This is Democracy – Episode 254: Evangelicals Today

[00:00:00] Daniel: This is Democracy. A podcast about the people of the United States. A podcast about citizenship. About engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today’s important issues. And how to have a voice in what happens next.

[00:00:25] Jeremi: Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy.

This week we are going to talk about how the evangelical population of the United States, which has been a mainstay of American society for a long time, how this population has changed and is changing, and what those changes mean for American democracy. We’re joined by a friend and a really terrific scholar who’s been on our podcast before, Dr.

Daniel Hummel. Daniel, thanks for joining us.

[00:00:56] Daniel: Pleasure to be with both of you. Dr.

[00:00:59] Jeremi: Hummel is the Director for University Engagement at Upper House, which is a Christian study center serving the University of Wisconsin Madison, particularly serving the students at the University of Wisconsin Madison. He’s a very highly regarded author of books on the history of American evangelicals and their relationship to policy, as well as the theology and intellectual work surrounding that topic.

His first book, which was actually his dissertation that I was a part of as he was writing it, I got to learn from him as he did his research. and wrote this wonderful dissertation, which became his first book. The first book is titled Covenant Brothers, Evangelicals, Jews, and U. S. Israel Relations. His second book, which came out, I think, about a year ago, The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism, How the Evangelical Battle over the End Times Shaped a Nation.

We discussed that book and the theology surrounding dispensationalism on a prior episode of This is Democracy, about six months ago. And Daniel has written and continues to write frequently on religion, on politics, on foreign policy. He writes for the Washington Post, he writes for Christianity Today, for the Religion News Service, and for many, many other outlets.

He also writes quite a lot of book reviews. Uh, book reviews that really place, uh, the questions around religion and American history in a valuable context, I think, for all of us who care about our democracy. So, we’re very well served to have Dan on the podcast with us today. Before we turn to our discussion about the nature of our evangelical population in the United States, we have, of course, Mr.

Zachary’s scene setting poem. What’s the title of your poem today, Zachary? If your God is a God of truth. If your God is a God of truth. Okay, let’s hear it. If your God

[00:02:48] Zachary: is a God of truth, I will gladly read your book of Ruth and walk with you to freedom. And if your God is a God of light, I will join you. I will join the fight for a future filled with freedom.

If your God is a God of life, I will walk with you the fields of strife in search of a place called peace. And if your God is a God of hope, I will wash my hands with a bitter soap and follow the path of peace. If your God is a God of right, I will bow before an awesome might that points its way to love.

And if your God is a God of dreams, I will write mine down in paper wings and see the way to love. Yes, if your God is a God of love, I will follow you like a turtle dove until we find Elysium. But if your God is a God of hate, I think I’ll stick around and wait until I find an

[00:03:43] Jeremi: answer. So have you figured out if your god is a god of truth, Zachary?

I don’t know. I mean, you put it out there.

[00:03:53] Zachary: Well, I don’t really think that’s the point of the poem. It’s more about the ways in which religion can be. Uh, misused, um, for, for, um, hate and for division, um, but also about the many possibilities of religion as a way towards love, towards peace, uh, towards life, towards hope.

All of these things that religion promises, um, but also the, the danger of it being misused or, um, turned. Uh, to, towards, uh, into, into something that divides us.

[00:04:24] Jeremi: Right, right, right. And, and in a sense, this is, uh, this has been with us in American history from the first days, from before there was a United States.

These questions of front and center, whether we’re talking about John Winthrop, whether we’re talking about early Jewish settlers, early Muslim Americans, these questions have been front and center. Dan, before we get into discussing how the evangelical community in the United States has changed, I think it would be helpful to have your definition of what an evangelical is.

[00:04:53] Daniel: Ooh, that’s a, that’s a million dollar question. That’s one that, uh, scholars of evangelicalism in a number of fields, so you think of historians, sociologists, maybe even religious studies scholars, have their own way of defining it. Um, as a historian, Uh, I don’t totally agree with this definition, but this is the one that is most commonly cited.

Uh, it was offered by a historian named David Bebbington, who studies actually British evangelicalism, but his definition, which is known as the Bebbington quadrilateral, um, is, is the one that, that until, I would say until the last few years has been the dominant one. And that quadrilateral obviously has four, Uh, characteristics or features of what an evangelical is.

And those are, um, uh, evangelicals, uh, center their faith on the Bible. So biblicism, they are, uh, focused on the cross or the crucifixion of Jesus as the atoning work that saves people. So crucicentrism, they believe in conversions. as the sign of salvation, so conversionism, and then, uh, the fourth is activism, or the idea that the way Christian faith is expressed is through action, and that is often, um, evangelism, of spreading the, the gospel, the, the good news to others.

So that, that Bebbington quadrilateral has been the dominant view for, um, for a long time. And I, I think there’s a lot to that. I think each one of those things I listed has, uh, obviously evangelicals aren’t the only Christians to, you know, care about the Bible or other things, but where you find all four of these active, you’re probably looking at an evangelical.

And one of the big. The strength of this definition is it applies over time. So we can talk about 18th century revivals, the first great awakening, uh, people like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield. And then we can see a continuity through evangelicals today. But I would say a lot of scholars in more recent years, and a lot of this you can date to, you know, 2015, 2016 and the emergence of Donald Trump and the close association, uh, of evangelical support.

