Among some of the religious conservatives who helped place Donald Trump in the presidency, there is a subtle but growing sense of buyer’s remorse. To them, Trump has not been ennobled by the office as they had hoped. He has not allowed his newfound but much touted commitment to faith to lift him above the crass brawler he has been most of his life.
For some of these religious conservatives, it is the pettiness that offends most. They had hoped for a healer, rather than the kind of man who would call protesting NFL players “sons of bitches” or who would feud with the beleaguered mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, while she stood elbow-deep in the waters of hurricane Irma. For other faith-based former Trump supporters, it is the sense that something is amiss in the president’s inner being, that perhaps TV host Stephen Colbert was right when he spoke of the president’s “anemic firefly of a soul.”
Then there are those who simply fear that the chaos in the White House and Trump’s bare knuckles approach to threats like North Korea will lead the nation into avoidable disasters.
They had hoped for a better man. In fact, they were promised one. During the 2016 presidential election, many conservative religious leaders, traumatized by the Obama years and terrified of a Hillary Clinton presidency, turned to Trump as the champion of their hopes. In doing so, they remade his campaign into a holy crusade, excusing behavior they had often derided in their pulpits.
It worked. By the time the dust settled, Donald Trump had won the votes of 81 percent of white evangelicals, more than half of all Roman Catholics, and more than half of all weekly church attendees in the United States.
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01.22.2025