Over two thirds of white Christian Americans voted for Donald Trump in 2024. Why has such a significant portion of America’s religious population accepted Trump’s claim to their faith, and why have their churches’ leaders embraced his rhetoric?Robert Jones’s new book, Backslide: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation after the Christian Turn Against Democracy, explains the roots of these issues and their warnings for the future.
Robert sat down with Jen to discuss Backslide and the Christian Americans who have given themselves over to the MAGA movement. They also recapped the religious messaging at this week’s Republican National Convention— a video stating that “God made Trump” and a mass pledge to vote (and cheat, if needed) in the elections, under threat of going to Hell, were standout moments.
Backslide is out now! Check it out here.
Robert P. Jones is the president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and a New York Times bestselling author.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor in Chief of the Contrarian. I am delighted to welcome back my friend Robby P. Jones. He heads PRRI. which is the premier think tank that looks at values, religion, the religious right. He is the author of multiple books, but his latest, called Backslide, is a barn burner. It takes a very hard look from a very personal perspective for Robby at the religious right. Robby, it is so good to see you, welcome back. Congratulations on the phenomenal book!
Robert P. Jones
Oh, thanks, Jen, and thanks for talking with me about it.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. You refer to the current state of white Christian evangelicals in the United States with the word that I, as a Jewish person, was not familiar with, and that is apostasy. What is that, and what is the state that you think they have fallen into?
Robert P. Jones
Yeah, wow, to live in a world where you don’t know the word apostasy. Imagine. So, as you know, I grew up in this white evangelical world. I grew up as a Southern Baptist in Mississippi. It was a word not far from my ears, growing up. So the two words backslide from the title and then apostasy kind of go hand in hand. Apostasy, it’s a Greek… it has Greek roots, and it literally means to stand apart from. stand apart from a former place that you used to stand, and in religious circles. It was really about falling away from the faith, right? Becoming a heretic, and in fact, losing your salvation. Losing your way to such an extent that you might not find it back, is kind of the way that… but it is also, whenever that word is leveled, you know, I think in the theological world, it is also actually a call to repentance. So it’s saying, like. oh no, you have crossed the line. You have left the fold. But there’s always this invitation, I think, to come back.
Jen Rubin
And what is it that they have done, or how have they lost their way? You talk about it both in terms of giving up on democracy per se, but also on the underlying fundamental principles of Christianity. Where did they go astray, and what have they become in your eyes?
Robert P. Jones
Yeah, so, you know, I do think it’s time to draw some lines, and to make some pronouncements, which is what I’ve done in this book. And it’s not an easy… I should say, like, you know, I grew up in this world, my family’s in this world, I have friends, you know, still in this white evangelical world. But, you know, in the book, I really do, you know, I come to the conclusion, that they’re lost. They have lost their way. Here, and… and, you know, it’s always difficult to make these conclusions, but let me just say that I… there are a few things that have really stood out to me. One is, that we now have, for example, a majority of white evangelicals in this country supporting the construction of concentration camps on U.S. soil. For undocumented immigrants. Now, I’m gonna go out on what I don’t think is a very thin limb. and say. If you have reached the point where you are supporting, the construction of concentration camps on U.S. soil for anyone, you have lost your way. You know, then you see, you know, just the kind of giving themselves over to, to Trump and the MAGA movement, which has violated all kinds of, you know, Christian principles, that are not even worth delineating, you know, here. But the other thing inside the faith is, is also a… I have a whole chapter, for example, on the war on empathy. Now, let me just say that again, a war on empathy. So this upside-down world now has decided, that they need a theology that is going to call empathy a kind of fundamental democratic and human instinct, moral instinct, a sin. They call it toxic, they call it evil. They literally call it satanic. And then when you ask, well, what in the world is going on, right, from a religion that’s supposed to be about protecting the widow and the orphan, and let’s be very, very clear, the Bible, the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, all the way through. protecting the immigrant among you. I mean, it’s one of the most fundamental messages of the faith, and they’ve gone from that to a theology that is going to undercut empathy. And, you know, when I ask myself, what’s going on, and why would there need to be a project? And this is no fringe project, this is being mainstreamed into, the middle now of the white evangelical world. And the only answer to that question is quite a chilling one. It is that they need a theology that is going to turn off this fundamental impulse of compassion and empathy, because they need to prepare their followers, to follow someone who’s about to, and is in the process of, all kinds of political violence. And he needs them to sort of turn a blind eye to it.
