“Small Governmentism” and Evangelical Support for Trump

Ie extent and duration of white evangelical Protestant (WEP) support for Trump continues to mystify many. An earlier post summarized John Fea’s (who himself is a WEP) explanation for this support. Marcia Pally provides a somewhat different explanation. She starts her paper by noting dimensions of WEP support for Trump as found in a PRRI survey. Among WEPs, 81% of males and 71% of females voted for Trump in the presidential election as did 68% of those with a college education and 78% of those without a college degree. Since his election, WEP support for Trump has never dropped below 65%.

Pally makes the point that assuming WEPs support Trump solely for evangelical beliefs is methodologically dubious. Many factors can prompt WEP voting behavior as it does for most people. Additionally, most analysis of WEP voting does not distinguish between those who classify themselves as evangelicals due to strongly held religious beliefs and practices and those who loosely classify themselves as evangelicals. During the Republican primaries, Trump did much better with evangelicals who never or only occasionally attended religious services. Frequent-church-going evangelicals tended to support Ted Cruz much more than Trump. In the main election, however, both sets of evangelical voters supported Trump.

Given this voting pattern as a backdrop, Pally suggests that another factor played a significant role in WEP support for Trump. She theorizes that strong support for “small governmentism” may have determined why many WEPs voted for and continue to support Trump. She defines small governmentism as a belief that supports reducing government’s place in society through reducing government regulation of small businesses and minimizing federal social assistance through cutting taxes.

Right-wing Populism

Pally uses the term “right-wing populism” to refer to people “who feel that society is economically and demographically changing in unwanted ways but can be fixed by protectionist trade and immigration policies.” She believes that in the United States small governmentism accompanies right-wing populism. In this sense, just as right-wing populists see immigrants and liberals as outsiders, they also see the federal government as an outsider that needs to be constrained. This makes American right-wing populism different than right-wing populism in many European countries.

Because “populism” appears in many different guises in the literature, Pally tries to narrow the definition for her use in the paper. “Populism is a way of presenting solutions to economic and way-of-life duress. “Way-of-life duress” refers to a “sense of threat to the way things should go, to knowing what’s fair, what’s due you and others.” “Economic duress” includes not only a reference to poverty and under-employment “but also to the sense that opportunity is unfairly distributed and familiar paths to self-betterment are disappearing.” Duress can be present or anticipated as a future fear for oneself or one’s children. Pally notes that studies show that financial crises put a strain on democracies and that financial crises often result in gains made by far-right political parties.

Populists answer questions about duress in binary form. That is, they believe that their group is the one that is struggling against those who are unfairly harming their group. They believe that solutions to their problems must be understandable and the most easily understood solutions are those solutions that are familiar. Thus, populists tend to see solutions in their own societies’ foundational “narratives, symbologies, history, normative ways of thinking, myths, and other cultural and religious tropes.” Thus, solutions echo prior action.

America’s historical-cultural bases

Unlike many other analysts, Pally plays down a cult-like effect with America’s right-wing populism. She describes American right-wing populism as grounded much more in grassroots activities rather than in cult-like leadership. She reemphasizes the point that right-wing populism relies on us vs. them binary. In America, the “them” are foreign people, foreign products, and the federal government. This “them” is unfairly harming the “us” – hardworking ordinary folk. Consequently, protectionist trade and immigration policies and small governments become reasonable, understandable solutions for solving the problems facing right-wing populists.

The question that she then tries to answer is What in America’s historical and cultural experience brings about the specific combination of government and immigrants being the unfair and dangerous “other”? Pally develops a four-fold answer: (1) covenant, (2) republicanism, (3) liberalism, and (4) localism.

Covenant

Pally defines covenant as “a reciprocal commitment between parties where each gives for the flourishing of the other.” In her view, the Reformed Protestant political theory in the 16th century developed the idea of a covenantal republic. Covenantal politics became alive in America in the Massachusetts Mayflower Compact of 1620. John Winthrop further developed the idea in 1630 in his Model of Christian Charity. Winthrop declared that a community is held together by mutual consent in bond with God and among persons in which every man might have need of others. In 1641, Massachusetts established “protections of the common good against the rich and politically ambitious.”
Pally suggests that the Declaration of Independence aims to protect the covenanted community from exploitative power, among other aims. The U.S. Bill of Rights includes many provisions found in the 1641 Body of Liberties enacted by Massachusetts.

Republicanism

The Aristotelian republic becomes the second tradition comprising America’s foundation. Aristotle saw humans as social beings who lived in networks of networks comprised of families amongst communities, and communities amongst republics. Aristotle saw freedom as the freedom of political self-determination to participate in the polis and not the freedom to roam alone. Like the covenant tradition, for Aristotle, the “unjust person shirks responsibilities to the commons and grabs an unfair portion of societal benefits. Thus, the republic is successful insofar as it educates its citizens in civic virtue and care for the commons.”