Uh, for trump that’s been made in, in a lot of analysis is there’s been a pushback on this definition, which doesn’t really get into cultural and political, uh, uh, issues or stakes. And a lot more recent focus has been on. Cultural and political positions that evangelicals hold or people who call themselves evangelicals seem to hold together.

So whether this is focus on issues like abortion or opposition to same sex marriage, or if it’s sort of positions on immigration or economics, these are maybe more cultural or political factors that at least sociologically when you pull evangelicals, they seem to be quite uniform on these views as well.

And so I’m someone as a historian who does really, uh, want to think about evangelicals in a longer history. I tend to try to merge these together, but, um, but I think it’s hard. It’s hard to stick to only the Bebbington quadrilateral here in 2024 when there is an obvious, uh, a lot more going on, particularly among American evangelicals, uh, than that would capture.

Uh, those, those just particular theological, um, commitments. Is this direct

[00:08:19] Zachary: connection between, uh, evangelical religion and American politics, uh, a new phenomenon? Or is it, is it something that has sort of defined a lot of our political discourse for, for a

[00:08:30] Daniel: long time? Yeah, evangelicals, uh, it’s pretty good if you take, Someone like David Bebbington, you know, the evangelicals have been around for about 300 years and, and they’re, there’s always been, uh, in a North American component to evangelicalism.

But, uh, as we talk about the term today, evangelicals are, are a global religious community that is much bigger than the United States. And it’s always important for Americans to remember that, that most, I mean, if you were to use a definition like Bebbington’s, the vast majority of evangelicals. today are in the global south and are, are, you know, in, in much different context than, than even North American, Western Europe.

But in American politics, the, the close association between evangelicals and conservative politics, uh, goes, it’s, it’s largely a 20th century story. Uh, some of it has to do with the fundamentalist movement, which is where modern evangelicalism tends to trace its roots. Fundamentalists in the 1920s were very much active in the public square on issues like Um, uh, opposition to the teaching of evolution in school, in public schools, they were quite, uh, against, uh, feminism, they were quite against communism.

Um, and then in the 1970s, you really get a, a much bigger focus in. In the broader media on evangelicals, 1976 was, uh, so called the year of, uh, the evangelical. It was when you had Jimmy Carter running for president, who turns out to have a much different politics than what we think of evangelicals today.

But, but Carter really paved the way for talking about being a born again Christian and how that influenced his And, uh, many presidential candidates since Carter have claimed to be born again or claim to be evangelical and wanted to tap into this emerging, uh, or at least in the seventies, emerging political, uh, classification that was up until that point, seemingly more of a religious classification, but became associated with Republican party politics and particularly these, these social issues like abortion, um, Uh, or, um, opposition to homosexuality, um, or as I’ve written about, uh, support for the state of Israel.

And so, uh, when we, when we think about that association today, it’s around a 50 year old association between evangelicals and the Republican Party in the U. S.

[00:10:51] Jeremi: And most of us as historians, and here I draw on your work as well as the work of many others, Dan, most of us see an upswing of evangelical expression and participation in American society after World War II, particularly in the 1950s.

Is

[00:11:09] Daniel: that correct? Yeah, that’s right. You can see a lot of, um, you know, some, some scars, I think, of, of a diplomatic historian, actually, Seth Jacobs, who calls the 1950s, uh, a great awakening. I think he calls it the third great awakening. And that’s because people like, uh, Billy Graham, who is the, you know, par, the, the evangelical par excellence, um, becomes a household name for all Americans, not just evangelical Christians.

And Billy Graham is the, you could say the tip of the spear of a much broader, much bigger, uh, institutional structure of evangelical parachurch organizations, nonprofits, universities and colleges, and of course, churches and related organizations. that are emerging after World War Two, really, uh, really wanting to engage with, uh, the broader American culture, and that includes American politics.

So, Billy Graham is, is probably the, the tip of that, but you can think of more, um, you could say in some ways more, uh, extreme or more fundamentalistic figures like Billy James Hargis, who, uh, is, is very active in anti communism, um, and, and many other figures who, uh, are, you know, are engaging with politicians are actually running for office themselves at certain points and are also able to shape the broader political culture.

You think of someone like Dwight Eisenhower, who is very eager to associate himself with Billy Graham eager to identify himself as a church going person when he wasn’t really a church going person before being president But there’s a lot of cachet in the broader political culture for associating with Christianity at that point or religion, but more specifically an evangelical brand of Christianity that becomes Really really potent and and in some ways up until the 1970s as we were talking about is is somewhat bipartisan There’s a there’s a desire As much among certain Democrats to predicting the South to identify with this tradition, but as time goes on, there’s a very clear Republican potency to the evangelical subculture,

[00:13:19] Jeremi: and I think that’s a wonderful foundation for the rest of our conversation, because in a sense, that’s the legacy of post war evangelical expression that I grew up with, that my generation that came of age in the 80s grew up with, right?

It was this perception that evangelicals, and maybe this perception was outdated even at that moment, but nonetheless, it was the perception that evangelicals were churchgoing. And that there were major figures like Billy Graham, who was the biggest of all of them as you said, meeting with every single president until the end of Billy Graham’s life.

That there were these figures who were pastors and religious leaders of this community. And those who were in this community were spreading the good news. But they were doing it as part of an organized movement to some extent. And they had church going and church leaders. who were, as you said, the tip of the spear.

