Trust me on this. If you want to visit Sioux Center, Iowa, you really need to want to go there.
Even by Midwestern standards, this town is remote. There’s a popular stereotype that many Christian liberal-arts colleges are found in lovely small towns in the middle of cornfields. That’s what we’re talking about here.
However, if you have visited this Dordt University and Sioux Center, you know that this trip is worth taking. This is especially true if you are interested in learning about the fine lines and complex divisions inside American evangelicalism and the Christian Reformed Church, in particular.
I bring this up, of course, because of a magisterial New York Times analysis that ran the other day that ran with this epic headline: “ ‘Christianity Will Have Power’ — Donald Trump made a promise to white evangelical Christians, whose support can seem mystifying to the outside observer.”
Friends, as strange as it sounds, it appears that we have found a topic on which the Times and America’s 45th president appear to be in agreement, for the most part. They share a common, simplistic view of evangelical Christianity in which everybody Just. Loves. Trump.
Before we go there, let me share part of a column that I wrote about the book “Alienated America” by journalist Timothy P. Carney. It appears that he visited the same Sioux Center that I did and what he learned there about evangelicals and the 2016 election didn’t surprise me one bit. This is long, but essential:
Research into (2016) primary voting, he noted, revealed that the "more frequently a Republican reported going to church, the less likely he was to vote for Trump." In fact, Trump was weakest among believers who went to church the most and did twice as well among those who never went to church. "Each step DOWN in church attendance brought a step UP in Trump support," noted Carney.
Reporters could have seen this principle at work early on in Sioux County, Iowa, where half of the citizens claim Dutch ancestry. According to the Association of Religion Data Archives, Sioux County has the highest percentage of evangelicals in Iowa. …
Trump didn't win a single Sioux County precinct in the Iowa caucuses.
"The Dutch Calvinists didn't like Trump at all," said Carney. "They considered him proud and boastful and they thought he showed a lack of compassion to immigrants and the poor. … These people are very conservative Republicans. They saw a connection between caring for refugees and caring for the unborn. They could tell that Trump didn't see that."
The Times piece starts with a 2016 Trump speech that was delivered at a Christian Reformed Church institution at the heart of Sioux Center life — Dordt University.
Dordt is then mentioned several other times during this lengthy feature. What is interesting, however, that Times readers never really get to hear from the political and religious thinkers who teach and do research on that campus. My guess is that this piece is rooted in the voices of CRC conservatives, even people in splinter movements, while the denomination’s mainstream is almost totally missing.
Thus, the heart of Sioux Center — with it’s complex fabric of evangelical groups and thinkers — is missing from this article as well.
GetReligion readers will not be surprised that everything in the article pivots on a familiar number — 81%. Read this next paragraph carefully:
… (The) Iowa caucuses kicked off the most polarizing road to the White House in memory. Mr. Trump largely lost the evangelicals of Sioux County that day: Only 11 percent of Republicans caucused for him. But when November came, they stood by him en masse: 81 percent of the county voted for him. And so did 81 percent of white evangelical voters nationwide.
Why did all of those evangelicals who opposed Trump (click here for the GetReligion typology on that complex topic) in the caucuses suddenly decide to vote for him?
This leads us to the heart of this piece, which is one of those all-too-familiar Times summary passages that appears to have been written by the journalism gods and, thus, there is no need for clear attributions so that readers know who is talking. Clear attributions are so old school.
This is long, long, long — but essential:
To the outside observer, the relationship between white evangelical Christians and Donald Trump can seem mystifying. From the start it appeared an impossible contradiction. Evangelicals for years have defined themselves as the values voters, people who prized the Bible and sexual morality — and loving your neighbor as yourself — above all.
Donald Trump was the opposite. He bragged about assaulting women. He got divorced, twice. He built a career off gambling. He cozied up to bigots. He rarely went to church. He refused to ask for forgiveness.
It is a contradiction that has held for four years. They stood by him when he shut out Muslim refugees. When he separated children from their parents at the border. When he issued brash insults over social media. When he uttered falsehoods as if they were true. When he was impeached.
Theories, and rationalizations, abound:
That evangelical support was purely transactional.
That they saw him as their best chance in decades to end legalized abortion.
