White Christians support Donald Trump's re-election

When you read that headline, did you immediately think I was referring to evangelical Protestants -- roughly speaking, churches like the Southern Baptists, Assemblies of God, or various non-denominational congregations? You'd be right. But you would also be wrong. Research from the Pew Center finds that white mainline Protestants and white Catholics also support Trump, though not by the margins found among evangelicals. Here's the break down:

• White evangelicals -- 78 percent
• White mainline Protestants -- 53 percent
• White Catholics -- 52 percent

Fortunately, there are a lot of other voters who are not white Christians, whose anti-GOP leanings overcome the Trump margin among white Christians, on the national level if not in all areas.

White Christians are a key segment of the electorate because they make up roughly 44% of  U.S. registered voters. Roughly 7% of registered voters are Black Protestants, 5% are Hispanic Catholics, 2% are Jewish and 28% are religiously unaffiliated.

Large pluralities of these latter groups want to see the last of Trump.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media, ignorantly, assumes all Christians are evangelicals, an alien tribe to them. The media may soon need to do a rethink on that.

Diana Butler Bass shared a new chart from Robert P. Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute which shows that evangelical numerical decline and a slight uptick among mainline Protestants is making the two groups nearly equal in size. Seems hard to believe, but PRRI is a reputable survey researcher.

Click to enlarge.

Bass points out that the overall decline in white Christian percentages reflects the country's shifting demographics. Every year, more of us are not white. Concurrently, more of us from all racial groupings are ceasing to identify with any religious faith.

And Bass notes something else:

... Black, Asian, or Hispanic evangelicals ... vote more in line with non-evangelicals in their communities than they do with their white co-religionists.

Might it not also be accurate to say that in segregated America, white Christians vote more in line with their white communities than with their co-religionists of color? 

Or rather, whiteness trumps religious affiliation when it comes to political orientation.