Where religious voters might to be found

Peter Wehner was a speech writer for three Republican presidents and is a prominent voice in evangelical Christian conservatism. He sees Donald Trump's latest efforts to run away from the backlash against the work of his anti-abortion court appointments -- and sees the demise of the anti-choice movement. 

Trump has done what no Democrat—not Bill or Hillary Clinton, not Mario Cuomo or John Kerry, not Joe Biden or Barack Obama, not any Democrat—could have done. He has, at the national level, made the Republican Party de facto pro-choice. Having stripped the pro-life plank from the GOP platform, having said that Governor Ron DeSantis’s ban on abortion after six weeks is “too harsh” and a “terrible mistake,” and having promised to veto a national abortion ban, Trump has now gone one step further, essentially advocating for greater access to abortion.

But that’s not all. The public is more pro-choice today than it was at the start of Trump’s presidential term, with pro-choice support near record levels. Approval for abortion is strongest among younger people, who will be voting for many decades to come. (Seventy-six percent of 18-to-29-year-olds say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.) Since the Dobbs decision, ballot measures restricting abortions have lost everywhere, including deep-red states such as Kansas and Kentucky. In addition—and this fact doesn’t get nearly enough attention—the number of abortions increased 8 percent during Trump’s presidency, after three decades of steady decline.

So voting for Donald Trump didn’t mean you were voting for fewer abortions. Abortions declined by nearly 30 percent during Barack Obama’s two terms, and by the end of his term, the abortion rate and ratio were below what they were in 1973, when Roe v. Wade was decided. But they went up again on Trump’s watch. Public opposition to abortion is collapsing. Pro-life initiatives are being beaten even in very conservative states. The GOP has jettisoned its pro-life plank after having it in place for nearly a half century. And Trump himself is now saying he’d be great for “reproductive rights,” a position that pro-lifers have long insisted is a moral abomination.

Wehner has long been an anti-Trumper; he catalogues fluently the former president's multiple immoralities. But he felt he could understand his co-religionists for whom being against abortion was the only issue. No longer. Trump has rendered that stance insupportable.

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Meanwhile, historian of religion Diana Butler Bass thinks Democrats trying to peel Christian voters from Trump are looking at the wrong group. It's not the evangelicals (however deluded) who might change their minds; it's the slightly more than half of white mainline Protestants and white Catholics who have been giving their votes to the orange felon.

But if you think religion is still important — and you want to flip religious voters — you need to find those people who are actually willing to change their minds. And those voters aren’t in evangelical churches.

The religious “margins” are in congregations more influenced by nostalgic patriotism than Christian nationalism and in faith communities that cherish democracy and diversity over authority and conformity. Those sorts of Christians don’t believe in one-time conversions or think that doubt is evil or that changing your opinion is heresy. Indeed, they cherish the idea of faith as a journey to follow grace and goodness wherever it takes them — even to unexpected ideas and places.

And those sorts of religious people are more likely to be in white mainline and white Catholic churches than in evangelical congregations — especially in swing states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

Will these folks stay with the crazier and crazier Trump in this crucial year?