Trump’s Holy Week Bible Sales Raise Questions

On Friday, Robert P. Jones, Ph.D., PRRI’s President and Founder, joined Joy Reid on MSNBC’s The ReidOut to discuss white evangelical Christians’ continued support for former President Donald Trump even as he monetizes the Bible and compares himself to Jesus during Holy Week. Jones told Reid, “When Trump denigrates migrants and the Black Lives Matter movement, white evangelicals are with him on those sentiments… They share a worldview of white Christian nationalism.” PRRI’s 2023 American Values Survey found that 60% of white evangelical Protestants believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and 76% say they would vote for Trump in a 2024 Trump/Biden matchup.

Americans Continue To Lose Their Religion as GOP Pushes It

Axios’ Russell Contreras reports that, based on PRRI’s latest research, a slim majority of Americans (53%) say that religion is important in their lives, down from 72% in 2013. Contreras also highlights the gap between how citizens and lawmakers see religion’s role in society: 26% of Americans now consider themselves unaffiliated, at a time when members of Congress are more Christian than the American public by wide margins. PRRI CEO Melissa Deckman told Axios that among unaffiliated Americans younger than 30, “60% cite the [religions’] treatments of LGBTQ people as a reason they stop going to church.”

Sunday Marks Both Easter and the Transgender Day of Visibility. Cue the Culture War.

Olivia Alafriz and Giselle Ruhiyyih Ewing at POLITICO report on the conservative backlash against President Joe Biden’s proclamation recognizing Transgender Day of Visibility, which coincided with Easter Sunday this year. Congressional House leadership demanded an apology from the Biden Administration, which replied that “President Biden stands for bringing people together and upholding the dignity and freedoms of every American.” Biden also highlighted the rise of extremism against transgender youth in particular in his statement Friday. PRRI’s 2023American Values Survey found that 85% of Republicans agree that “people advocating for the rights of transgender people have gone too far in recent years” compared with 56% of independents and 29% of Democrats.

The Common Lesson From the MSNBC Uproar and Trump’s Bible Business

At The Washington Post, columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. writes that NBC’s short-lived hiring of Ronna McDaniel and former President Trump’s decision to sell the “God Bless the USA Bible” illustrate Trump’s effect on the media and religion, two institutions that have historically served as checks on power. Dionne writes that Trump has convinced his supporters to see supporting him as godly, citing a PRRI-Brookings Institution poll that asked whether “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.” In 2011, only 30% of white evangelicals agreed with the statement, but a couple of weeks before the 2016 election, 72% agreed, a much bigger swing than was recorded among other religious groups.