UNHOLY

An examination of the historical reasons for Donald Trump’s appeal to white evangelical voters.

Journalist Posner, a reporter for Type Investigations who has written for Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, and other outlets, looks back through five decades of evangelical activity to ascertain why white evangelical voters would support Trump, who has repeatedly shown himself to be biblically illiterate and morally bankrupt. “They had been waiting for a leader unbowed,” writes the author, “one who wasn’t afraid to attack, head-on, the legal, social, and cultural changes that had unleashed the racist grievances of the American right, beginning with Brown v. Board of Education.” Throughout the book, Posner characterizes the Christian right as undeniably racist, steeped in a generational disdain for civil rights and secretly longing for an age of white dominance. As the author argues in mostly convincing fashion, because Trump embodies these same worldviews and despite his questionable Christian credentials, he is closely connected to Christian right voters. Posner takes pains to draw connections from early, sometimes obscure figures in evangelical politics—e.g., activist Paul Weyrich and strategist Arthur Finkelstein—to a wide constellation of Trump supporters and others pushing radical agendas. She shows how white evangelicals continue to fight against the changes brought about by desegregation, affirmative action, women’s rights, and LGBTQ rights. Posner’s discussions of American ties to Hungary’s right-wing government, as well as Moldova as a center of worldwide far-right activity, require more research and context to lift them above the level of conspiracy theory. Posner’s passionate antipathy for Trump, the “pagan king,” is consistently palpable, as is her disdain for conservatives in general. Though she makes many solid points about Trump’s racist, xenophobic, and misogynistic actions, most of these are already well-covered elsewhere. For a deeper dive into American evangelicalism that explains Trump’s appeal in a more organic, less headline-grabbing fashion, try Frances FitzGerald’s The Evangelicals.

More grist for anti-Trump readers that could serve as an entry point for further investigations of political evangelicalism.