televangelist than an evangelical.
Although Ted Cruz used the traditional religious right playbook to win in Iowa, Mr. Trump’s subsequent successes in beating Mr. Cruz among evangelicals — including across wide sections of the Bible Belt — demonstrated that many Republican voters, and even many evangelical Republicans, were more swept up in Trump-style nativist culture wars than battles over abortion, marriage or, especially, bathrooms. Mr. Trump understood he could unite nativists and culture warriors using his diatribes against political correctness as an all-purpose code to stoke conservative resentments.
Mr. Trump has some big-name evangelical endorsements, notably from Jerry Falwell Jr., but he has vocal opponents within the religious right as well. Many historically Republican evangelicals may stay home, or vote for the Democrat or a third party.
It doesn’t mean that the union of America’s evangelicals and the party is over forever. But at least in 2016, many influential voices within the religious right are not interested in entering into a suicide pact with the Republican Party.