Former president Donald Trump’s struggle to find a position on abortion that appeases religious activists in his party without offending more moderate and secular voters is perhaps the clearest example of one of the most important tensions in American politics today: Religion is declining in America overall but in some ways becoming an even more important force within the Republican Party. We have less religion but still very religiously influenced politics.
You’ve no doubt read articles over the past two decades about the declining numbers of Christian Americans and the growing contingent who have no religious affiliation. And that’s not just a story of Democrats and liberals leaving faith. The number of Republicans who attend church weekly and consider religion a core part of their lives is also shrinking.
Yet many policies enacted by local, state and federal Republican elected officials and conservative judges are straight from the religious right’s agenda: vouchers and other initiatives to make it easier for parents to send their children to religious schools; limits on reproductive rights that ban abortion and could even threaten in vitro fertilization; restrictions on gay and particularly transgender Americans; provisions allowing religious Americans to cite their faith in declining to participate in various activities, such as getting vaccinated.
Louisiana’s House of Representatives last week passed a bill requiring the state’s public schools and universities to display the Ten Commandments. Trump is promising to create a federal task force to root out what he describes as “anti-Christian bias” in America. Some Republican operatives likely to play major roles in a second Trump term have openly stated that they believe government policies should be shaped in accordance with Christianity.
How are these trends — a secularizing America, a party increasingly tied to its religious wing — happening at once? In some ways, they are causal. Many Americans on the political left and center say they stopped identifying themselves as Christians in part because of the faith’s vocal conservative bloc, particularly its anti-LGBTQ+ agenda. On the flip side, Robert P. Jones, founder of the Public Religion Research Institute (now known as PRRI), argues White Christians have become more radical in their policy goals and more deeply embedded in the Republican Party because of their alarm at how quickly America is becoming more racially diverse and secular.
But with a growing number of Republicans saying they aren’t Christian or religious, another explanation is important: internal party politics. Polls suggest there are many Republican voters who would prefer a GOP that wasn’t trying to make abortions impossible and ban books written by LGBTQ+ authors from public schools and libraries.
But those Republicans aren’t organized into well-funded activist groups working at the local, state and federal levels. And the portion of the party wary of the religious right overwhelmingly falls in line and backs GOP candidates in general elections, even if those candidates have adopted the religious right’s agenda.
In contrast, the party’s religious bloc defends its priorities fiercely — and in moral terms. Groups such as the Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom are constantly pushing bills in state legislatures and filing lawsuits. They are creative and relentless in exploring methods to execute their agenda, such as their effort to get a future Republican president to invoke a once-obscure law from 1873 (the Comstock Act) to limit abortion.
Those on the religious right argue that abortion, same-sex marriage, people changing their gender identities and other actions condoned by liberals are violations of core religious tenets. So they aren’t willing to set aside those views just because they poll badly. It’s hard for nonreligious Republicans to win intraparty arguments when the religious bloc is speaking with such passion.
So while America and even the Republican electorate is significantly less religious than in Ronald Reagan’s or George W. Bush’s heyday, the GOP is still dominated by the same two groups that have controlled it for decades: wealthy individuals and businesses who donate millions to conservative organizations and Republican campaigns because they want to keep taxes low and regulations limited; and religious groups that want to keep American culture conservative.
Of course, the religious right has changed over time. Though the term “evangelical” once described religious conservatives of prior eras, it was more precisely a movement led by White, male Southern Baptist leaders and activists. Today’s religious right has a bigger role for Catholics, women and people of color, as well as Protestants who aren’t Southern Baptists, including Pentecostals and those from America’s growing ranks of nondenominational churches. (This is why I use the term “religious right” rather than, say, “Christian nationalists” or “evangelicals.” There are many Christians who argue that the religious right’s stances are a perversion of the faith. The exact meanings of “Christian nationalism” and “evangelicalism” are contested, but everyone agrees there is a bloc on the right that claims to be acting out of religious beliefs.)
Nevertheless, winning Republican primaries still requires courting both the party’s business and religious wings. The former provides money for a campaign; the other voters and local organizers.
These two groups have an informal détente. Wealthy conservatives who are more interested in keeping taxes low don’t trash the party’s religious conservatives for being focused on abortion and school vouchers. And the religious conservatives go along with tax cuts for the wealthy.
Trump is beholden to religious conservatives, too. The business wing of the party tried to break with him after the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, spending much of the past three years trying to elevate other potential Republican presidential nominees, particularly Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. But Trump’s strong support among religious voters helped him easily win the Republican primaries this year.
For the general election, Trump’s attempts to distance himself from recent antiabortion rulings from conservative judges in Arizona and Florida show he understands the problem: The religious right’s agenda might be unacceptable to the rest of the country.
It’s not that America is hostile to religion. Seventy-four percent of Americans are affiliated with a faith. (Sixty-seven percent are Christians.) And while atheists and agnostics to be very liberal and anti-religion, the biggest bloc of nonbelievers is people who describe their religious views as “nothing in particular.” This bloc tends to have more moderate views politically and regard religion more with ambivalence than repugnance. It’s likely many swing voters are “nothing in particular” or nominally Christians. So they wouldn’t be turned off by a religious candidate but would oppose someone pushing policies hostile to women, LGBTQ+ Americans and non-Christians.
That means this year’s elections could hinge on whether Trump and other Republican candidates can remain deeply tied to the religious right without offending too many of everyone else. America might not yet be ready for a presidential candidate who is openly not religious, but it might no longer tolerate a candidate who promises to do the bidding of the religious right.
