3. Not all “evangelicals” are Evangelicals™.
Land, Dobson, and Falwell, although they have a lot of name recognition, are of an older, fading guard. Dobson, for instance, is no longer head of Focus on the Family; Land has been off the helm of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for quite a while now. And Liberty University has distanced itself from Falwell’s political endorsement. Most “movers and shakers” in the evangelical circuit have condemned Trump in no uncertain terms, including household names like Max Lucado and Randy Alcorn. But these calls have lacked a motivated response from the pews.
During the primaries, there was a noticeable split between church-going evangelicals and sporadic evangelicals. Church-going evangelicals eschewed Trump and flocked to Cruz and Rubio. But now the numbers are about the same. Why aren’t pious evangelicals seeking to fall in line with their official and non-official spokesmen?
For one, the “grassroots traction” simply isn’t there. This is partly because evangelical thought-leaders don’t exercise as much influence in evangelicals lives as they think. More importantly, it means that everyday believers don’t care as much when evangelical thought leaders and celebrities condemn their fellows as traitors to the guild or class. It doesn’t matter to them. This goes double for evangelical academics, which D. G. Hart takes to task here, here, here, and here.
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