Do We Have a Center?: 2016, 2020, and the Challenge of the Trump Presidency by Walter Frank

Author:Walter Frank [Frank, Walter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780578541051
Google: 1Vs9yAEACAAJ
Goodreads: 52118893
Publisher: walter frank
Published: 2019-08-19T08:16:40+00:00

h. Paula White, Mike Pence, and the Evangelical Vote

In addition to the Republican Party, Trump owes a great deal to a woman who most people have never heard of. Her name is Paula White, the founder of the Without Walls International Church and a star in the evangelical community. When she came to Donald Trump’s attention around 2006, she was preaching to an astonishing 20,000 people a week. They became friends. White went through some bad times but Trump stood by her. She returned the favor by connecting him with key leaders in the religious community, even organizing meetings. The first one in Dallas, Texas in September 2015 involved not only evangelicals but also a Rabbi and a Bishop (SM 94). She reached out to key leaders of the Baptist Community on Trump’s behalf as well. At these and other meetings, Trump learned for the first time about the Johnson Amendment that prevented ministers from preaching politics from the pulpit for fear of losing their church’s tax-exempt status. When Trump committed himself to its repeal, many decided they were all in with him. Stephen Mansfield, a writer on religion and politics, summed up White’s importance this way:

She prayed for Trump publicly and privately, she gave him counsel, and she helped him win the voters that were certainly among those least likely in all the United States to find him [a] fit. He won by a margin much smaller than the voters she helped draw to him (SM 96).

In 2008 Barack Obama won 26% of the white evangelical vote; in 2012, he won 21%; Hillary won 16% (MW).

Paula White didn’t keep evangelicals in the fold by herself. Mike Pence’s effectiveness might best be illustrated by what was described as a low-key September event at the Living World Bible Church in Mesa, Arizona. Speaking to about 900 believers, Pence focused on “family faith, and the GOP’s shared faith in the American dream.” Pence didn’t talk a lot about Trump, saying, “All you need to know about Donald Trump is he loves his family, and he loves this country.” It was a clever way of linking Trump to conservative social values without going into too much messy biographical detail. Pence did emphasize Trump’s German immigrant grandfather and that Trump’s father was a self-made man. He also pointed out that a Trump victory would mean lower taxes and a conservative Supreme Court nominee. Did these events matter? They certainly did to some. One young voter at the rally described himself to an Arizona reporter as “up in the air” before the rally but after Pence spoke he said how pleased he was that Pence had chosen to speak at his church and added, “I think I’m going to be going for Trump.”

It should not go unnoticed that Trump also owes a considerable debt to Hillary Clinton’s campaign strategists for his remarkable share of the Evangelical vote. As Messrs. Dionne, Ornstein and Mann have noted, “Hillary Clinton’s campaign was widely critiqued by religious progressives for

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