From Christian Right to Christian Nationalism: How Donald Trump Changed Conservative Evangelical Political Engagement in the U.S.

The evolution of the U.S. religious conservative movement in the past decade has been remarkable but not adequately explained in scholarship. Leading works on the Christian Right prior to the Trump era focused on the political maturation of the movement over time. That is, its ability to integrate with mainstream GOP politics, to compromise, to use non-threatening sounding rhetoric often couched in terms familiar to progressive rights advocates, to build diverse coalitions - in essence, to accept the reality of incremental policy gains in a political environment not hospitable to much of the religious conservative agenda. Christian Right leaders in the 1990s and 2000s often framed the movement's issue appeals in ways not to offend secular audiences and to comport with what they perceived as the mainstream framework of public policy debates. Leaders said they just wanted a "seat at the table" in U.S. politics, to not be discriminated against, to join the diverse ranks of the GOP coalition without any claim of wanting to "take-over" the party. They urged followers to accept the realities of incremental change, which regarding abortion policy meant advocating for parental notification, parental consent, no taxpayer funding for abortion services, and no late-term abortions. The key was to try to align policy with what was feasible to achieve. The Trump era changed all of that as the three-time GOP presidential nominee and twice elected leader of the party emboldened the religious conservative movement to seek broad-ranging policy change, without compromise or concealing its actual policy goals. What previous scholarship on the Christian Right deemed to be tactics likely to fail have led to profound changes in policy in the U.S., very much aligned with the movement's major agenda goals. This development has surprised and even shocked many U.S. political observers and scholars. This paper seeks to explain and analyze the remarkable shift of the U.S. religious right movement that happened in a relatively brief period of time. What were the events and factors that led to the rise of an emboldened and ultimately successful movement that no longer couches its agenda as comporting with mainstream values. Now that the descriptor "Christian Nationalism" has largely replaced the long-used "Christian Right", what is different about the movement today from the previous wave of religious conservative activism? Finally, what are the prospects for the movement's future?