White evangelical Christians helped bring President Donald Trump to power. They remain among his most ardent supporters. This, even as the president seemingly has gone out of his way to mock Christianity and its first commandment.

One year in, the vast majority (69 percent) of White evangelicals continue to approve of Trump’s job performance, according to 2026 Pew Research data. This is compared to his 39% approval rating nationally.

It’s true that support for Trump among all religious groups — including White evangelicals and White Catholics — has steadily dropped since he took office, with the exception of Black Protestants who were already near rock-bottom approval levels and are largely Democratic. But it has not collapsed.

It’s not just that there’s nowhere else to go, although that’s likely part of it given Democrats’ trouble with religious voters. It’s that many Christians actually seem to like Trump’s policies.

A solid majority (58 percent) of White evangelicals and nearly half of white Catholics (46 percent) say they support all or most of his plans and policies, compared to 27 percent support nationally. They also trust his judgment. White evangelicals are twice as likely (40 percent) as the general public (21 percent) to say they are confident that Trump acts ethically in office.

This, even though Trump has depicted himself as Christ in an AI-generated image, hired a spiritual advisor who compared him to the risen Christ, tweeted praise to Allah on Easter Sunday before threatening to destroy a civilization, used his 2026 National Prayer Breakfast speech to re-air his 2020 election grievances and continues to disparage the pope.

At some point, these aren’t random missteps. They are a pattern.

I ask because I don’t know: What are Christian groups getting in exchange for such embarrassment and harassment? Or have they so fully given their allegiance to Trump and the GOP that their priorities have become indistinguishable from his own?

There’s no longer much daylight between the MAGA policy agenda and evangelical support, even on issues that would seem to be very far from the pulpit. Whereas 44 percent of U.S. adults support getting rid of DEI policies in the federal government, this jumps to 75 percent among White evangelicals, according to a 2025 Pew survey. The same percentages hold for cuts to federal departments and agencies. While only 39 percent of U.S. adults approve substantially higher tariffs, this jumps to 69 percent among White evangelicals. A vast majority (65 to 71 percent) support the decision to use military force in Iran.

In places where the administration has directly bucked evangelical political priorities, the religious right has looked away. For example, the vast majority (74 percent) of White evangelical Protestants say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. But Trump is the first Republican president to suggest the U.S. should allow taxpayer-funded abortions, and he had longstanding anti-abortion language removed from the GOP platform prior to the 2024 election.

Source: Korea Times News