大西洋月刊：特朗普无法扭转白人基督教美国社会的衰落 [美国媒体]

Trump Can't Reverse the Decline of White Christian America

特朗普无法扭转白人基督教美国社会的衰落


  
Down the home stretch of the 2016 presidential campaign, one of Donald Trump’s most consistent talking points was a claim that America’s changing demographics and culture had brought the country to a precipice. He repeatedly cast himself as the last chance for Republicans and conservative white Christians to step back from the cliff, to preserve their power and way of life. In an interview on Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) in early September, Trump put the choice starkly for the channel’s conservative Christian viewers: “If we don’t win this election, you’ll never see another Republican and you’ll have a whole different church structure.” Asked to elaborate, Trump continued, “I think this will be the last election that the Republicans have a chance of winning because you’re going to have people flowing across the border, you’re going to have illegal immigrants coming in and they’re going to be legalized and they’re going to be able to vote, and once that all happens you can forget it.”

在2016年总统大选的最后阶段，唐纳德?特朗普最一以贯之的观点之一是：美国不断变化的人口结构和文化让这个国家走到了悬崖边上。他一再把自己看作是共和党和保守的白人基督教徒从悬崖边上退下来的最后机会，以保护他们的权力和生活方式。今年9月初，特朗普在接受帕特·罗伯逊的基督教广播网络的采访时，为该频道的保守的基督教观众给出了明确的选择：“如果我们不赢得这次选举，你将永远看不到另一个共和党人，你将会有一个完全不同的教会结构。”被要求对此进行详细阐释的特朗普继续说道：“我认为这将是共和党有机会获得胜利的最后一次选举，因为你们将面对的是跨越边境的人流，你们将面对的是蜂拥涌入的非法移民，他们会获得合法地位，他们能够投票，一旦这样的事情发生了，你们就休想达成所愿”。

Michele Bachmann, a member of Trump’s evangelical executive advisory board, echoed these same sentiments in a speech at the Values Voters Summit, an annual meeting attended largely by conservative white Christians. That same week, she declared in an interview with CBN: “If you look at the numbers of people who vote and who lives [sic] in the country and who Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton want to bring in to the country, this is the last election when we even have a chance to vote for somebody who will stand up for godly moral principles. This is it.” Post-election polling from the Public Religion Research Institute, which I lead, and The Atlantic showed that this appeal found its mark among conservative voters. Nearly two-thirds (66 percent) of Trump voters, compared to only 22 percent of Clinton voters, agreed that “the 2016 election represented the last chance to stop America’s decline.”

米歇尔·巴赫曼是特朗普福音派执行顾问委员会的成员，她在“价值观选民峰会”上的一次演讲中也表达了同样的观点。该峰会主要的参与者是保守的白人基督徒。同一周，她在接收基督教广播网络的采访时声明：“如果你看看那些投票和居住(原文如此)在这里的人的数量，以及巴拉克·奥巴马和希拉里·克林顿想要引入美国的人，那么这就是我们有机会选出一位将会支持上帝的道德准则的人的最后一次选举。事实就是如此。”我所主导的公共宗教研究所的选举后民调显示，这一呼吁在保守派选民中得到了回响。在特朗普的支持者中，有近三分之二（66%）的选民认为：“2016年大选是阻止美国衰落的最后机会”。

Does Trump’s victory, then, represent the resurrection of White Christian America? The consequences of the 2016 elections are indeed sweeping. Republicans entered 2017 with control of both houses of Congress and the White House. And because the Republican-controlled Senate refused to consider an Obama appointee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in early 2016, Trump was able to nominate a conservative Supreme Court justice right out of the gate. Trump’s cabinet and advisors consist largely of defenders of either Wall Street or White Christian America.

