In the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump won 81 percent of the white Evangelical vote, and in 2020 he garnered 76 percent of that vote according to exit polls. If you thought conservative white evangelicals would abandon Donald Trump after being indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on nearly three-dozen felony counts related to paying hush money to an adult film star and a Playboy model, fuhgetaboutit! The faithful are remaining faithful!
And they are labeling the indictment the “weaponizing of the judicial system,” and calling it a "horrible, corrupt, disgusting, evil, demonic situation."
According to religion expert Anthea Butler, Holy Week "has been hijacked" by Trump's supporters, Raw Story’s Tom Boggioni reported. In a column for MSNBC, Butler wrote, "Holy Week has been hijacked by the spectacle of white evangelicals crying over their savior Donald Trump," before adding, "...they see his prosecution as a persecution, as a punishment Democrats are inflicting on him because he was their chosen one, the messiah who gave them power."
Immediately after the indictment, Trump’s “longtime religious advisor Paula White-Cain … organize[d] an ‘Emergency Prayer Call’ with Trump's faith advisory board through Intercessors for America,” The Christian Post’s Anugrah Kumar reported.
The call brought together Evangelical pastors who served on Trump’s Evangelical advisory board during his 2016 campaign and during his term in office. According to Kumar, “Following the 2020 election defeat, Trump launched a new National Faith Advisory Board in 2021 led by televangelist White-Cain and Jenny Korn, who served in the Trump White House.”
"Today we are coming together as people of faith with deep concern about the direction of America," White-Cain, who formerly served as the senior pastor of New Destiny Christian Center in Apopka, Florida, said.
"Regardless of any party affiliation, we should all be appalled when a judicial system is weaponized against a political opponent. Today, we do what people of faith in America have always done and continue to do. We pray and we and cry out to God for righteousness."
Trump, who participated in the call, said it was a "fake investigation" and "sham" indictment, saying "radical left people" who "hate our country" are behind it.
Sean Feucht, a former Bethel worship leader and founder of the Let Us Worship movement, said: "What a heavy, somber, shameful day for the nation, Lord. I just pray, God, for believers that are listening to my voice, for President Trump who is listening to my voice, I just pray that You would replace the heaviness, God. Instead of a spirit of despair, God, would You release a garment of praise? I pray, God, that this call would catalyze and mobilize intercession to go forth, prayer warriors, God, that would rise up to change the atmosphere over our nation."
Other participants in the call include Pastor Jentezen Franklin of the Free Chapel in Gainesville, Georgia; Pastor Samuel Rodriguez of New Season Church in Sacramento, California; conservative radio host Eric Metaxas; and the grand old dude of the Religious Right, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson.
"We're calling out for justice, righteousness, in the culture. What is taking place here is evil, it's wrong," Dobson, 86, prayed. "We ask you to intercede on behalf of former President Donald J. Trump."
In a pre-indictment piece originally posted on the Substack of Robert P. Jones, titled “Why a Trump indictment will matter so little to most of his Christian supporters,” Jones noted that “One of the most blatant acts of public hypocrisy I’ve witnessed, in more than two decades observing conservative white Christians, was their easy discarding of the “values voters” moniker along the road to supporting Trump. This abrupt abandonment was particularly striking, given that its original purpose was to exploit the sexual indiscretions of Bill Clinton as a campaign weapon to be wielded against other democratic candidates” (https://religionnews.com/2023/03/24/why-a-trump-indictment-will-matter-so-little-to-most-of-his-christian-supporters/).
Jones, CEO and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute and the author of White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, pointed to numerous examples of public revelations against Trump that did not move the needle for conservative white evangelicals against him.
Jones pointed out that “an indictment is unlikely to have a great impact on the white evangelicals and other conservative white Christians who have been his staunchest supporters. To those who have long abandoned their posture as “values voters” and have fully embraced an authoritarian figure they see as the savior and protector of white Christian America, the moral repulsiveness of the crass violation of his marriage vows and the legal evidence of a cover-up, even if they are substantiated in a court of law, will likely have little weight.”