Liberalism

Liberalism distinguishes itself from both covenantal and republican theory by taking a much more individualistic approach. Liberalism’s freedom gives one the right to leave the polis to pursue individual opportunity. Freedom is freedom from constraint. Pally connects this line of thought to the Protestant idea of by faith alone, especially as advocated by the Pietists. Pietists see true Christianity and baptism as personal conversion, a focus on the inner self.
This notion of liberalism fostered the First Great Awakening, a grassroots religious revival of the 1730s and 1740s in America. According to Pally, this movement promoted the idea that every person must act singly, the individual plays the critical role in salvation. This movement facilitated the growth of Methodism. Pally notes that the number of Methodist churches rose from 20 in 1770 to nearly 20,000 in 1860.

Localism

Immigration and the frontier facilitated this focus on the “separable individual.” Immigrants fleeing persecutory or oppressive states reinforced the benefits of separability. English immigrants especially in the 18th and early 19th centuries became wary of highly centralized government and others that threatened their local values and self-rule. These immigrants desired to preserve in America, their local attachments and values and a sense of self-rule, that they had found threatened in England.

Pally adds that the “uprooting experience of immigration and harsh frontier conditions further boosted the advisability of self-reliance, trust in one’s local community, and wariness of far-away federal authorities.” In this regard, she notes the Shays Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion against taxation that occurred in the last two decades of the 18th century. A bit later, Tocqueville would glowingly describe America’s grassroots localism and suspicion of government.

Pally sees the Constitution as a document constraining the federal government and fostering the importance of state governments and localism. The Bill of Rights, she argues, protect individuals and groups from the government. She refers to Alexander Hamilton’s understanding of “freedom as a means to private ambition and a check on government overreach rather than a precondition for participation in the polis.”

The well of right-wing populism

As an immigrant nation, America cannot identify what or who is American based on common descent, ethnicity, or faith. What is the societal glue that holds American together? This leads her to ask, “Is government itself one of ‘us’ or is it suspect and in need of constraint?” She answers this question by focusing on liberal and localist thought as the primary source of American right-wing populism. She believes that right-wing populism draws on faith that “civil society, the market, and local and state-level institutions are best equipped to advance society while a distant federal government and other non-locals are interfering, disruptive, and potentially tyrannical.”

Liberalism and localism fostered a democratic critique of central authority and the development of civil society. Localism has produced a set of ideas that in various places generates either strong or weak environmental protections, lax or tight gun control, and either cooperation with federal deportation agencies or support for local sanctuary movements.

But support for this ambiguity fades when people come under duress – whether that duress is present or anticipated. Duress fosters, perhaps almost requires, many people to seek solutions through a binary framework. Pally argues that a binary framework produces a definition of the local community as my community in an unfair struggle against outsiders. “[I]n a populist turn: (a) commitment to community may become the determination that ‘outsiders’ are not merely different but threats to be constrained, and (b) wariness of oppressive government may become suspicion of government per se, whose activities should be limited – except to implement the constraints of outsiders required by (a), such as border patrols, or national security.”

Pally believes right-wing populism and left-wing populism differ from one another in a key regard. Right-wing populists define the other in essentialist terms such as race, ethnicity, and religion. Thus, immigrants and minorities are taking an unfair share of societal resources. On the other hand, left-wing populists focus on business and the wealthy as taking an unfair share of societal resources. The point she makes is that the essentialist position develops a much stronger binary framework for right-wing populists than for left-wing populists.

Pally quickly reviews a history of right-wing populism: (1) the Know-Nothing Party and its anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic platform (the 1850s); (2) the anti-immigrant fervor caused by the recessions of 1873 and 1893; (3) discriminatory laws enacted in 1875, 1882, and 1924 against immigration from southern and eastern Europe, and (4) the Ku Klux Klan’s movement against blacks and Jews. Today, the outsiders of right-wing populists include those trying to restrain gun rights and the rejection of government programs like the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). She points out how people who would have lost $5000 or more in health subsidies with Republican plans to eliminate the ACA voted for Trump by 59 to 36 percentage points – demonstrating a willingness to reject government assistance that they themselves need. She explains this paradox by saying that people want to reduce government’s presence in their own lives and are frustrated that they need help. They feel guilty for taking help and resent the government for providing it.

