Hollis Phelps

Many have argued that Trump is little more than a “scam artist” who has duped evangelicals into following him. But it’s the other way around: Trump didn’t use the religious right to win the presidency; the religious right used Trump to get what it wanted.

Much of the discussion of white evangelicals laments the loss of their moral standing, but such criticisms suffer under the misunderstanding that white evangelicalism in the United States has somehow devolved from a once salutary moral vision to brute political opportunism.

Not only are claims that the religious left is “on the rise” as old as the contemporary religious right itself, but the framing of the religious left may actually further enable the religious right.