Pennsylvania State University

Weekend think pieces: Concerning 'evangelicals' and the quest for better exit polls

If you have been on Planet Earth in recent months, and have the slightest interest in (a) religion, (b) politics or (c) both, then you know that the rise of Citizen Donald Trump has raised lots of questions about religion, politics and exit polls.

To be specific, the press has been obsessed with the idea that evangelical Protestants have fallen in love with Trump.

Sure enough, some evangelicals are quite fond of Trump, especially those who -- in the words of historian Paul Matzko of Pennsylvania State University -- are "cultural" evangelicals, as opposed to folks who frequent church pews once or more a week. You may want to check out this academic paper by Matzko: "What Evangelical Support for Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump Suggests About the Future of American Evangelicalism."

But forget Trump for a moment. The most interesting concepts in Matzko's paper concern the fault line between evangelicals who backed Rubio and those who support Cruz. Here is a chunk of my "On Religion" column from this week:

"... White collar" evangelical elites have appeared to favor Rubio while "evangelical workers" may appreciate Cruz's hard-line stance on illegal immigration. 

However, Matzko believes a deeper, more complex split is emerging, one rooted in history. 

On one side, he wrote, are "18th Century evangelicals -- a "persecuted religious minority" in American culture that yearned for the "liberty to practice their faith free from State interference. To that end, they allied with freethinkers like Thomas Jefferson. … They had little interest in fomenting sweeping social change, in using State power to make America more pious, holy or Christian. They asked only for the freedom to be left alone."  
On the other side, Matzko argued, are "19th Century evangelicals" who, by the end of that century, had begun to gain cultural influence and political power. This would eventually lead to talk of a "Moral Majority." 


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