These Are Not the Evangelicals You Are Looking For

White Evangelicals May Not Be the Real Story.

Dennis Sanders
7 min readMar 2, 2023
Photo by Malcolm Lightbody on Unsplash

White evangelical.

Ever since Donald Trump’s surprise win in 2016, I’ve heard that phrase over and overused by journalists, academics, pastors, writers, and others. It has been used to describe who was most responsible for putting Trump in the White House and it’s launched many a career as folk seek to “understand” this segment that supposedly was so beneficial to Trump.

“White evangelical” has become a shorthand way of usually calling people racist, homophobic, nationalist, sexist, and every other bad attribute. It’s a way of saying that there is something wrong with these people and that they are to blame for what ails our society and are a threat to democracy itself.

But what if the picture is far more complicated? What if white evangelicals are not the dangerous monolith that we fear but are a group that is far more nuanced?

What if the picture is far more complicated? What if white evangelicals are not the dangerous monolith that we fear but are a group that is far more nuanced?

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Dennis Sanders

Middle-aged Midwesterner. I write about religion, politics and culture. Podcast: churchandmain.org newsletter: https://churchandmain.substack.com/