Trump and right-wing populism

Trump’s narratives and policy proposals track the right-wing populist feelings of duress. Shrinking the federal government, closing borders, reducing regulation, cutting taxes, establishing tariffs, withdrawing from trade partnerships provide a salve to those who experience economic and way-of-life duress. They see Trump as fighting a corrupt Washington and its government elites and globalists. These narratives and policies tap into long-rooted liberalism and a localism set of ideas manifested in a long-established distrust of government.

Trump and Evangelicals

Three categories of evangelical support exist for Trump. Wealthy evangelicals support Trump because they support tax cuts and business deregulation. A second category supports Trump because they highly value the commitment Trump has made to make more difficult, if not prohibit, legal abortion and same-sex marriage. The final category, and the one on which Pally focuses, are evangelicals who believe non-locals, immigrants, and the federal government are major societal problems. Pally thinks the first two categories may overlap substantially and the last two categories as well. But she thinks the first and third categories may overlap little.

Evangelical political affiliation

Pally says evangelicals have long had a strong connection to a wariness of government for theological reasons and for religious-political reasons. Reformed theology with its strong emphasis on personal covenants with God and among others influenced evangelical traditions. These traditions relatedly stressed the significance of the protection of the covenanted community from outside interference.

The persecution by European state churches on Anabaptists and low Reformed churches made this tradition sensitive if not hostile toward tyrannical government. Reformed immigrants from Europe who wanted to build the New Jerusalem with no interference from government or outsiders of other faiths relied on trusting their community and being wary of outsiders. She mentions the father of the American Baptist communities, Roger Williams, who argued for a wall “between church and state for the protection not of the state but of the ‘garden’ of the churches.”

This theology and experience of a close-minded community joined with the frontier living of the time encouraged strong community and self-reliance. The federal government was suspect in part because of fear it would enforce a state religion. Consequently, evangelicals according to Pally became “the backbone of American civil society.” They became active, for example, in supporting public education, promoting temperance, and protesting sexual trafficking, although they argued both sides of the slavery issue. The evangelical Methodist and Baptist churches comprised in mid-19th century two-thirds of U.S. Protestants.

With the advance of industrialization and urban poverty, evangelicals continued their civic activism. They criticized business for paying low wages and established schools for young women and men. They helped develop the Social Gospel, administering programs for the poor and critiquing laissez-faire capitalism. Pally notes that in 1898 Charles Sheldon asked, “‘What would Jesus do about the great army of unemployed and desperate? . . . Would Jesus care nothing for them?’ The evangelical socialist tradition was strong into the 1930s.”

The evangelical turn toward conservatism

According to Pally, the first turn toward conservatism occurred early in the 20th century. Several factors, including concern about the evils of urbanization, Bolshevism, and the Jazz Age, generated this turn. But the scholarly approach of the blossoming German Historical-Critical method of Bible criticism facilitated the turn toward conservatism. As Pally puts it: “This scholarly approach, requiring training in ancient languages and sophisticated exegetical tools, seemed like a threat to many evangelicals whose faith was grassroots and relatively untutored.”. It was during this time, 1910-1915 that the pamphlet series, The Fundamentals, was published. Although this series supported many socialist ideas and programs, it primarily reinforced the evangelical basics of anti-elitist, grassroots, and wariness-of-government traditions. The series inaugurated the term “fundamentalism.”

Some societal derision of evangelicals because of the 1925 Scopes trial, caused many evangelicals to turn inward and withdraw from their civic activism. This derision reinforced the evangelical experience of discrimination and reinforced the evangelical “wariness of elites, big government, and other “outsiders.”

Evangelicals made a second turn toward conservatism after the defeat of Goldwater. This time, evangelicals focused on the evils of communism along with the panoply of cultural change illustrated by the youth counter-culture and its anti-war protests, the federal civil rights and Great Society programs, the growing sense of self-indulgence and support of government handouts, and the feminist and gay rights movements. Evangelicals saw these sets of changes as denigrating their basic values of localism and self-responsibility. At this point, evangelicals started to support the Republican Party and its attempts to move back to the basic values of localism and self-responsibility.

Evangelicals and Republicans

Pally believes that Trump’s supporters consist of conservative big-money interests plus what is known as Trump’s base: evangelicals and the right-wing of working and lower-middle classes. She thinks this is an uneasy coalition for several reasons. Policies that benefit the wealthy generally do not benefit the working and lower-middle classes. For another, the religious concerns regarding gay marriage, abortion, and special protections and tax benefits for religious organizations are not intensely held by either the monied interests or much of the working and lower-middle classes. To her, small governmentism holds together Trump’s base.

Importantly, Pally emphasizes that evangelical support for Trump is not a Faustian bargain. By that, she means evangelicals do not support Trump only for his support on religious matters and are otherwise indifferent to the overall economic and political positions of the Republican Party. “Rather, evangelicals are drawn to their own traditional beliefs in a reliant Tocquevillian republic unmolested by an over-reaching government and other potentially disruptive intruders.”

