By Eliza Griswold in the NYT
Ms. Griswold is the author of “Circle of Hope: A Reckoning With Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church.”
In the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13, a video with images of Jesus crowned with thorns, blood running down his face, followed by photos of the former president circulated on social media. Days later, at the Republican National Convention, the evangelist Franklin Graham endorsed Mr. Trump from the stage, saying that “God spared his life.”
But the idea of Mr. Trump as chosen by God has infuriated those evangelicals who believe that he stands in direct opposition to their faith. Their existence highlights an often-overlooked fact about the American religious landscape: Evangelicals are not a monolith.
The troubling ascendancy of white Christian nationalism has galvanized evangelicals for whom following Jesus demands speaking truth to power, as well as building the kingdom of heaven on earth in actionable ways. In 2024, this includes mobilizing voters against the former president.
Although this broader evangelical movement is often referred to as the evangelical left, it adheres to no party. “This isn’t about being a Democrat or a Republican,” Jim Wallis, an evangelical Christian pastor, author and justice activist, told me. Instead believers like him say they refuse worldly labels and division.
They also believe that they can sway enough of their fellow evangelicals, along with other people of faith, and low-income Americans, who historically have had much lower voting rates than other groups, to swing this presidential election against Mr. Trump.
“The so-called evangelicals who support Trump have a Jesus problem,” Bishop William Barber II told me. Jesus advocated tirelessly for the poor and warned that nations would be judged “by how we treat the hungry, the sick, the incarcerated and the immigrant,” Bishop Barber said. (continued)