那么，特朗普的胜利代表了美国白人基督徒的复兴吗？2016年大选的结果确实是深远的。共和党人在2017年控制了国会两院和白宫。而且，由于共和党控制的参议院拒绝考虑用奥巴马任命的人选来取代在2016年年初去世的大法官安东宁斯卡利亚，特朗普能够提名一位保守派的最高法院大法官。特朗普的内阁和顾问主要是华尔街或白人基督教美国社会的捍卫者。

The evidence, however, suggests that Trump’s unlikely victory is better understood as the death rattle of White Christian America—the cultural and political edifice built primarily by white Protestant Christians—rather than as its resuscitation. Despite the election’s immediate and dramatic consequences, it’s important not to over-interpret Trump’s win, which was extraordinarily close. Out of more than 136 million votes cast, Trump’s victory in the Electoral College came down to a razor-thin edge of only 77,744 votes across three states: Pennsylvania (44,292 votes), Wisconsin (22,748 votes), and Michigan (10,704 votes). These votes represent a Trump margin of 0.7 percentage points in Pennsylvania, 0.7 percentage points in Wisconsin, and 0.2 percentage points in Michigan. If Clinton had won these states, she would now be president. And of course Clinton actually won the popular vote by 2.9 million votes, receiving 48.2 percent of all votes compared to Trump’s 46.1 percent. The real story of 2016 is that there was just enough movement in just the right places, just enough increased turnout from just the right groups, to get Trump the electoral votes he needed to win.

然而，有证据表明，特朗普令人意外的胜利更容易被理解为白人基督教美国社会——即由白人新教基督徒建立的文化和政治大厦——的死亡之声，而不是复兴。尽管选举产生了直接和戏剧性的后果，但重要的是不要过度解读特朗普的胜利，选举结果是非常接近的。在超过1.36亿张选票中，特朗普在三个州的选举人团中获胜的优势仅为77744票：宾夕法尼亚州44292张选票，威斯康星州22748张选票和密歇根州10704张选票。这些选票代表着宾夕法尼亚州的特朗普支持率仅高出了0.7个百分点，威斯康星州仅高出了0.7个百分点，密歇根州仅高出了0.2个百分点。如果希拉里·克林顿赢下了这些州，她现在就已经成为了总统。当然，希拉里·克林顿在普选中赢得了290万张选票，获得了48.2%的选票，而特朗普的得票率为46.1%。2016年的真实故事是，在正确的地方进行足够的运动，只要有足够多的人参加，就能让特朗普赢得他所需要的选举人票。

Trump’s intense appeal to 2016 as the “last chance” election seems to have spurred conservative white Christian voters to turn out to vote at particularly high rates. Two election cycles ago in 2008, white evangelicals represented 21 percent of the general population but, thanks to their higher turnout relative to other voters, comprised 26 percent of actual voters. In 2016, even as their proportion of the population fell to 17 percent, white evangelicals continued to represent 26 percent of voters. In other words, white evangelicals went from being overrepresented by five percentage points at the ballot box in 2008 to being overrepresented by nine percentage points in 2016. This is an impressive feat to be sure, but one less and less likely to be replicated as their decline in the general population continues.

特朗普在2016年发出的“最后的选举机会”的强烈呼吁似乎促使保守的白人基督教选民群体出现了特别高的投票率。在2008年的两个选举周期中，白人福音派占据了普通民众的21%，但是，由于相对于其他选民的投票率更高，他们占了实际选民数量的26%。在2016年，尽管他们的人口比例下降到了17%，白人福音派仍然占据了选民数量的26%。换句话说，白人福音派教徒在2008年的选举中多出了5个百分点的代表率，在2016年则多出了9个百分点。这是一项令人印象深刻的壮举，但随着他们在普通人群中比例的下降，这样的壮举可能越来越无法被复制了。

Updating two trends with 2015-2016 data also confirms that the overall patterns of demographic and cultural change are continuing. The chart below plots two trend lines that capture key measures of change: the percentage of white, non-Hispanic Christians in the country and the percentage of Americans who support same-sex marriage. The percentage of white Christians in the country fell from 54 percent in 2008 to 47 percent in 2014. That percentage has fallen again in each subsequent year, to 45 percent in 2015 and to 43 percent in 2016. Similarly, the percentage of Americans who supported same-sex marriage rose from 40 percent in 2008 to 54 percent in 2014. That number stayed relatively stable (53 percent) in 2015—the year the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states—but jumped to 58 percent in 2016.

