Evangelicals are divided over the movement’s support for Donald Trump

SET IN THE bucolic countryside on the edge of Nashville, Christ Presbyterian Church is a stately building where, in normal times, hundreds of evangelical Christians gather to worship. On a recent Sunday a smaller, socially distanced congregation assembled to hear the preacher speak on the eighth chapter of the gospel of Mark, in which Jesus asks his disciples: “Who do people say I am?” Such questions of identity are troubling many in the congregation, too. Chatting after the service, Samantha Fisher, a mother of two who works in public relations, sums up the current moment: “I don’t know any more what it means to be a Christian and an American.”

White evangelicals like Ms Fisher are undergoing an identity crisis that has been a long time in the making, but has crystallised during four years of Donald Trump’s presidency and, especially, with the violent uprising at the Capitol on January 6th. Images of activists waving flags with Christian messages, praying in the name of Jesus inside the Senate chamber and claiming to defend America as “a Christian nation”, have left many evangelicals angry and confused. About 80% of white evangelicals supported Mr Trump in 2016 and at least 75% did so in 2020. The Pew Research Centre found last year that 59% of evangelicals felt the Trump administration had helped not hurt their interests....