Grim news for Trump as members of huge voting bloc he depends on say they’ve gone off him

Donald Trump must wage a biblical battle to retain evangelical voters as some turn away from the Republican base and vote for Kamala Harris despite her liberal views.

Trump has always had a strong following among white evangelical GOP voters, even selling Trump-themed Bibles.

Surveys show that about 8 in 10 white evangelical voters voted for him in the 2020 election, including two in 10 for Joe Biden.

However, Biden did better among evangelical Christians of all faiths, winning about a third of voters.

Groups like Evangelicals for Harris have taken out ads and held Zoom calls in an attempt to argue that she is the better choice for this election, despite serious policy disagreements.

“I’m tired of seeing meanness, bigotry, and recreational cruelty as the worldly witnesses to our faith,” said the Rev. Lee Scott, one of those evangelicals. “I want transformation, and transformation is a risky business.”

Harris continues to struggle among devout Christian voters, with about six in ten “born again” or “evangelicals” having a negative opinion of Harris.

Among white evangelical Christians, that figure is even higher: eight in ten people view her negatively, while only 33 percent of Christians say they view her positively.

Scott, a Presbyterian minister and pastor, says he is taking a big risk with the Democratic candidate.

“The easiest thing for us to do this year would be to keep our heads down, go to the polls, keep our votes private, and just go about our business,” Scott said in a Zoom call. “But right now, I just can’t do that.”

Scott lives in Butler, Pennsylvania, the same city where a would-be assassin shot and killed former President Donald Trump in July.

He said the attack and its impact on his community prompted him to speak out against Trump and the “vitriol” and “acceptable violence” he normalized in politics.

Trump has made many contacts white conservative evangelicals since his arrival on the political scene almost ten years ago and has the overturning of Roe v. Wade and begged Christians to vote for him.

While white evangelical Christians vote heavily Republican, not all evangelicals immediately gravitate toward the GOP. And in a close race, every vote counts.

However, a senior figure in conservative Christian politics has expressed concern about former Trump’s recent positions on issues including abortion and in vitro fertilization (IVF).

Albert Mohler, 64, a leader of the Southern Baptists in Kentucky, made the comments this week, warning that the candidate’s inconsistency could be his undoing.

The comments come in response to recent statements made by Trump on Truth Social, where he said his administration would be “great for women and their reproductive rights.”

In April, the 78-year-old refused to support a national abortion ban, saying it should be up to individual states. In 2020, he said he wanted to overturn federal protections for the procedure and support a near-total ban.

In an interview with The New York TimesThe president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary explained why this, along with comments from Trump saying his administration would require insurers to cover IVF, could alienate loyal voters.

“Trump is in grave danger,” Mohler told host Astead W. Herndon on the newspaper’s podcast The Run-Up.

‘[He] “He’s basically challenging the pro-life movement to turn against him,” he added of the comments on Truth Social.

The Rev. Dwight McKissic, a Texas Baptist minister who spoke at the Evangelicals for Harris rally, said he saw no “moral superiority of one party over the other,” citing the GOP’s decision to “abandon a commitment to ban abortion through a constitutional amendment” and to soften its stance against gay marriage in its platform.

Although he has voted Republican in the past, McKissic said he would vote for Harris because he believes he has stronger character and better qualifications.

“I certainly disagree with her on all of the policies,” said Scott, who identifies as evangelical and is ordained in the mainline Presbyterian Church (USA). “I’m pro-life. I’m anti-abortion. But at the same time, she has a pro-family platform,” referring to Harris’ education policies and pledge to expand the child tax credit.

Vote Common Good, a similar group led by progressive evangelical pastor Doug Pagitt, has a simple message: Political identity and religious identity are not a one-for-one deal.

“There’s a whole group that’s uncomfortable voting for Trump,” Pagitt said.

“We’re not trying to change their minds. We’re trying to work with them once their minds have changed, to turn that change into action.”

They target black Protestants and Hispanic evangelical Christians, especially in key swing states.

Groups are reaching out to Catholics and Protestants in the Rust Belt and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Arizona and Nevada. Butler’s colleagues are working with Jewish and Muslim voter groups.

Catholics for Harris and Interfaith for Harris groups are launched. Mainline Protestant groups such as Black Church PAC and Christians for Kamala are also campaigning on behalf of the vice president.

But the chorus of evangelical Christians who say voting for a Democrat is unreasonable remains loud.

Sean Feucht, an evangelical worship leader who supports Trump, ridiculed the existence of Evangelicals for Harris on X: “HERETICS FOR HARRIS rings so much more true!”

Reverend Franklin Graham, a longtime Trump supporter, criticized one of the group’s ads and its use of imagery of his late father, Reverend Billy Graham.

“The Liberals are using everything they can to promote Candidate Harris,” he wrote on his public Facebook page, which has 10 million followers.

But the project of supporting Democratic evangelical voters goes beyond partisan politics. It goes to the heart of what evangelicalism means.

The term evangelical itself is loaded and has become synonymous with the Republican Party, argues Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University.

“There are probably more people who are theologically evangelical,” Burge said, “but they won’t grab that word because they didn’t vote for Trump or because they’re moderate or liberal.”

For many, evangelicalism is largely defined along racial and sociopolitical lines. By endorsing Harris, Rah hopes to “show that there are other voices in the church than just the religious right and the Trump evangelicals.”

Latasha Morrison, a speaker at Evangelicals for Harris Zoom, told the AP that as a Black woman, she “never associated myself with the word ‘evangelical’ until I started attending predominantly white churches.”

For years she voted Republican because of her anti-abortion views, but now the Christian author and diversity trainer says, “I feel like women and children have a better opportunity under the Harris administration than they did under the Trump administration.”

Meanwhile, Trump continues to back away from his support for nationwide restrictions, which could pose a hurdle for Republicans struggling to win back key groups — such as suburban women — who have drifted away from the GOP in recent years.

Yet he still wants to take credit for overturning Roe v. Wade, even though it handed abortion jurisdiction back to the states.

“The states will decide by vote or legislation or maybe both. And whatever they decide has to be the law of the land,” Trump said of abortion rights in April. “Now it’s up to the states to do the right thing.”