That seems to have changed in the last few years. Is that correct,

[00:14:13] Daniel: Dan? Yes, I think it’s, a lot has changed. And one of the things that’s changed is there’s been, there’s emerged a sort of new class of evangelical leaders who are not coming out of explicitly religious organizations, you could say. So take one example of someone who’s been really important in the last few decades, Ralph Reed, who’s been at the, the center of organizing evangelicals politically since the 1980s.

And particularly, he was really important in the 1990s with the Christian coalition, which, uh, was led by someone named Pat Robertson, who was a. televangelist and, and a pastor, but Ralph Reed was really the, the person who was, who was working and organizing the Christian coalition. Reed does not have, he didn’t, he doesn’t come out of a ministry background and he, his, his authority comes from being a political actor.

And yet, when he talks, he is talking in an entirely evangelical language, and he is invoking the same theological and religious language that evangelical pastors would, but his authority is around access to power in Washington, D. C., and then within D. C., his ability to organize, you know, evangelical voters on the ground.

And Reed is probably one of the better known of a whole class of evangelical leaders that have emerged that are really much more about organizing politically than they are about any type of explicit religious activity. And that’s a, that’s a largely recent phenomenon. You could date it to the 80s, but it really emerges in the 90s.

Um, and, and is now a major part of the way evangelicals relate to, uh, relate to politics. You can just imagine, just think of, um, the average evangelical. And we might imagine in a vacuum that the way an evangelical In Iowa, we could say since we’re, um, right here in primary season, you know, who are they looking to, to form their opinions about candidates, about issues, uh, maybe even deeper things or just about commitments or principles that they’re going to live by.

I think we’d imagine that it would be their pastor and the Bible and maybe some supplementary material or something like that. But we often don’t think of someone like Ralph Reed as someone who’s actually shaping the fundamental beliefs of. Evangelicals, but as as time has gone on, you know, in the last few decades, we’ve realized that actually those people are quite important.

They often have access to the average evangelical more than their pastors do And they are very media savvy. And so in some ways, you know, an average evangelical might be spending Dozens of hours a week listening to very politically plugged in evangelicals, and they’re listening to their pastor for, you know, a couple hours a week on Sundays.

And this is one of the keys to understanding how evangelicals, how even the definition of evangelicalism has turned much more political than theological in recent years. According

[00:17:06] Jeremi: to Pew, and you’ve seen these studies and seen more of them than I have, but according to Pew and a number of other studies that I’ve read, uh, Americans as a whole are going to church less and evangelicals are going to church less.

Is that correct?

[00:17:19] Daniel: Yes. Um, yeah, certainly for, uh, for Americans, I bet that might be the easier one to tackle. We’ve, we’ve seen church decline ever since the 1960s. And that was probably the peak of, of church going actually in American history. It’s interesting in some ways, um, the, the church. The church attendance rate today is actually not that much different from a century ago.

And so if you take the really long view, there isn’t, uh, you might just think of it a little differently. You might interpret it differently, but if you take a 50 year view, it’s been a, a, a steady decline. We’re right around, uh, 30 to 35 percent of Americans, uh, now attend, uh, uh, regularly, uh, church. And it’s actually interesting since COVID a number of the polling agencies have actually had to redefine what regular attendance is, and they’ve defined it down because, uh, most people are going, even, even the so called regular attenders are going to church.

Um, instead of I think the the old definition that was widely used was something like three times a month, and I think they’ve reduced it to two times a month because if they were to keep it at three times, they would just be an entire bottoming out of that of that practice. But so, yeah, that’s happening across the board.

That’s not even just an evangelical phenomenon. That’s across all religious traditions among evangelicals. This is a really interesting thing is is, uh, self defined evangelicals are going to church less. And so we might imagine that, um, uh, church attendance is almost a unspoken, assumed, crucial part of what it means to be an evangelical Christian, because this is the primary way you’d engage with other evangelicals in some type of formal setting.

You’re all attending church, worshiping together, listening to a sermon together. But what we see is that there’s plenty of evangelicals more and more who will continue to respond to a pollster and say they are evangelical, but will not sort of, uh, do the same practices that we’ve always assumed evangelicals do.

One of them is church attendance. Another was is prayer. Another is giving to your, um, often giving your church, but giving to some type of, uh, charity or, or other organization. All these things are going down. And even as the self identification of evangelicalism has actually remained quite steady for the last decade or so.

And that’s the big puzzle that a lot of people are trying to unpack is why are Why isn’t that if all these signs of being evangelical are dropping, why aren’t people actually not identifying less with the term evangelical? And that’s where the, the politics comes in and where evangelicalism, what many people mean by that now has very little to do with anything Bebbington was talking about and much more to do with a particular set of.

political and cultural stances that are really popular in, in conservative politics today. How might this

[00:20:03] Zachary: de institutionalization of evangelical religion affect not just evangelical politics or the relationship between evangelicals and evangelical religion, but our politics itself? Uh, and, and I’m thinking in particular of the election in 2024 that we’re approaching and the primary season that we’re almost already in the midst of.

