Monday October 21, North Carolina. Religious leaders and faithful of this swing state are legion who came to attend “the meeting of religious leaders of the 11th hour”. Smartphone in hand and Maga cap (Make America Great Again) on the head, the crowd energetically chants the name of the Republican candidate. With a tight smile on his lips, Donald Trump savors a few moments, before interrupting the choirs and beginning his speech.
This one was thought of, manufactured, packaged by the Trumpist sphere. The objective? Make the Republican presidential candidate a messiah sent to save the United States. “I like to think that God saved me for a specific purpose, that of making our country greater than ever,” said Donald Trump. A reference to the assassination attempt which, within a few millimeters, could have cost the former real estate magnate his life.
Donald Trump, choice of reason for the Christian electorate?
This historic date of July 13, Donald Trump has made it a campaign argument in its own right, particularly among Christian voters. An electoral windfall which alone covers nearly two thirds of the American electoral pool and on which the Grand Old Party account since the 1980s. Electoral strategy is based on an observation: in his work, researcher Robert Wuthnow, cited in a Ifri reportobserved that a dividing line was established when Ronald Reagan came to power, between the pro-Republican vote of practicing Christians on the one hand, and the pro-Democratic vote of non-believers or non-practisers on the other hand. .
A border which, although porous enough to allow defectors to pass through, seems to persist a few days before the 2024 presidential election. According to a report from the Pew Research Center and the Public Religion Research Institute, 61% of Protestants and 52% of Catholics say they will vote for Donald Trump on November 5. The share rises to 82% for white evangelical Protestants and 61% for white Catholics. Figures which could surprise, as Donald Trump has, on numerous occasions, appeared to be at odds with Christian and traditionalist values.
Sexual scandals, corruption cases, or even infidelity… It is difficult to establish the Republican candidate as a paragon of virtue. “Donald Trump is not particularly appreciated by practicing Christian voters,” explains Ipsos research director Mathieu Gallard. “This electorate understands well that Donald Trump is far from leading a life consistent with the precepts of the Gospel. But from a rational point of view, continues the author of the work The United States on the brink of civil war? (L’Aube), Christian voters say that he will be the candidate best able to give substance to what they defend.”
The shift of Hispanic believers and African Americans
Many of them, for example, were not indifferent to the appointment during his first term of three conservative judges to the Supreme Court. A rearrangement of the Scotus which allowed the invalidation of the Roe v. Wade in the spring of 2022 and thus granted the federated states the possibility of reconsidering the right to abortion. The most conservative Christians saw it as a victory after a long moral struggle, credited to Donald Trump, whose feats of arms did not leave certain sections of the Democratic religious electorate indifferent. Like Hispanic Americans. “Latinos are very religious, and for many, very conservative, anchored in an anti-abortion vision, anti-opening of LGBT rights,” recalls Mathieu Gallard.
Thus, although a majority of them still plan to vote Democratic in 2024, the proportion of Latin Americans ready to slip a Donald Trump ballot into the polls has increased slightly compared to the 2020 presidential election. 36% of Hispanics Americans then voted for the singer of Maga (a campaign slogan already used by Ronald Reagan during the 1980 presidential campaign and taken up by Donald Trump). Today they are almost 40%, according to a report from the Pew Research Center. A study of New York Times even goes back to the 2012 presidential election: at the time, only 27% of Latin Americans voted for the then Republican candidate, Mitt Romney.
If the margin of progress since 2020 seems small, it could nevertheless make the difference in the polls as the gap between the two candidates is tenuous. For several months, some have insisted that victory will be decided by a few thousand votes. Donald Trump’s entourage knows this only too well. So the latter does not hesitate to use religious conservatism as a Trojan horse to attract into its fold segments of the Christian Democratic electorate, made up largely of African-Americans. According to a report from the Pew Research Center still, 97% of African-Americans say they believe in God, and more than the majority – two-thirds – say they are Protestant. If these voters are historically won over to Democrats, more and more of them would vote Republican.
According to the figures of Pew Researchonly 8% of African-Americans had voted for the Republican billionaire in the previous supreme election. Four years later, almost twice as many express their desire to see Donald Trump return to the White House. “More and more religious African-Americans are uncomfortable with the fights Democrats are taking on, such as LGBT rights, or even abortion, which has returned to the center of Kamala’s campaign Harris And although the phenomenon is far from massive, some are closer to Donald Trump presented as the sole defender of Christian values,” explains Mathieu Gallard. Rhetoric used by the billionaire himself, who regularly raises the idea that Kamala Harris would twist the neck of religious freedoms if she were to succeed Joe Biden.
Kamala Harris’ birthday at Church
In a vote that could well be the closest in modern US history, every vote counts. And the Democrats therefore know well that they cannot do without the African-American religious electorate, which constitutes a historic electoral cushion for them. Thus, although arriving at the end of the journey, Kamala Harris did not have the luxury – unlike John Kerry in 2004 – of going through the traditional visit to black Protestant churches. Losing momentum in the last kilometers of the race for the White House, the vice-president visited two Protestant churches in the key state of Georgia on October 20: the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta and Divine Faith Ministries International in Jonesboro.
The chosen date is not insignificant. This Sunday, Kamala Harris celebrates her 70th birthday. The Democrat is greeted by the serenade “Happy Birthday” sung live by Stevie Wonder himself. An artist born at the dawn of the 1950s, who experienced the pre-Civil Rightswhere ethnic segregation was the rule. Quite a symbol. A few minutes earlier, the former San Francisco prosecutor questioned the faithful: “What kind of country do we want? A country of chaos, fear and hatred, or a country of freedom, compassion and justice?”
All without explicitly pointing the finger at his opponent Donald Trump. If candidates can go to places of worship, any speech with a strong political coloring would in fact be immediately perceived as awkwardness. Metaphors and innuendoes are therefore legion. You have to convince without enjoining. This is the very essence of the “Souls to the Polls” operation in which Kamala Harris intervened in mid-October. An initiative whose genesis dates back to the 1990s and which consists of encouraging the faithful to go to the polls after Sunday service. “But be careful, the pastor does not give any voting instructions. He limits himself to laconic formulas: ‘vote for your values’ or even ‘vote well’, insists the specialist Lauric Henneton. The fact remains that in fact, the message is quite clear because places of worship are very politicized.”
Churches, places of politicization
The porosity between religion and politics is part of the civic history of the United States. Because if there is indeed a separation of Church and State across the Atlantic, this is “essentially limited to the fiscal area”, underlines Lauric Henneton, who continues: “Without the evangelicals, the abolition slavery would not have occurred in the 19th century.” It is in fact in the religious matrix that the social and political activism of the 19th and 20th centuries sprouted, which gave birth to the civil rights movement. It is also no coincidence that one of the icons of the movement, Martin Luther King, was a pastor.
American churches are not only places of worship. Even today, they constitute a space of socialization and politicization where communities come together not only by chapel, but also by ideological affinity. “Black communities have created a very strong bond with the Democratic Party, very committed to the fight for the acquisition of civil rights, and therefore still vote massively for this party today,” explains Mathieu Gallard.
An ethnic-political-religious homogeneity which, however, tends to crumble. “Young African-American believers seem to have lost contact with this memory,” observes Lauric Henneton. “This is why they are more easily tempted by the Trump speech.” Enough to jeopardize the future of the Democratic Party? “We are still a long way from that,” adds the specialist. “Especially since we are seeing at the same time an increase in agnostics who tend to vote for the Democratic camp.” Expand without losing too much hair. In this election with the most uncertain outcome, this is the credo which will allow one of the two candidates to sign a four-year lease at the White House.
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