2015到2016年数据的两大最新趋势也证实了人口和文化变化的总体格局仍在继续。下面的图表描绘了两条趋势线，它们抓住了关键的变化指标：这个国家的白人、非西班牙裔基督徒的比例和支持同性婚姻的美国人的比例。这个国家的白人基督徒比例从2008年的54%下降到2014年的47%。这一比例在随后一年再次下降，2015年降至45%，2016年降至43%。同样，支持同性婚姻的美国人比例从2008年的40%上升到2014年的54%。这一数字在2015年保持相对稳定（53%）——最高法院在全美50个州将同性婚姻合法化——但在2016年跃升至58%。


  
Despite the outcome of the 2016 elections, the key long-term trends indicate White Christian America’s decline is continuing unabated. Over the last eight years, the percentage of Americans who identify as white and Christian fell 11 percentage points, and support for same-sex marriage jumped 18 percentage points. In a New York Times op-ed shortly after the election, I summarized the results of the election this way: “The waning numbers of white Christians in the country today may not have time on their side, but as the sun is slowly setting on the cultural world of White Christian America, they’ve managed, at least in this election, to rage against the dying of the light.”

尽管出现了2016年大选的结果，但关键的长期趋势表明，美国白人基督教徒的衰落仍在继续。在过去的8年里，白人基督教徒的比例下降了11个百分点，支持同性婚姻的人数上升了18个百分点。在选举后不久发表的纽约时报专栏中，我总结了选举的结果：“时间可能没有站在全国日渐减少的白人基督徒一边，但随着白人基督教美国社会的文化世界的逐渐日薄西山，至少在这次选举中，他们成功地回光返照了”。

One of the most perplexing features of the 2016 election was the high level of support Donald Trump received from white evangelical Protestants. How did a group that once proudly identified itself as “values voters” come to support a candidate who had been married three times, cursed from the campaign stump, owned casinos, appeared on the cover of Playboy Magazine, and most remarkably, was caught on tape bragging in the most graphic terms about habitually grabbing women’s genitals without their permission? White evangelical voters’ attraction to Trump was even more mysterious because the early GOP presidential field offered candidates with strong evangelical credentials, such as Ted Cruz, a longtime Southern Baptist whose father was a Baptist minister, and Marco Rubio, a conservative Catholic who could talk with ease and familiarity about his own personal relationship with Jesus.

2016年大选最令人困惑的特征之一是唐纳德?特朗普从白人福音派新教徒那里获得的大量支持。一群曾经自豪地认为自己是“有价值观的选民”的人怎么会支持一个已经结过三次婚、、受到竞选巡回演说诅咒、拥有赌场、出现在《花花公子》杂志的封面上——最引人注目的是，在录音中未经女性许可而习惯性地提及她们的生殖器——的候选人？白人福音派选民对特朗普的吸引力则显得更为神秘，因为早期的共和党总统候选人都有着很强的福音派背景，比如泰德·克鲁兹，他长期以来都是美南浸信会信徒，而他的父亲则是浸信会的牧师；还有马可·卢比奥，他是一个保守的天主教徒，能够娴熟地探讨自己与耶稣的关系。

The shotgun wedding between Trump and white evangelicals was not without conflict and objections. It set off some high drama between Trump suitors, such as Jerry Falwell Jr. of Liberty University and Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas, and #NeverTrump evangelical leaders such as Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention. Just days ahead of the Iowa caucuses, Falwell invited him to speak at Liberty University, where he serves as president. In his introduction, Falwell told the gathered students, “In my opinion, Donald Trump lives a life of loving and helping others as Jesus taught in the great commandment.” And a week later, he officially endorsed Trump for president. Robert Jeffress, the senior pastor of the influential First Baptist Church in Dallas and a frequent commentator on Fox News, also threw his support behind Trump early in the campaign but took a decidedly different approach. Jeffress explicitly argued that a president’s faith is “not the only consideration, and sometimes it’s not the most important consideration.” Citing grave threats to America, particularly from “radical Islamic terrorism,” Jeffress’ support of Trump for president was straightforward realpolitik: “I want the meanest, toughest, son-of-a-you-know-what I can find in that role, and I think that’s where many evangelicals are.” Moore, by contrast, remained a steadfast Trump opponent throughout the campaign. He was aghast at the high-level embrace of Trump by white evangelical leaders and strongly expressed his incredulity that they “have tossed aside everything that they previously said they believed in order to embrace and to support the Trump candidacy.”