[00:20:24] Daniel: Well, I think one thing it’s going to do, it’s going to just exacerbate, is this sense that there are the, the tastemakers, the influencers that are going to shape evangelical thinking about politics are going to be more and more people who don’t have obvious institutional power centers. And that can be everyone from, uh, a youtuber who gets really popular and a bunch of evangelicals are listening to that person and whatever their views are to, um, uh, to broader, you know, cultural influences that are going to be the things that dictate what it means to be an evangelical and then what the, you know, so called right view of something is based on that evangelical, um, identity.

I think one thing that churches have tended to do, uh, well, um, at least at their best moment is to tend to be spaces where evangelicals can come together and think together about Important issues, and maybe they don’t always land where other people want them to land, but there usually is a sense of a communal reasoning toward, um, uh, toward a position on on immigration or prayer in school or whatever the hot topic is because Less evangelicals are going to church today, uh, fewer evangelicals are.

Um, that type of communal aspect to politics is not happening. At least it’s not happening within churches. It might be happening with, within explicitly conservative political spaces or within even Republican Party spaces. But it’s not happening, it won’t be happening as much within churches. And, um, and that that creates a different dynamic to who gets to speak, who gets to sort of decide who’s in and out of those kind of those conversations.

And it ultimately, I think, uh, means that there’s actually less gathering altogether among evangelicals. And there’s a lot more, um, individual or maybe you could say family based reasoning toward these things. One of the things that evangelicalism is known for Is for its tendency toward individualism, uh, toward a, even in the conception of, of the babington, quadrilateral, all of these things around reading the Bible about a conversion experience.

These are individual, um, relationships between you and God. And so leaving evangelicals to their own devices, they tend to be individualistic and they tend to idealize the individual and, and the politics that would come from that idealization. attending church, being part of, of, uh, third, uh, third spaces or, you know, sort of a thicker, uh, social scene has tended to be the balance to that.

But as those, as there’s a deinstitutionalization happening in evangelicalism, I think you’re going to see those tendencies that are embedded within the tradition express themselves even more because there isn’t that check on them that traditionally there has been.

[00:23:16] Jeremi: It’s so interesting to hear you describe this, and you describe it so vividly.

Um, because as a historian and as someone who’s not an evangelical, I’m obviously not one, um, it sounds as if the changes in the sociology of evangelicals today, the changes in their behaviors, their attitudes, their self identification, they sound less traditionally religious. I think of religion in American history as, you know, what Tocqueville found as he was going across the country in the early 19th century.

Church attendance, people quoting and citing the Bible, uh, many of the things that are in the Bevington Quadrilateral, whether these were evangelicals or not that he was talking about. The way you’ve described, uh, where evangelicals are today. at least to me sounds, sounds less religious. I’m sure that’s an unfair characterization, so I’d love to hear your reaction to that.

[00:24:11] Daniel: Well, I think for, uh, for a segment of evangelicals, I think that is true. I think you can actually see a secularization of what the term means. And, um, you know, you even see this in the issues that are, um, that, that are most important in polling to evangelicals today. And so if you, if you just rewind even a few decades, The top issues would be.

abortion and same sex marriage. If you go, you know, to the nineties, those are the issues that if you pulled evangelicals, they would say are the most important issues. The issues that should define what it means to be an evangelical voter. You should always vote, you know, in support of evangelicals views on on these issues.

If you pulled evangelicals today, they actually don’t care about those issues as much. They care more about it. immigration and the economy. And, um, and that is a remarkable change for a group that, um, uh, we’re seemingly, at least on the surface, are the same people over those decades. But I think that part of the key to understanding this is it’s actually not the same people.

Donald Trump and other developments in the last few decades have done a sorting that is hard to see on the surface. Where a lot of, uh, evangelicals, uh, from the 90s and 2000s have disaffiliated from that term. Um, I am in, I will call myself an evangelical, though I want to, I often want to qualify what that means.

And even that, you know, even my own struggles with that show that the term means something different than it meant. A few decades ago, but there’s there’s a ton of of one time evangelicals who have disaffiliated and then there’s a large number of event of new evangelicals of people who have taken on that label in the last decade who have done so because they like the political positions that they associate with evangelicalism far more than the religion or the theology or the church practices that come with it.

And so, um, because that has happened and we, we know this has happened, we’ve, it was, it was something that People had to discover, uh, sociologically and historically, but, but, um, the Trump phenomenon has helped, uh, people turn attention to that. Um, there’s a term that some sociologists use, uh, of political evangelicals, evangelicals who adopt the term purely for the politics.

Um, we know that’s happened, and so there has been a secularization of the term that makes it very confusing, actually, to talk about it, because there are still evangelicals who largely define that themselves on theological terms, and then there’s a whole nother group who define themselves on the political terms.

And there’s, of course, a lot of people who would do both and who see both as implicating each other. And so it’s a very confusing, uh, very confusing landscape right now that takes a lot of sorting out and nuancing just to even try to understand what’s going on on the ground.

[00:27:00] Jeremi: But I guess coming back to my question, and this is something Dan, you and I have talked about repeatedly over the years.

Um, because it fascinates me, and I think it fascinates you, and you have far more background in this than I do. Um, To what extent can we say people are motivated by religion or to what extent are What you’re describing sounds sometimes to me like people who have decided they want to take a political position for whatever reason and then are more justifying it by contortions of Theological

[00:27:31] Daniel: argument.

