Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism--and What Comes Next

by Bradley Onishi

This leads to one final lesson to be learned from the Carter-Reagan election. When it came to voting for Donald Trump, Christian nationalists had a precedent for prioritizing politics over morals and policies over identity. In the wake of Trump’s 2016 election, in which he gained the support of 81 percent of White evangelicals and 60 percent of White Catholics, many claimed that conservative Christians must have had to hold their noses in order to vote for a thrice-divorced television star who talked about God at opportune moments but seemed, by all accounts, to have no relationship with God. Yet viewed through the lens of the Goldwater-Reagan heritage, as it was cultivated by the likes of Weyrich, Falwell, and others, voting for Trump was likely a gratifying, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for many Christian nationalists. If Reagan’s two-term presidency was the culmination of Goldwater’s extremism, then the election of Trump was an unforeseen triumph.