The illusion of the conservative white American Christian majority

Just a reminder that MAGA Evangelicals, like the Greatest Catholics of All Time, are a tiny minority whom the temporary accidents of American wealth and a gigantic American media microphone have allowed to drown out the rest of their fellow Christians on the global stage (many of whom their policies are helping to persecute and kill). As the US falls to pieces under MAGA misrule, that dynamic will change and the gospel will come out of eclipse.  That, not the  aesthetic fetishes of a small demographic of Traditionalists who equate the faith with European culture, is what Francis has his eye on.  By 2035, for instance, China will be both majority Christian and the largest Christian nation in the world. Sherry Weddell looks at this piece on Global Christian Demographics and comments:

Under the rubric of “The stupid is making my head hurt.”

Q: So just how “white” is evangelicalism anyway?
A: It isn’t . . . really!

Globally, 84% of evangelicals around the world (that’s 270 million people) are NOT white and the percentage of evangelicals of color is steadily growing.

The US is a global outlier in that US evangelicals are still majority white – but just barely!

As of 2015, 41.2% of all US evangelicals are non European in background (20.9 million). And that percentage is growing as well.. Which is why the highly visible leaders of high profile national evangelical organizations like Intervarsity are people of color these days.

The next time that some political pollster talks about “white evangelicals” as the true representatives of evangelical opinion, you can remind yourself that they are actually talking about less than 60 percentage of American evangelicals and that number is shrinking.

So when they say that 81% of “white evangelicals” voted for Trump in 2016, you’ll know that what that statistic *really means* is that *48% of US evangelicals actually voted for Trump*. (.81% X .59% = 47.79%)

Now, obviously *some* evangelicals of color also voted for Trump but they were a small minority. So it is possible that a majority of American evangelicals did not vote for Trump at all!! No matter how many times you and I drew the opposite conclusion because US media and pollsters presumed that all evangelicals = white evangelicals! (I did not know it myself until just now when I did the math!)

And you’ll also know that of the 321 million evangelicals in the world in 2015, US evangelicals only make up roughly 15%.

And *white American evangelicals* only make up 6.5% of the world’s evangelicals.

Aren’t you glad you know?