特朗普和白人福音派之间的强制婚姻并不是没有冲突和反对。它在特朗普的追求者——比如利伯缇大学的小杰里·福尔韦尔和达拉斯第一浸信会教堂的罗伯特·杰夫斯，以及南方浸信会的拉塞尔·摩尔等福音派领袖——之间引发了一些戏剧性的事件。就在爱荷华州党团会议召开的前几天，福尔韦尔邀请特朗普到他担任主席的利伯缇大学演讲。在他的介绍中，福尔韦尔告诉集会的学生：“在我看来，唐纳德特朗普过着爱他人和帮助他人的生活，就像耶稣在伟大的戒律中所教导的那样。”一周后，他正式支持特朗普竞选总统。达拉斯颇具影响力的第一浸信会教堂的高级牧师、福克斯新闻的常任评论员罗伯特?杰斯雷斯也在竞选初期支持特朗普，但他采取了截然不同的方式。杰夫斯明确指出，总统的信仰“不是唯一的考量因素，有时甚至不是最重要的考虑因素。”提到美国所面对的严重威胁，尤其是来自“激进的伊斯兰恐怖主义”的威胁时，她对特朗普的支持是一种直截了当的现实主义政治：“我想要的是我能为这个职位找到的最卑鄙、最强硬、最聪明的人，我认为这就是许多福音派教徒的所想”。相比之下，摩尔在整个竞选过程中始终是一个坚定的特朗普反对者。他对白人福音派领袖对特朗普的高层级拥抱感到震惊，并强烈表达了他的质疑，即他们“把他们之前说过的一切都抛在了一边，以支持特朗普的候选人资格”。

In the end, however, Falwell and Jeffress had a better feel for the people in the pews. Trump received unwavering support from white evangelicals from the beginning of the primaries through Election Day. As I noted at the beginning of the primary season, the first evidence that Trump was rewriting the Republican playbook was his victory in the South Carolina GOP primary, the first southern primary and one in which more than two-thirds of the voters were white evangelicals. The Cruz campaign had considered Super Tuesday’s South-heavy lineup to be its firewall against early Trump momentum. But when the returns came in, Cruz had won only his home state of Texas and neighboring Oklahoma, while Trump had swept the southern states, taking Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, and Arkansas. Trump ultimately secured the GOP nomination, not over white evangelical voters’ objections, but because of their support. And on Election Day, white evangelicals set a new high water mark in their support for a Republican presidential candidate, backing Trump at a slightly higher level than even President George W. Bush in 2004 (81 percent vs. 78 percent).

然而，福尔韦尔和杰夫斯最终却错误地估计了教堂里的会众。从初选开始到选举日为止，特朗普都得到了白人福音派的坚定支持。正如我在初选开始时所指出的，特朗普正在改写共和党剧本的第一个证据是他在南卡罗来纳州共和党初选中所获得的胜利，这是南方的第一次初选，这一地区三分之二以上的选民是白人福音派教徒。克鲁兹的竞选团队曾将南方的“超级星期二”初选视为对抗特朗普早期势头的防火墙。但结果表明克鲁兹只在他的家乡德克萨斯州和邻近的俄克拉荷马州赢得了胜利，而特朗普横扫了南方各州，拿下了乔治亚州、阿拉巴马州、田纳西州、弗吉尼亚州和阿肯色州。特朗普最终获得了共和党的提名，这不是因为白人福音派选民的反对，而是因为获得了他们的支持。在大选日，白人福音派教徒对共和党总统候选人的支持率创下了新高，特朗普的支持率略高于2004年的总统乔治·W·布什（81%对78%）。

Trump’s campaign—with its sweeping promise to “make American great again”—triumphed by converting self-described “values voters” into what I’ve called “nostalgia voters.” Trump’s promise to restore a mythical past golden age—where factory jobs paid the bills and white Protestant churches were the dominant cultural hubs—powerfully tapped evangelical anxieties about an uncertain future.

特朗普的竞选——以及他的“让美国再次伟大”的承诺——以将自称为“价值观选民”的一群人转变为我所称的“怀旧选民”而获得了胜利。特朗普承诺要恢复一个神话般的过去的黄金时代——用工厂的工作工资来支付账单和白人新教教堂是其主要的文化中心——他有力地利用了福音派对不确定的未来的焦虑。

The 2016 election, in fact, was peculiar because of just how little concrete policy issues mattered. The election, more than in any in recent memory, came down to two vividly contrasting views of America. Donald Trump’s campaign painted a bleak portrait of America’s present, set against a bright, if monochromatic, vision of 1950s America restored. Hillary Clinton’ campaign, by contrast, sought to replace the first African American president with the first female president and embraced the multicultural future of 2050, the year the Census Bureau originally projected the United States would become a majority nonwhite nation. “Make American Great Again” and “Stronger Together,” the two campaigns’ competing slogans, became proxies for an epic battle over the changing face of America.