Jen Rubin
Much of this goes back to race, to an association of white evangelical Christians, not all of them, but The folks that you’re speaking of with racism, and the degree to which they supported, facilitated slavery, and that this was baked in to the religion over the last few hundred years. How did that happen? And is there a way of going back To the before times, before this… really fundamental deformity, this corruption of Christianity into something that was racist, very hierarchical. Really misogynistic in many ways, and certainly xenophobic.
Robert P. Jones
Yeah, you know, I think if you were going to talk about before times, you’d need, 2,000 years, to get to the before times. You know, before Christianity became really, I would say, corrupted and wrapped up in empire and power, right? That happens, you know, 300 years after Christianity is on the planet, and the rest has been a struggle, and I think that’s what I’m calling here, is that, you know, we’re seeing a struggle between what kind of Christianity is going to survive in this country. And in the same way that I think we’re seeing a struggle in what kind of political state we’re going to, is going to survive in this country, and unfortunately, I think because of our history and the strong role that particularly white Christianity has played in this country, our future is tied up in these… both of these things, like, what version of Christianity is really going to kind of come to the fore? Is it going to be this white supremacist, version of Christianity that sees, hierarchies, that sees, dominance and power and even violence in the name of protecting power, as compatible with the Christian gospel, which is the word that’s supposed to mean good news, that word gospel. And by the way, when that word gets used in the New Testament, it is good news to the poor. It’s not good news to the powerful. You know, in the New Testament. I mean, that people kind of forget that that’s what it really means. Here. But I think that’s the challenge here, is that we’re seeing… so there’s not a Christianity to go back to, like, a before Christianity, unless you’re gonna go way, way back. But what there are are competing strains, right? We saw this in the Civil War. There was an abolitionist strand of Christianity, and there was a slaveholding. strand of Christianity. And I think we’re seeing a kind of similar struggle today, where that old slaveholding strand that said, look, this country is of, by, and for Christians of European descent. and everybody else is here, somewhere down the ladder from us, is making a comeback. It’s really reasserting itself. And there’s this other version of Christianity there. Here’s the challenging part, though. The only piece I wrote after the 2024 election, it was a piece for Time Magazine. I called it, What White Christians Have Wrought. And it was because, when I looked at the election data, what we saw, as we’ve seen every time Trump has been on the ballot. that more than 8 in 10 white evangelicals voted for him every single time he’s been on the ballot, that’s been true. But the thing that people forget is that it was 6 in 10 white Catholics who also voted for Trump. It was 6 in 10 white non-evangelical Protestants, the mainline. Protestant world that voted for Trump. And overall, if you put them all together, it’s 2 to 1, white Christians have supported Trump, so I was like, look, everybody was kind of reading the tea leaves about African Americans moving toward Trump, or Latinos moving toward Trump, and I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s all interesting, but we don’t get Trump. We don’t get him as a Republican nominee, we don’t get him as president, without the support of two-thirds of white Christians in the country.
Jen Rubin
And many of these people are not voting for him, despite their religious background.
Robert P. Jones
Yeah.
Jen Rubin
They’re voting for him because he seems to fulfill this vision that they have. And lest you think that Robby and I are some kind of wacky left-wingers inventing all this, I want to call your attention to two things at the Trump convention. We’re going to put them in the notes. When we post this, so you can look for yourself. One was a film. that… is hard to believe. It shows in kind of very… kind of religious, kind of end times view that Trump has been sent to save us, and that he’s done all sorts of things, including bringing his grandchildren into the world, as if he helped deliver them. There is also a point in the proceedings in which he asked them to take an oath to him. Donald Trump, and to vote for him, whether illegal or not, that they are obligated to support him. And you have thousands of people, or at least hundreds of people, who are willing to stand up and do that. When you saw these two things, this film and this oath-taking. What did that tell you, and how does that relate back to the book?