Yeah, um, you know, I think And we yeah, we have talked a lot a lot about this Jeremy and I think I think I’ve definitely Um, moved from a position maybe a decade ago or more where I really didn’t want to even contemplate that and that’s part of my own biases as a, as a practicing evangelical that, um, that, uh, you know, people.

Um, are, are ultimately driven by these, you know, deep religious convictions, and then there’s a, there’s a political implication to them. I think, ultimately, I think it’s, it’s a very, I guess I was trying to paint the picture as quite complicated. I think you’re right. I think there’s a lot of people, um, who, who maybe not even cynically take on, they, they believe this is what an evangelical is.

An evangelical is someone who is, pro life, uh, anti abortion, who opposes, uh, same sex marriage, who wants a stronger immigration policy. And that’s really what they think an evangelical is. And I think there’s been a leadership class that has really encouraged that way of thinking. And it’s largely that leadership class I was talking about, that there are plenty of pastors who have moved that way as well.

And there’s a, there’s a big advantage to evangelical politics if more and more evangelicals see the expression of their faith, the most authentic expression of their faith being voting for these issues more than other parts, other practices that you might think are more obviously religious or evangelical.

Um, but disentangle these things in. In, um, in a, in a broader sense, maybe you can on a micro level and you can see certain people who are much more cynical in their use of evangelical language and concepts because they really are, they really have a certain politics that they’re trying to push. And the best, most effective way to push it is to cloak it in evangelical language.

I think you can probably find a lot of. specific examples of that. But when you zoom back out and you see it as sort of an ecosystem, uh, in a macro level, I think it’s hard to see, it’s hard to discern where the theology ends and where the politics begins. And I’m not even sure if that’s the right way to, to say that, but there seems to be a dialectic there that would be really hard, at least at this point, uh, to disentangle.

Though we do have a lot of examples, um, there are anomalous or minority examples of evangelicals who dissent from the, uh, conservative, uh, the, the move in evangelical politics toward a sort of, uh, embrace of Trump and conservatism. There’s plenty of examples of people who’ve rejected that. Um, but they, they are the minority, but they do stand out and show that there are, there are other ways that evangelical commitments on a theological or religious level can lead to a different type of politics than the one that the majority of the community has embraced recently.

With that note,

[00:30:13] Zachary: how, um, how, how are Republican politicians in particular, uh, and, and, and politicians who try to appeal to these, uh, particular self identified evangelical voters navigating this changing religious landscape? Uh, for me in particular, it’s been fascinating to watch, uh, this play out, uh, in the, uh, early primary elections, uh, that will shape.

Uh, the Republican primary process in particular in states like Iowa and New Hampshire.

[00:30:42] Daniel: Well, the first thing just to acknowledge is that the, or not the vast majority, but a majority of evangelicals support Trump, uh, in polling. And so he’s not even, you know, he’s not in the debates. He’s just, you know, he’s barely, um, campaigning.

He is now in Iowa, but, uh, that, that’s one thing that. Republican politicians who had to navigate is that there is this lockstep with about right now. The polling is around 55 to 60 percent of evangelical white evangelical voters support trump in the primaries. And so, um, you’re already talking about a dynamic that was, you know, it was in, in existence before 2015, 2016, and for the remaining, you know, 45%, which is what people like Nikki Haley and Rhonda Santis are jockeying for, one of the things they try to do is they try to appeal to evangelicals by, um, doing what I mentioned just a few minutes ago, which is by emphasizing issues that they see as resonant with polling with evangelicals today.

And though the interesting thing is, those tend not to be the same issues that were of interest even a few years ago for evangelicals. And so you hear a lot about the economy and inflation. Maybe that’s I mean, that’s most Americans care about that to some extent. So that that might not be unique to evangelicals.

It’s also immigration and um and and the curbing immigration. Uh, that is a major issue that evangelicals have had A largely conservative view on that for decades, but it was never seen as sort of the hot button issue. There were other culture issues that were much more important to evangelicals. You can think of someone like Ron DeSantis, who’s really emphasized his culture war bona fides as governor of Florida and the way that he will be the person that can sort of stand up to the progressive left.

That’s the type of rhetoric that’s gonna At least they think is going to appeal to evangelicals and in Iowa and elsewhere. But what they are not doing is they tend to not emphasize, um, their deep, their personal deep religious piety, which is something that traditionally evangelicals cared a lot about.

We know Ron DeSantis is a catholic and that he’s a family man, but that’s not usually the thing he leads with. Um, and we know Nikki Haley, uh, has, has her own, um, of faith background as well, but she tends not lead with that as well. Um, and we also know that most evangelicals when pulled think Donald Trump is a religious person as well.

And so, um, uh, and he obviously doesn’t do a lot, uh, beyond, uh, rhetoric to show that he doesn’t attend church regularly or, or do other activities that would indicate that. And so it’s a much different in, in, I think it’s, this is going back to Jeremy’s observation is a much more secular way of trying to appeal to evangelicals than the historical way, um, that even earlier Republican politicians did when people like Ronald Reagan, who also had problems, uh, at least on on the surface with identifying with evangelicals.

