The Church of Trump
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/the-church-of-trump/567425/
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The Church of Trump
At the presidents rallies, his devotees find the relief of belongingand something more, besides.
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Is it Trumpor something larger than Trump? Possibly, its both. Last spring, my colleague Peter Beinart looked at the increasing secularization of American society and how it had contributed to the rise of political tribalism:
As Americans have left organized religion, they havent stopped viewing politics as a struggle between us and them. Many have come to define us and them in even more primal and irreconcilable ways.
This tribalism has infected both the right and the leftbut in particular, Beinart cited the work of W. Bradford Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia who has concluded that rates of religious attendance have fallen more than twice as much among whites without a college degree as among those who graduated college.
Non-college-educated whites are the Trump base, now set adrift:
Establishing causation is difficult, but we know that culturally conservative white Americans who are disengaged from church experience less economic success and more family breakdown than those who remain connected, and they grow more pessimistic and resentful.
You could draw a straight line from a disenfranchised, pessimistic, resentful audience to Trumps brand of fear-driven, divisive politics, but this would leave out an equally important part of the Trump phenomenon, and something critical to its success: the elation. Go to a Trump rally, speak to Trump supporters, and the devotion is nearly evangelical. Their party line is less a talking point than a sermon: His voters have talked to me about the bad deal with Iran, the drug mules crossing the border, the Mueller witch hunt. The language is uniform, as they quote chapter and verse. Here are the true believers: It is no surprise that Trumps numbers wont move.
In his research, Wilcox noted the particular isolation of the white working class in the institutional church:
Moderately educated Americans may feel less attracted to churches that uphold the bourgeois virtuesdelayed gratification, a focus on education, self-control, etc.that undergird this lifestyle. As importantly, working class whites may also feel uncomfortable socializing with the middle and upper class whites who have increasingly come to dominate the life of religious congregations in the U.S. since the 1970s, especially as they see their own economic fortunes fall.