That the opportunity to nominate conservative justices to the Supreme Court was paramount.
That they hated Hillary Clinton, or felt torn to pick the lesser of two evils.
That they held their noses and voted, hoping he would advance their policy priorities and accomplish their goals.
But beneath all this, there is another explanation. One that is more raw and fundamental.
Evangelicals did not support Mr. Trump in spite of who he is. They supported him because of who he is, and because of who they are. He is their protector, the bully who is on their side, the one who offered safety amid their fears that their country as they know it, and their place in it, is changing, and changing quickly. White straight married couples with children who go to church regularly are no longer the American mainstream. An entire way of life, one in which their values were dominant, could be headed for extinction. And Mr. Trump offered to restore them to power, as though they have not been in power all along.
Restore them to power? Is that the same thing as some form of legal protection in a complex America attempting to live under the First Amendment?
Here is the final statement of the thesis, which roots this piece in the words and ideals of Trump, as opposed to Sioux Center.
To understand evangelicals and Trump, saith the Times, “one has to go back to Jan. 23, 2016. One has to hear the speech at Dordt the way the evangelical community heard it.
Yes, “THE evangelical community.”
There is only one of them, you see, and all of those evangelicals — or even all of those white evangelicals — have the same view of Trump and American politics.
Anyone who has visited Sioux Center and Dordt knows better than that.
Why does this matter? Here are the Times gods again, summing it all up for their readers:
There is a straight line from that day at Dordt four years ago to a recent scene at a chapel in Washington, where armed officers tear-gassed peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square and shot them with rubber pellets. They were clearing the way for Mr. Trump to march from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church and hold up a Bible, a declaration of Christian power.
After reading all of that, let me point readers to a Religion Unplugged essay by a longtime D.C. Beltway friend of mine, veteran journalist Lee Pitts — who now teaches at Dordt. He has covered national politics and also was an embedded reporter during the second round of fighting in Iraq. Here is a chunk of his commentary on the Times commentary:
I know how hard it is to parachute into a place and come away with a complete picture of that community. During my decade as a political reporter based in the nation’s capital, I once rented a car and drove across the country, from Washington, D.C., to Washington state, in advance of the 2010 midterm elections. I know it is tempting to go to a place and just report in a way that confirms your pre-existing stereotypes. That makes you feel smart. That you were dead-on with your insights. It’s much harder to be open to having your stereotypes challenged by your street-level reporting and not just seek out (or keep in your final piece) people who match your original thoughts on what a place is like.
After reading this article on my adopted town, I think the piece will satisfy East Coast readers who have a handful of stereotypes that pop into their minds on those rare times they think about flyover country. They likely nodded their heads in satisfaction that this article confirmed these preconceived notions, and then they turned the page.
I’ve done more than parachute into Sioux Center. I call it my home. And you can find a broad diversity here. So much so that any slice you choose does not feel like the whole.
Pitts has more to say, so let’s keep reading:
Capturing nuance in explanatory journalism is hard. People are complex. Places are complex. …
That is not to say that the Times picture is wrong. It represents a slice of life here and fits a certain narrative that exists. Yet that slice does not represent the entire pie that makes up Sioux Center. I know that it is hard to capture the mystery and complexity of any place in one article. But Sioux Center is not a monolith. Other voices and perspectives exist. Including even one of those voices offering a counter-narrative to the caricature makes the picture depicted in any story that much more complete. Does journalism exist to confirm stereotypes, often shaped by readers from afar, or to sometimes have those challenged? I do think it is interesting that the Times article depicted a nuclear family who goes to church and prays before sharing a meal as something curious to study like Jane Goodall going to live with the apes. When did that become an outlier and not a cornerstone of America?
Amen. Let us attend. In conclusion, let me ask:
Are there Trumpian evangelicals in Sioux Center and are their views worth covering? Of course there are.
Are there progressive evangelicals in Sioux Center and elsewhere and are their views worth covering? Of course there are.
Are the views in those wing-groups identical to those found in the mainstream of evangelical life at Dordt, in Sioux Center and in the wider Christian Reformed Church? Of course not.
There’s a word for what needs to happen, when digging into a story of this kind. That word is “journalism.”