He was, uh, he was divorced. He was a Hollywood actor. He didn’t have a strong history of, Uh, going to church or, or sort of speaking in a, in a really definitive religious way, Reagan did a lot of overt things in the 1976 election, where he ran in the Republican primary or the 1980 election to really signal the evangelicals that he was one of them.

he would pray with them. He would, um, quote from the Bible extensively. He would attend churches a lot. That’s how you traditionally appeal to evangelicals, to show that you were, if not one of them, then at least sympathetic to them. Much of that has gone out the window, except in a very pro formal way. And it’s much been more about appealing to these, uh, conservative, uh, Policy positions or culture, sort of culture war talking points that evangelicals do hold, but are also shared by a broader set of Republicans.

That’s

[00:34:49] Jeremi: such an insightful comment, Dan, because, you know, I think back not that long ago to when George W. Bush was president, and there’s no doubt that what you described as the more traditional way of evangelicals appealing to voters or appealing to evangelicals. voters was the attack that, um, George W.

Bush took, right? He prayed in public. He talked very explicitly about his own born again experience, right? And prayer breakfasts in Washington, D. C., as you know, became much more common. They became mandatory for those in the Bush administration, uh, that that’s night and day from where Donald Trump is, uh, today, which is, which is so extraordinary.

I mean, I guess the big question, um, that, that in a sense we want to close on, though, I think we also do want to ask you about, about students because you have the opportunity to see this, uh, among students. We’ll come to that one next, but before that last question, why has this shift occurred? I know that’s, that’s a podcast unto itself.

But give us your, your, your top reason for why we’ve seen such a shift away from what might be the traditional tone, attitude, and content of public expression by evangelicals in the United States.

[00:36:01] Daniel: Yeah, that is a, that is a whole podcast unto its own. I think, um, you know, I think there is something to Really tracing this emerging class of leaders that are political animals more than religious animals that have that in some ways now lead the evangelical movement and and And there’s been a lot a lot written about that I also think it’s also it’s really important to remember some key features of evangelicalism as a religious movement that aren’t all that aren’t shared by all other Christians and certainly not all other religions.

Evangelicalism is highly decentralized. There is no, um, there is no Pope. There is no even a council of people who dictate much at all to a broader evangelical world. And so the, world of evangelicalism since, uh, well, maybe going all the way back, but certainly since the nineties and the rise of the internet has been, you know, celebrity driven.

And you can see this even earlier with televangelists and the amount of influence that they would gain. And even before that radio, uh, figures. But certainly since the Internet, there’s been a whole sort of celebrity culture around evangelicalism. Um, the, uh, one observer, Sky Jethani, calls it the evangelical industrial complex that is really what produces celebrity in evangelicalism and that celebrity actually carries a lot of political and cultural potential.

power as well. And that’s been an emergence in recent decades as well. And then I think it’s also important to remember that evangelicals are Americans like, uh, like other Americans. And there’s been a massive decline in trust in institutions across the board. And, uh, churches have actually fared slightly better than other institutions like Congress and the presidency, but not by much.

And so there’s been a hollowing out of Most of our institutions in American society and churches have been so central to so many Christians and, uh, and that, that their decline means that there is a much different culture. around evangelicalism, uh, even if there are still churches, um, how those churches actually influence and to use a, a Christian term form or shape the people in the pews is, is much different and, and much lessened than it, than it has been in the past.

And so I think those, those things come together into a stew that means, um, that, that evangelicalism as a movement is Is experiencing a lot of change, a lot of churn, you could say a lot of people exiting and other people entering. And as that process continues, it only. Exacerbates the trends that we see already to where, um, uh, the evangelicalism of the 2030s will probably look somewhat different than even the 2020s.

And, um, and that’s where, you know, definitions like the Bebbington definition that is intended to try to capture everything from the 18th century up to the 21st century, those types of definitions are going to experience even more strain as the very group that we’re trying to talk about, even if they’re going under the same name, decade after decade, um, is really much different and has a much different set of priorities than, uh, than we would talk about historically.

That makes a lot of

[00:39:24] Jeremi: sense. And that brings so many things together. So we, we, we do want to close Dan then with asking you to maybe just share with us, if you’re comfortable, some of how you see these larger dynamics that we’ve discussed, how you see them playing out with. with younger Christians because you’re in a really unique position, uh, at Upper House, uh, which I know, uh, is an organization doing extraordinary work, uh, to help students at the University of Wisconsin Madison.

Uh, I assume most of, uh, not most, but many of your students have evangelical backgrounds or are connected to this. So how do you see this playing out with the next

[00:39:59] Daniel: generation? Yeah, it’s so interesting. Uh, you know, one, one Obvious trend is a a discomfort with the term evangelical for Gen Z and even millennial evangelicals.

Um, many of them don’t hold to the same social, cultural, political positions as the leading evangelicals in the country do. And so there’s a hesitancy to even associate with the term, but many of them still do. And, um, and there you still see a much different relationship to. to other institutions and to politics in particular.

You know, there’s particular issues that are very distinctly important to younger evangelicals that for a long time have been not associated with evangelicalism at all. Uh, one of them is in sort of care, concern for the environment and, and, um, you know, belief that global warming or climate change is real.

Um, there’s a lot of skepticism of that when you pull evangelicals and particularly if you pull evangelicals over the age of. say 40. Um, there’s a lot of skepticism. Younger evangelicals, and of course, I, well, in polling, younger evangelicals overall do, um, believe the science, uh, much more on this. Uh, at upper house, we’re in a particular context at a university.

