Post-evangelicals shift away from faith tied to Republican politics

Charlotte, North Carolina (CNN) — Larissa Miller spent the early years of her life steeped in evangelical communities.

She attended an evangelical high school and college and spent more than 16 years working for the association tied to one of the best-known evangelists of the last century, Billy Graham. When Graham died in 2018, she produced the livestream of his 10-day memorial.

But by her late 30s she could no longer bury the feeling that her sexuality wasn’t compatible with the religious community she’d called home for most of her life.

“It was really hard to reconcile that, and to figure out, ‘Can I be gay and be a Christian?’” Miller, a 44-year-old director and producer based in Charlotte, told CNN. “It took many years, deconstructing and reconstructing, trying to figure out, ‘What is God telling me?’”

In 2021, Miller left her job, came out as a lesbian and married her wife. She’s now part of a community where her spirituality and sexuality aren’t in conflict: Charlotte’s Watershed Church, one of a growing number of “post-evangelical” institutions that have broken away – theologically and politically – from conservative places of worship.

Over the last few decades, a growing number of Christians have left traditional, predominantly White evangelical churches. Some have left Christianity altogether, while others have joined communities that preach inclusivity, are affirming of LGBTQ rights, and take a social justice approach to the major moral issues of the times – from racial equality to the plight of refugees.

The post-evangelical movement predates former President Donald Trump’s political rise, but has been accelerated by his alliance with White conservative evangelical leaders. It’s also part of a broader community of Christians who’ve been turned off by mainstream evangelicalism’s embrace of Republican politics – a group Democrats are hoping to make inroads with in November in battleground states.

There’s room to grow. In a Fox News poll released late last month that found Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump virtually tied in a head-to-head matchup, 79% of White evangelicals in North Carolina said they would vote for Trump, compared to 20% who would vote for Harris.

It’s not clear what post-evangelicals voting patterns are, though many of their political stances align with Democrats. At its core, however, the movement isn’t about encouraging people to vote for Democrats – if anything, they have urged people to decouple their partisan and spiritual identities altogether.

“The tension is not to become the rigid, judgmental reverse side of what you just left when it comes to evangelicalism or conservative,” said Matt O’Neil, the lead pastor at Watershed Church. “We create environments where people can come and ask questions.”

A shrinking voting bloc

The evangelical label covers a broad swath of Christian denominations and people of all races. But politically, the predominant image of an evangelical Christian has become a White conservative who votes Republican; opposes same-sex marriage and abortion; and, in the last eight years, supports Trump.

White evangelicals have been a key part of the Republican coalition since the 1980s. About 80% of White evangelicals voted for Trump in the 2016 election, while 76% voted for him in 2020, according to CNN exit polls. The exit polls estimated that 26% of 2016 voters and 28% of 2020 voters were White evangelicals.

But the voting bloc is shrinking. Between 2006 and 2023, the number of White evangelicals dropped from 23% to 13%, while the number of those with no religious affiliation rose from 16% to 27%, according to the Public Religion Research Institute’s 2023 Census of American Religion.

Randall Balmer, an Episcopal priest and religion professor at Dartmouth College, attributed the decline in White evangelicalism in part to a growing generational divide between younger and older evangelicals before Trump’s political rise, fueled by different views on abortion and LGBTQ rights.

“For the older generation, they were really big into the anti-abortion movement, they were opposed to changes in sexual identity politics,” he said. “The younger generation, as I’ve encountered them … those were issues that just didn’t resonate with them.”

It’s unclear how many people have left the evangelical church for post-evangelical faith communities. The Post Evangelical Collective – a network of churches and academics – has about 100 member congregations on its website of various sizes spread across the country, primarily around major cities.

“There’s no question that the evangelical embrace of Trump from 2015 forward has definitely turbo charged the post-evangelical movement,” said David Gushee, a Christian ethics professor at Mercer University, post-evangelical and the author of “After Evangelicalism.”

Watershed, located in Charlotte’s historic Chantilly neighborhood, has a congregation of a few hundred people. On a recent Sunday morning the congregation gathered in a dimly lit auditorium for a service that, structurally, resembled a typical evangelical church, with worship music, announcements and a sermon.

But the updates included a recap of the church’s recent pride parade float and a reminder that Flamy Grant, a drag queen and Christian musician, would be visiting the church soon as part of her “No More Trauma” tour, a nod to the challenges faced by queer Christians. And the sermon challenged the idea of prosperity gospel, popularized by televangelists, which teaches that deep faith in God leads to physical health and financial wealth.