She supports her conclusion by noting

• In 2004, the Christian coalition’s national legislative priority was ensuring that the Bush tax cuts remained permanent.
• Two-thirds of evangelicals voted for Reagan although he was divorced and an irregular churchgoer because of his slogan of small-governmentism.
• Evangelicals gave high majorities to all Republican presidential candidates since Reagan even though the party did little to end abortion when it had the presidency and full control of Congress. Since ending abortion is the highest religious priority among evangelicals, this suggests that evangelicals support Republicans due to political and economic convictions in addition to religious convictions.
• More white evangelicals supported the Tea Party with its small-government principle than any other religious group (44% of evangelicals support the Tea Party, which bests other religious groups by 13 to 37 percentage points).

Pally says evangelicals have reasonable faith that Trump will move policy toward evangelical religious positions given his appointment to the Supreme Court of two very conservative judges, his executive order prohibiting federally funded health clinics from providing information on abortion, his moving of Israeli’s capital and US Embassy to Jerusalem (seen by evangelicals as a step in the Second Coming of Christ). Monied evangelicals support his tax cuts and deregulation. And those with way-of-life duress believe that tax cuts and deregulation along with protectionist immigration and trade policies will protect them from outsiders. Overall for evangelicals, “Trump is a triple win.”

Evangelicals who do not support Trump

About 20 to 25% of evangelicals do not support Trump, some so strongly they have decided to no longer identify as evangelicals. In their view, they believe that Trump’s policies and ethics run counter to the Gospels. Pally provides some examples that illustrate the disconnect between Trump’s evangelical supports and the teachings of Jesus.

Christianity Today notes that only half of evangelical pastors are comfortable using the term “evangelical – that evangelical has lost its usefulness as an identity in today’s current culture. A small percentage of evangelical pastors, 33 to 23%, say that are uncomfortable using the term with non-Christians and even other Christians. Illustratively, some evangelical pastors say things like “the term evangelical has become politicized and thus divisive of Christians and Christ’s work.” Others say that the term evangelicals means whites who consider themselves religious and vote Republican. Others say that many people assume all evangelicals are Republicans, but we are interested in being people who are defined by our faith and not by a political agenda. On the other hand, some evangelical pastors who disagree with Trump’s ethics and policies say the term should be kept because of its historical meaning or want to stay publicly as an evangelical but will try to help fellow believers what it means to be a Christian citizen in democratic America.

Comment

I believe Pally is correct in stating that there may be multiple reasons why WEPs voted for and continue to support Trump. Her historical, or genealogical (in the social science sense), approach is informative. At first, I thought the connections she was making were tenuous. Her mixing seemingly contradictory themes appeared awkward. However, some of her analyses did resonate with me.

The convent theme struck me as a theme that supports seeing the world in a binary fashion. There is “us” (our community) and there is “them” (people outside our community). It’s an easy step then to take the position that we are better than them. To come to believe that the them (or the other) should be ignored or disempowered.

As Pally suggests, the liberalism theme seems inconsistent with the covenant and republicanism themes. Pally makes the point that liberalism here refers to freedom and freedom refers to freedom from constraint. To me, the theme of localism becomes the dominant theme.

The localism theme focuses on the suspicion of government and more specifically on belief in government overreach – the idea that government is too interfering in the lives of people. In other words, that government is too constraining regarding individual freedom. This resonates with me for two reasons. First, Pally states that WEPs support the Tea Party more than any other religious group. As one reads about the grassroots members of the Tea Party, one gets a sense of how strongly they see government as too intrusive regardless of their religious orientation. For example, this thread is very prominent in Schradie’s study of conservative grassroots activists in North Carolina after 2010.

Second, much of the evangelical political-oriented literature in the 1980s and 1990s focused on government overreach. Evangelicals saw government intervening too much in their daily lives, with much of this overreach represented by government bureaucracies’ rules and regulations. (See Kintz’s Between Jesus and the Market.) During this time period, this evangelical literature matched Ronald Reagan’s 1970s and 1980s emphasis that government was the problem, not the solution. It is easy to see how evangelicals became heavy supporters for Reagan and the Republican Party and how this has continued through to Trump and Trumpism.

In sum, Pally’s paper seems instructive in a broad way to understand support for Trump. But it seems not to articulate the sharpness, the visible antagonism, behind support for Trump. The next post on WEPs will address this.
*
Kintz, L. (1997). Between Jesus and the Market: The Emotions That Matter in Right-Wing America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Schradie, J. (2019). The Revolution That Wasn’t: How Digital Activism Favors Conservatives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.