4. They see the rise of the Irreligious Right and are staking a claim.
For a while now, GOP leadership has been hankering for “fiscally conservative, socially liberal.” And evangelicals have felt the pressure. Meanwhile, younger evangelicals have been working hard to extricate their religious commitments and identities from political partisanship. If such trajectories continue, both Democratic and Republican parties will be indifferent if not antagonistic to religious traditionalists.
With religious social concerns off the table in both parties, how then does one make his political allegiances in national politics? What is an evangelical to do if neither the GOP nor the Democrats care a wit about the traditional family or the social importance of the church? Well, some make their choice of allegiance based on other non-religious values, like nationalism vs. globalism. And some think Trump aligns closer to their positions than Hillary Clinton does.
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