Um, the students there tend to, you know, listen to their professors and, and believe what their professors are saying. So I certainly believe that at all. I’ve never seen that. Actually, that’s true. Maybe they don’t believe everything, but they certainly, um, are open to, um, ideas like, uh, climate change or the science of climate change being being real.

So we see an openness to that. I mean, that one issue I study a lot is evangelical support for Israel. And this is one where generationally it’s very stark that evangelicals under the age of 40 really, um, don’t support Israel more than the U. S. Population in general does. And that’s a big change from where, um, Evangelicals have been for a long time where they’ve been far out ahead of, of the averages in supporting Israel.

And in fact, younger evangelicals, uh, uh, talk much more in a, you could say social justice, uh, language than their elders. And so actually have a lot of concern about, um, About Palestinians about occupation in the West Bank and other issues that, um, that, uh, that are related. And so on a lot of different issues, younger evangelicals are much different than their parents.

And one of the questions will be. Will those even, will those younger evangelicals, um, decide to somehow stick with the movement and reform it or change it from within? Or will they be pushed out or leave and either affiliate with other types of Christian traditions or leave Christianity altogether? We know also that there are just fewer.

Younger evangelicals, um, as Gen Z in particular is much less religious, at least in an organized sense. There’s a lot of spirituality and other concerns, but in terms of embracing organized religion, um, they’re much lower. And that’s part of that distrust of institutions, uh, trend as well. But that’s going to be a question as well as those.

Those young people who do identify as evangelical, um, will they have the opportunities and the, um, and be welcomed at some point at least into leadership positions and into taking over institutions or will they ultimately leave because the the disconnect between what they understand evangelicalism to, to be to the implications of evangelicalism for their politics.

Those, if that’s too different from their elders, they might just leave and go somewhere else. So we’re writing a sort of an inflection point. I would say the, the 2020s are going to be a very interesting decade at the end of it to understand. Particularly where Gen Z lands on these things. Um, but I would say the, the trends are pretty encouraging from upper house at upper house’s perspective.

There’s a very engaged, um, very, um, passionate, uh, student body that really is looking for answers and, and asking really good questions about the intersection of faith and religion and society and politics. Um, but. I always want to make sure I’m not confusing my micro, uh, experience, my anecdotal experience with the broader experience.

And when you look at the broader experience, there are a lot of open questions that, uh, we will only know the answers to, you know, far into the future from now. Right, right. It’s

[00:44:37] Jeremi: so interesting to have this conversation with you, Dan. It’s relevant for our society today, but it also, it gets a deeper questions about institutions power and participation in our, in our democracy, which of course are at the core of what our podcast is about.

I was thinking as you were just describing the experience at the University of Wisconsin at Upper House. I was thinking to my own experience as an undergraduate at Stanford a few decades ago. I don’t want to say how many. decades ago. It embarrasses me now, but a few decades ago. And, and my experience was, uh, and I’m going to ask Zachary then, you know, if this resonates with where he is today in college.

But for me, my experience was the evangelical community among Stanford students and Stanford undergraduates was a very friendly, open community. I even went to some of their events, had some very good friends, some of whom, you know, as well, Dan, like Professor William and others who I met in that context.

Um, But they always seem to me, and this is a positive statement, they seem to be one of the groups that was pro institution, that was pro establishment, and in some ways I often felt jealous as a Jew that they seem to have a closer connection to mainstream sources of power than we did. It’s very different from the anti institutionalism that you’ve been describing so well to us here.

The polar opposite of that, at least in my micro experience, um, in the 1990s, Zachary, I wonder how you experienced this at, at Yale. Do you see the evangelical community, first of all, is it a major presence on campus? And how do you see its relationship to the issues we’re discussing here on the national scale?

Um,

[00:46:22] Zachary: I don’t. I, I mean, I, it could be my own ignorance or, or, or blindness to these issues, but I don’t, I don’t see it as a major presence on campus. I mean, there’s certainly a very large Christian population, um, across all denominations, um, and there certainly

[00:46:36] Daniel: are evangelicals on campus,

[00:46:38] Zachary: um, but I think that, uh, at least my guess would be that I think it’s become much more of a, of a fight to, to get people to, to, to come back to religion as opposed to a sort of denominational, uh, conflict.

And I, and so I think that there’s more of a, a sense, a division between those who, who identify, self identify as Christian or who are regular churchgoers, uh, and those who are not. As opposed to a sort of a division within the Christian population on campus, but that might be my own naivete or ignorance about these issues.

Um, but I do think that among young people on campus, there is actually a lot of interest in religion, um, not just in how religion affects our world and our politics, but also about personally interacting with and learning from religion. Um, and, and I think, for example, that. The religious studies, Jewish studies, uh, and the studies in sociology classes that touch on religion are some of the most popular and most, uh, subscribed to courses on campus.

Uh, so I think there is really a craving among young people to learn about how this religious history shapes

[00:47:38] Jeremi: our world, our country. Do you see it driven by some of the politics that Dan has described, or do you see it in a more, in a, in a less

[00:47:45] Daniel: political form? I think on college

[00:47:47] Zachary: campuses, there, it, College campuses are a space where people can talk about religion in a less political way, and that, um, I think that is really a space.