事实上，2016年的大选之所以特殊，是因为具体的政策问题是无关紧要的。这次选举比以往任何时候都要更多地展现对美国的两种截然不同的看法。唐纳德·特朗普的竞选团队描绘了一幅黯淡的美国现状的图景，与20世纪50年代美国的明亮的——如果是单色的——愿景形成了鲜明对比。相比之下，希拉里?克林顿的竞选团队试图用第一位女总统取代第一位非洲裔美国总统，并拥抱2050年多元文化的未来——美国人口普查局最初预计，美国将在这一年成为非白人占据多数的国家。“让美国再次伟大”和“一起更强大”这两个竞选口号成为了关于美国变迁图景的史诗战斗的代理人。

The gravitational pull of nostalgia among white evangelicals was evident across a wide range of public opinion polling questions. Just a few weeks before the 2016 election, 66 percent of white evangelical Protestants said the growing number of newcomers from other countries threatens traditional American customs and values. Nearly as many favored building a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico (64 percent) and temporarily banning Muslims from other countries from entering the U.S. (62 percent). And 63 percent believed that today discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities. White evangelicals also stood out on broad questions about cultural change. While Americans overall were nearly evenly divided on whether American culture and way of life have changed for worse (51 percent) or better (48 percent) since the 1950s, white evangelical Protestants were likelier than any other demographic group to say things have changed for the worse since the 1950s (74 percent).

白人福音派教徒对怀旧的吸引力在广泛的民意调查中表现得很明显。就在2016年大选的前几周，66%的白人福音派新教徒表示，越来越多来自其他国家的新移民威胁着传统的美国习俗和价值观。几乎同样多的人支持在美国与墨西哥边境修建隔离墙（64%），并暂时禁止其他国家的穆斯林进入美国（62%）。63%的人认为，对白人的歧视已经成为了和歧视黑人和其他少数民族一样严重的大问题。白人福音派也在关于文化变革的广泛问题上有所坚持。尽管全体美国人在美国文化和生活方式自1950年代以来的改变是变得更糟(51%)还是更好(48%)这个问题上势均力敌，但白人福音派新教徒比其他人群更有可能认为事情已经变得无以复加的糟糕(74%)。

It is perhaps an open question whether Trump’s candidacy represents a true change in evangelicals’ DNA or whether it simply revealed previously hidden traits, but the shift from values to nostalgia voter has undoubtedly transformed their political ethics. The clearest example of evangelical ethics bending to fit the Trump presidency is white evangelicals’ abandonment of their conviction that personal character matters for elected officials. In 2011 and again just ahead of the 2016 election, PRRI asked Americans whether a political leader who committed an immoral act in his or her private life could nonetheless behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public life. In 2011, consistent with the “values voter” brand and the traditional evangelical emphasis on the importance of personal character, only 30 percent of white evangelical Protestants agreed with this statement. But with Trump at the top of the Republican ticket in 2016, 72 percent of white evangelicals said they believed a candidate could build a kind of moral dike between his private and public life. In a head-spinning reversal, white evangelicals went from being the least likely to the most likely group to agree that a candidate’s personal immorality has no bearing on his performance in public office.

特朗普的候选资格是否代表了福音派的基因的真正变化，或者它是否只是揭示了以前隐藏的特征，或许是一个悬而未决的问题，但从价值观选民到怀旧选民的转变无疑改变了他们的政治道德。福音派道德屈从于特朗普竞选的最明显的例子是，白人福音派教徒放弃了他们的信念，即个人品格对民选官员非常重要。在2011年，以及在2016年大选前夕，公共研究与监管倡议组织曾问过美国人，在其私人生活中犯下不道德行为的政治领袖是否能在公共生活中有道德地履行自己的职责。在2011年，与“价值观选民”的招牌以及传统的福音派对个人性格的重要性的强调相一致的是，只有30%的白人福音派新教徒同意这一说法。但是，随着特朗普在2016年的共和党总统大选中名列前茅，72%的白人福音派教徒表示，他们相信一个候选人可以在他的私人生活和公共生活之间建立一道道德的“堤坝”。在一次令人头晕目眩的逆转中，白人福音派从最不可能认同候选人的个人道德与他在公职中的表现没有任何关系的群体变成了最赞成这一观点的群体。