“We are loved,” teaching pastor Shawn Bowers Buxton told the congregation. “Loved in our feelings, loved in our brokenness, loved in our imperfection, loved in our wholeness, not healedness.”

O’Neil, the lead pastor at Watershed, said describing their church as “post-evangelical” has been helpful language for people who are still holding on to their evangelical roots but have changed their thinking in key ways.

While many of the church’s discussions center around politics in the broad sense, O’Neil warned against the dangers of Christians hitching their wagon to any candidate. White evangelicals’ embrace of Trump has left him “heartbroken,” he said.

“Evangelicals that wrap themselves in MAGA – my perception is that they’re afraid that something is happening in the world and they’re not able to keep up with it or they’re not finding traction with the way the world is unfolding,” he said.

Christians off the sidelines

Trump – a former Presbyterian who told Religious News Service in 2020 that he is a non-denominational Christian – has not leaned on his faith to the same extent as past US leaders. Critics have said his personal conduct – such as his divorces, his alleged affair with an adult film star and a verdict that found him liable for sexual abuse – are in sharp contrast with the evangelical emphasis on traditional family structures.

Evangelicals have also been frustrated over his changing stances on abortion access and his decision earlier this year to endorse a patriotic Bible – which includes the Declaration of Independence and other historic American texts alongside the holy scripture.

Still, Trump has maintained overwhelming support among White evangelicals since consolidating their support during the 2016 Republican primary. He has been endorsed by more than 1,000 evangelical leaders who’ve joined his “Believers for Trump” coalition, according to Karoline Leavitt, a campaign spokesperson.

The former president appeared in June at the annual “Road to the Majority” conference of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, a group with close ties to Republicans that works to boost turnout among conservative evangelicals. Trump endorsed the display of the Ten Commandments in schools and said Christianity would be in “tatters” if President Joe Biden, the former Democratic nominee, won a second term.

“The radical left is trying to shame Christians – silence you, demoralize you, and they want to keep you out of politics. They don’t want you to vote,” Trump said in June. “But Christians cannot afford to sit on the sidelines.”

The Faith & Freedom Coalition announced in March that it plans to spend $62 million boosting evangelical turnout through text messages, knocking on doors, sending out voter guides and holding registration drives at tens of thousands of churches.

Ralph Reed, the founder of the coalition, said the mistake Democrats make is assuming that voters of faith are focused on a candidate’s religious identity instead of the policies they’re backing.

“If that was true, they would have voted for Jimmy Carter in 1980, who was a born again Christian and who taught Sunday school on the weekends,” Reed said in an interview. “Instead they voted for Ronald Reagan, who was the first divorced man to ever be president.”

Reed said White conservative evangelicals are motivated by issues such as abortion and supporting Israel, but also “the strengthening and defense of the traditional family” and the belief that “traditional gender roles” are part of God’s plan. Post-evangelicals have a right to start their own churches, he said, but he pushed back on the criticism that the churches they left behind are too closely linked to Republicans.

“There’s a great respect for the understanding that Jesus and the gospel message are above any political party, any politician or any political ideology,” Reed said. “Now, having said that, we do believe very strongly that Christians should be registered to vote.”

Liberals are also seeking to gain ground with White evangelical voters. Evangelicals for Harris has launched a digital ad campaign to explicitly boost turnout for the vice president. The campaign also plans to organize at hundreds of churches.

State Rep. James Talarico, a Texas Democrat and surrogate for the group, said there is a fine line between participating in the democratic process and letting democracy drift into idolatry.

“I think the key difference is that we don’t worship Kamala Harris, we’re just voting for her,” he said. “A vote is like a chess move for a better world.”

Another group, Vote Common Good, is seeking to encourage White evangelicals and Catholics who are open to changing their conservative voting patterns to take that next step. The organization launched its fall bus tour in Georgia this month, with visits concentrated in the three “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

“If you watch Donald Trump’s behavior and you’re still for him, there’s nothing we’re going to say that’s going to get you to change your mind,” said Pastor Doug Pagitt, the executive director of Vote Common Good. “We’re talking about the voters whose minds have already changed, but they’re conflicted about their voting habit.”

A similar, but spiritual, shift has taken place for post-evangelicals like Miller.

“My heart already knew that I was loved and affirmed by God,” Miller said. “But I had to figure it out.”

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