It’s seen as something that is a personal experience, um, as an individual experience, uh, and it’s something that. That is tied to how we are brought up, of course, and to where we’re from as well, but also something that a college campus, um, offers a sort of mix of and, and a place to explore. And so I think it’s less tied to the sort of polemic or the politics as

[00:48:18] Jeremi: it is.

Flower Society. That’s so interesting for me to hear you say that, especially, uh, in the shadow of what’s happening in the Middle East. I mean, it’s wonderful that you can still feel there’s a space on college campuses to talk about these issues without, without it being all about which side you’re on, uh, in a war or a conflict like that.

Uh, Dan, I think this affirms what you’ve said, and I think it, it, it also affirms why, um, The University of Wisconsin and all of us are fortunate to have you in the role that you’re in as, as a leading scholar of religion and American society to be in a position where you’re not only doing research and pontificating about it, but actually interacting with the next generation of key actors.

I mean, what, what, what a privilege you have in your job, Dan.

[00:49:02] Daniel: Yes, I, I enjoy it a lot and I always, um, I love interacting with students, uh, precisely because of what Zachary said that, um, there are, there are very few spaces in our society where you can, you know, ask, big questions and not be in the answer, not sort of putting you in a certain camp, uh, right away.

And I think universities at their best are those places are one of those places where you can still do that. And, and religion at its best, any religion, uh, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, whatever it is at their best, they are trying to give. Uh, answers to some of the biggest questions about what it means to be human.

Why are we here? What does it mean to live a good life? Uh, things that, you know, many of us were contemplating or are contemplating when we’re in college already. And at their best, the, uh, the answers that religions are giving are very time tested. Most of them are answers that have been contemplated for millennia, uh, if not, And, uh, and so those should be in the mix of the conversation today that we’re having at universities and, um, and it’s, it’s great to be a part of a university like UW that, um, a university community, I should say, like UW that has created, uh, a context where, uh, religious perspectives are, um, are welcome, not always, not, not equally always, but, um, are part of the mix.

And there’s a pretty committed religious community that wants to engage with the university. Um, and, and either at the best, at their best, I think that’s where universities can really play a role that almost no other institution in our society can play for people. Their teen, late teens, early twenties, where we know from polling, uh, what whatever answers they come to during this period of their life often tend to be very sticky.

Absolutely. Um, people do obviously change, uh, their minds after college, but it’s one of the most formative periods for most people, and so it’s in. incumbent upon the institutions that are forming them during this period of their life that they do a good job and that they provide as many avenues to ask these questions and then as many good, wise voices to offer answers as they can.

And that’s what ultimately upper house wants to be a part of here. here in Madison. But I will say just to just to, you know, close that observation is Yale does have we have a sister organization at Yale. It’s called the Rivendell Institute. Um, it’s it does a little different. It actually engages a lot of faculty at Yale as well.

But I would guess I know the director there. I haven’t talked to him about this recently, but I would guess they they tend to not want to, at least in the at the front, you know, uh, claim to be evangelical, um, that that is such a toxic or polarizing term at, in most university context right now, um, that, uh, even if the, even if the theological commitments are evangelical, there is a sense of that that’s going to win, you know, friends on most campuses to identify that way, or it’s going to just create a lot of misunderstanding or need to clarify before actually introducing yourself.

Uh, and, and, and actually being able to connect with people. So my guess is that’s actually happening a lot, uh, across the country as well, is that, uh, people who, um, on paper, um, in their, maybe even in their personal church commitments would be okay with the term evangelical understand that that’s not the way to lead the conversation when you’re trying to reach the Gen Z in particular.

Yeah, that’s my perception

[00:52:47] Jeremi: at the university of Texas as well. We have a very large, um, Christian community, of course. I mean, we’re a very large, I think, equivalent of what Upper House is. I forget the name of it, but it’s right, right off of the main drag on campus, and they’ve just renovated a beautiful building.

But they don’t, they don’t do any, I’ve not seen anything that self identifies as evangelical, even though I’m sure that’s an important part of the community. So I think what you’re saying is probably true across campuses. I love the fact, Dan, that you were able to articulate for us one of the many values that universities provide.

We’re in a moment now also where Of course, universities are under attack in so many ways, and maybe some of these attacks are legitimate. Maybe some of them are not. We’ve talked about that a bit on the podcast as well, uh, but I, I think it’s really important. You’ve articulated one of the many ways in which universities are hothouses of democracy for people to think through their, uh, religious identity as well as their political identity at a formative time in their lives.

We have been so fortunate, Dan, to have you, uh, with us today. I want to encourage our listeners, uh, who I’m sure want to hear more from you, Dan, to follow you. Uh, Daniel Hummel, as I said, is a director for university engagement at Opperhaus Christian Studies Center at the University of Wisconsin Madison.

And he’s written a number of major books. I’m only going to just push his most recent book, uh, The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism. And he writes frequently in many, uh, journals. Dan, uh, it’s been great talking to you, and we hope to have you back on at some point

[00:54:14] Daniel: soon. It’s been a pleasure talking to you both.

Zachary,

[00:54:18] Jeremi: thank you for your, uh, thoughtful poll that got us started, and for your excellent questions and reflections on your experience. And thank you most of all to our loyal listeners for joining us for this week of This Is Democracy.

[00:54:38] Outro: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts ITS Development Studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harris Codini. Stay tuned for a new episode every week You can find this is democracy on Apple podcasts Spotify and stitcher See you next time