Robert P. Jones
Well, I tell ya, I mean, the word we started the interview with, apostasy, was the word that came to mind. We’ve also had Trump posting himself as Jesus on social media, you know, like, literally in the place of the Son of God, right, in these social media, posts. And it did make me think, here we are, and I will say, he had them raise their right hand, right, as if they’re sort of taking an oath.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Robert P. Jones
And those images are really, really chilling, because what you see there is people giving over, themselves to this leader, to this authoritarian, really fascist leader. I mean, this is a fascist thing to do. This is not a democratic thing to do, because he had them explicitly pledge… To be willing to cheat. in the elections, right? So it wasn’t just like, oh, you know, he pledged… it was like the authoritarian, you know, ego trip, pledged to support the greatest president who ever lived, you know, that was part of the thing. But then it was also, he, he literally said to vote. You need to get out and vote whether you’re registered or not, and you need to be willing to cheat.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Robert P. Jones
Like, and that… and he’s… so he’s got people taking… This is a sacred thing that we do in democracy, right? We raise our hand, we pledge to tell the truth. is what we usually do when we raise our hand. We pledge to protect the Constitution, which he, by the way, raised his own hand to protect the Constitution when he took the oath of office, and this was an explicit violation of that. He’s supposed to protect the laws of the country, protect the integrity of the elections, and he’s just openly undermining it, and now getting his closest followers To raise their hands and say, yes, we’re with you, and then to do it in the name of God. And that was the piece at the end, you know, where you say, do it in the name of God, so help me, God, that the thing… and then he adds, and if you don’t do this, you’re going to go to hell. You know, in his remarks. And then plays this God Made Trump you know, video, as if he is, again, the savior here. These are… we should not laugh these things off, and that’s what we see kind of happening in social media. Oh, you know, it’s just Trump, he’s the greatest comedian in the world, it’s just Trump being Trump. This is Trump telling us exactly who he is and exactly what he’s going to do, and these are his followers telling us how much they are willing to abandon democracy in the name of Christian faith. And we should just name this for the, really, the apostasy on the religion side that it is, and the great betrayal of democracy that it is on the political side.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. You found your way out, of this… mindset, and you describe in very vivid terms the kind of childhood, the kind of socialization, the clubs, the education that you received, which for someone outside the faith, is fascinating. It’s really a way of completely shedding objective, critical thinking. And having you become… for all intents and purposes, a warrior for this kind of movement. You’ve found your way out. You wound up marrying a nice Jewish girl, so I can wish you and your family a very happy, sweet New Year on the… almost.
Robert P. Jones
Thank you.
Jen Rubin
Rosh Hashana.
Robert P. Jones
You as well.
Jen Rubin
But you’re not optimistic that others can do the same. Why do you think that, frankly, there’s a lot of people who are just lost, and that you have to aim at perhaps a smaller, but more critical group of people. Who might still be reachable? Why is it so hard for so many to break free in the way that you broke free?
Robert P. Jones
Yeah, I think it’s because it really is an all-consuming world, right? So, you know, as I describe in the book, I went to church 5 days a week. Growing up. You know, and that was normal. That wasn’t me being some… you know, outside Super Christian. I mean, that was just what you did, there. You know, I went to a Baptist college, you know, where that worldview kind of stayed wrapped around me through college. Then I went to a Baptist seminary, which was an even deeper dive down that well. But, you know, here’s what I would say actually, I think saved me, kind of gave me a little bit of a light out. It was, public school. It was that my… because I… I do worry that if my parents had, like so many, white Christian parents did, as the schools were being integrated, because I, you know, I actually… even though I’m only in my 50s, it was not until the 1970s that Mississippi actually started integrating their schools, so I experienced that. And many parents pulled their kids out and put them in these private whites-only Christian segregation academies. And you know, I do worry, like, if that had been my story, I don’t know, it would have been very… I just want to be honest, it would be very difficult to find your way out of there. Right. I mean, because it is just such an insular, all-encompassing. world. So, you know, I think these kind of… the fact that I went to school with, African Americans, I had African American teachers, in Jackson, Mississippi, and then experienced things like our soccer team trying to have a postseason party at a local Moose Club pool. And finding out 24 hours ahead of time that we couldn’t do it because they found out we had black kids on our team, right? And this was in the, like, late 70s, early 80s, in Mississippi. And it was just kind of those little moments of rupture and friction, I think, were the ways that kind of I found my way out, and I would credit some teachers, even a teacher at the Southern Baptist Seminary that told me for the first time, and this is relevant for today. I was a member of the Southern Baptist Convention. It remains the largest Protestant expression of Christianity in the country. It has declined some over the last 10 years, but it still remains the largest expression of Protestant Christianity. Its origin story, I didn’t even know until a seminary professor told me, is it was formed in 1845 to make enslaving other people based on the color of their skin compatible with the gospel. Like, that’s its Genesis story. And that version of Christianity has come to be the largest expression today. It’s also the one today building a theology that is waging war on empathy, right? So this all starts not seeming so odd once you realize, you know, that that history. But when I had a professor tell me that. That was another little crack in the facade. And I was like, oh, wait a minute, like, if the Genesis story of our denomination is something so awful and so sinful. what else have we not got right? And then where else have we missed it? And I think that’s the… that’s the journey, I think that sort of, like, you know, has been part of… part of my way out, yeah.