Fears about the present and a desire for a lost past, bound together with partisan attachments, ultimately overwhelmed values voters’ convictions. Rather than standing on principle and letting the chips fall where they may, white evangelicals fully embraced a consequentialist ethics that works backward from predetermined political ends, bending or even discarding core principles as needed to achieve a predetermined outcome. When it came to the 2016 election, the ends were deemed so necessary they justified the means. As he saw the polls trending for Trump in the last days before the election, in no small part because of the support of white evangelicals, Russell Moore was blunt, lamenting that Trump-supporting evangelicals had simply adopted “a political agenda in search of a gospel useful enough to accommodate it."

对现在的恐惧和对逝去的过去的渴望，与党派的依恋结合在一起，最终压倒了选民们的信念。白人福音派教徒完全接受了结果主义的伦理，他们没有恪守原则，让筹码落在它们可能出现的地方，而是完全接受了结果主义的道德准则，从预先确定的政治目的出发，在必要时扭曲甚至抛弃核心原则，以达到预定的结果。当谈到2016年的大选时，这些目标被认为是必要的，他们要为手段进行辩护。在选举前的最后几天，拉塞尔·摩尔看到了特朗普的民调趋势——它在很大程度上是得益于白人福音派的支持——曾直言不讳地哀叹，支持特朗普的福音派只是简单地采纳了“一项用来寻找足够有用的福音来容纳它的政治议程”。

White evangelicals have entered a grand bargain with the self-described master dealmaker, with high hopes that this alliance will turn back the clock. And Donald Trump’s installation as the 45th president of the United States may in fact temporarily prop up, by pure exertions of political and legal power, what white Christian Americans perceive they have lost. But these short-term victories will come at an exorbitant price. Like Esau, who exchanged his inheritance for a pot of stew, white evangelicals have traded their distinctive values for fleeting political power. Twenty years from now, there is little chance that 2016 will be celebrated as the revival of White Christian America, no matter how many Christian right leaders are installed in positions of power over the next four years. Rather, this election will mostly likely be remembered as the one in which white evangelicals traded away their integrity and influence in a gambit to resurrect their past.

白人福音派已经与自谓的交易大师达成了一项重大妥协，他们对这一联盟将会扭转这一局面抱有很高的期望。而唐纳德·特朗普就任美国第45任总统，实际上可能会通过纯粹的政治和法律权力暂时支撑白人基督徒认为他们已经失去了的东西。但这些短期的胜利将付出高昂的代价。就像以扫把他的遗产换成了一锅炖菜一样，白人福音派也用他们独特的价值观换取短暂的政治权力。从今天开始的20年时间里，2016年被视为白人基督教美国社会的复兴之年的机会几乎是微乎其微的，不管未来4年中有多少基督教右翼领导人被任命为掌权者。更确切地说，这次选举很可能会被人们铭记，因为白人福音派教徒为了复兴他们的过往而放弃了他们的正直和影响力。

Meanwhile, the major trends transforming the country continue. If anything, evangelicals’ deal with Trump may accelerate the very changes it was designed to arrest, as a growing number of non-white and non-Christian Americans are repulsed by the increasingly nativist, tribal tenor of both conservative white Christianity and conservative white politics. At the end of the day, white evangelicals’ grand bargain with Trump will be unable to hold back the sheer weight of cultural change, and their descendants will be left with the only real move possible: acceptance.

与此同时，改变这个国家的主要趋势仍在继续。如果说有什么区别的话，那就是福音派与特朗普的交易可能会加速它旨在阻止的变革的进程，因为越来越多的非白人和非基督徒美国人被保守的白人基督教和保守的白人政治的日益本土主义的、种族主义的男高音所排斥。在考虑所有情况之后，白人福音派与特朗普的重大妥协将无法阻挡文化变革的巨大压力，他们的后代将会面对唯一真正的可能：接受它。