Believe it or not, I had already selected a Dallas Morning News essay by Baylor University historian Thomas about evangelicals and politics as this weekend’s “think piece” before l’affaire Christianity Today rocked the chattering classes that live on Twitter.
The double-decker headline proclaims, “When political pollsters talk about ‘evangelicals,’ they aren’t talking about all of us: The evangelical leaders whom the president cites are actually a small group.”
Kidd has been everywhere in recent weeks, with due cause, because of his new Yale University Press book: “Who Is an Evangelical?: The History of a Movement in Crisis.”
Somebody, somewhere, really needs to buy a truckload this book and distribute copies to every journalist in America (and maybe the world) who plans to cover the 2020 White House race. And not just because of Trump! There are crucial “evangelical” plot lines unfolding linked to African-American evangelicals (ask Mayor Pete Buttigieg) and the growing number of evangelical Latinos (think suburban voters in Florida).
But, wait, is the word “evangelical” a political term? Here is a bite from a recent column I did on Kidd’s work:
Some journalists and pollsters are now operating on the assumption that white evangelicals are the only evangelicals that matter, noted Kidd. … A few have, however, started to realize that many Americans who self-identify as "evangelicals" are not walking the talk.
That has been common knowledge since the late 1970s, when Gallup researchers began asking hard questions about religious beliefs and the practice of those beliefs in daily life. Gallup cut its estimate that "evangelicals" were 34% of America's population to 18% – a number that would shock many journalists, as well as GOP activists.
"Evangelicals are covered, they are important, when they are a factor in politics — period," said Kidd. "All of those evangelicals who are not even voting, and there are lots of them, may as well not even exist. Their lives, by definition, are not newsworthy."
Well, #DUH. As your GetReligionistas have said for years: Politics is the true faith of way too many American journalists, the only fact-based way of affecting life on this planet.
Political life is real. Religious life? “Fugetaboutit!” Is there a similar phrase that would be used in more elite offices?
So why do journalists need to start reading Kidd? Here is a meaty sample from this short Dallas Morning News piece. Wanna guess what he has to use as a jumping-off point?
Many observers have discussed the high percentage of American evangelicals who voted for Trump in 2016. Most acknowledged that exit polls focused only on white evangelicals, but many stories still concluded with generalized assertions that more than 8 in 10 (81%) white evangelical Protestants supported Trump. More carefully worded reports remembered that exit polling was surveying only people who voted. Thus, these stories were typically about self-identified white evangelical voters. To be fair, the problem of vague rhetoric about polls’ expansive coverage does not apply only to evangelicals. Most pollsters are uninterested in nonvoters, but evidence would suggest that perhaps 42 percent or more of evangelicals have not voted in recent presidential elections.
Some polls estimate that about 41 percent of all Americans self-identify either as “born again” or evangelical. This percentage surely exaggerates the number of committed evangelicals in the nation. Surprising numbers of people will tell pollsters that they are born again or evangelical, even if they do not attend church or hold distinctive evangelical beliefs. The estimates still indicate, however, that there are likely tens of millions of politically inactive evangelicals in America. These people may be as regular churchgoers as many evangelical Trump supporters, but in most stories about evangelicals, nonvoters might as well not exist.
There’s more. Please read it all. It won’t take long.