Jen Rubin
And that is what is so difficult. You have to make people uncomfortable, and people would rather not be uncomfortable, and hence the difficulty of bringing people out. I want to end with… One part of the book, which is fascinating, and actually. is very relevant to the Higher Holy Days. You talk about this war on history, on truth, on the Black experience that white evangelical Christians who are part of this movement have waged. They really want to remove any sense of humanity, accomplishment. They want to make whites the victims. They want a soft soap. slavery. President Biden, for all of his faults and all of his shortcomings, did something extremely important, which he elevated and made into a national holiday, Juneteenth, which is an extremely helpful holiday in… understanding the African American experience in spreading empathy. And you have a phenomenally interesting suggestion about the two bookends June 13th, which comes on June 13th.
Robert P. Jones
19th!
Jen Rubin
Excuse me. What did I say, June 13th? June 19th, and… July 4, which as… The, great, evangelical and, the abolitionist, said, it’s not my July 4th, that’s not what, was, for African American slaves, and you have a fascinating suggestion about how to incorporate both these holidays. Talk to us a little bit about that.
Robert P. Jones
Sure, well, you know, it comes from my own struggles. I wrote a piece at Religion News Service right after, you know, Juneteenth became a federal holiday. And I kind of asked the question, like, you know, what to the white American is the 19th of June? In the spirit of Frederick Douglass’s famous speech, What to the Slave is the 4th of July? And interestingly enough, so June 19th is actually my birthday. So…
Jen Rubin
Oh, my word!
Robert P. Jones
So, I never… I always remember it, and I lived in Texas for a time as a kid, and so, where Juneteenth is actually celebrated, and it was something that was not missable, really, as someone living, in Texas. And I always thought it was kind of, you know, nice that on my birthday there’s this thing, but I was kind of taught that this really wasn’t our holiday. Right? It was African Americans’ holiday, and so, you know, it was fine that they were celebrating, but it wasn’t our… holiday, as white, white people. And so, I was thinking, like, well, what do we do, then, with this? So we have a new federal holiday, but we don’t really have any rituals around it, we don’t… outside of African Americans have, like, long history of rituals, but not white people typically don’t. But now it needs to be all of our holiday. So I say that I’m indebted to two people. One is a conversation with an amazing African-American minister, Jackie Lewis, who’s the minister of Middle Collegiate Church in New York. And my, my in-laws and extended Jewish family, on the other side, and just realized that, oh. One way we could do this is we could model it on the high holidays, right? Where we could… where there is, you know, there’s Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and they float days apart, but there’s a period in between, and the whole time is called the high holidays, right?
Jen Rubin
Days of Awe.
Robert P. Jones
Days of Awe, there’s a progression and a celebration across the period. And the whole period is sort of like this sacred time of reflection, where you take a step back, and you ask the bigger questions, and all of that, you take stock. And I thought that, you know, oh, well, you know, maybe we could do something like that that would help Juneteenth and July 4th, They’re similarly situated, you know, a couple of weeks apart. And they could kind of orbit one another, and kind of stay in each other’s gravitational pull, if you will, and we could treat it like a kind of civic days of awe, where we could think about… because, you know, one of them could be more about the kind of aspirational principles, and the other could be thinking about, oh, you know, but where do we miss the… miss the mark here? And it could be that, and it could be Even when we miss the mark. look at the perseverance and resilience of African Americans who persevered, even as we were missing the mark. And so there’s a way in which we could… it would… I’m always wary of July 4th as it turning into this kind of jingoistic, militaristic. you know, arrogant kind of holiday, and it would… I think it would tether it a bit from those pieces, and it would help, I think, many white Americans have a tighter connection to… to Juneteenth. So, that was sort of the idea. I’m kind of floating in the book.
Jen Rubin
Brilliant, brilliant. That and many other brilliant ideas are in Backslide. I cannot recommend it enough. It’s probably very hard reading for many people who you grew up with, and who are probably wondering what has become of Robby Jones, but Robby Jones has become one of our most valuable public intellectuals, is who he’s become, and we thank you for that. We thank you for the book, best of luck with it, and a sweet and happy new year to you and your extended family.
Robert P. Jones
Thanks, Jen. Yes, Happy New Year to you as well, and thanks for having me.
Jen Rubin
My pleasure, take care.
Robert P. Jones
Thanks.
