Salvation a possibility without certainty.
I’m not sure you can understand evangelicals’ embrace of Trump without understanding the fear and the “end times” mentality that are central to Christian fundamentalism. As children we were taught that we live in the “last days,” and evil will grow ever stronger until a powerful devil takes control of the world through an evil ruler. This ruler will usher in an unprecedented bloodbath and persecution of Christians called “the great tribulation,” after which Jesus returns to sentence the vast majority of all humans who have ever lived to a hopeless eternity of fiery torture that will never, ever end.
We could be saved from this fate but could never be certain of our salvation because we were always falling short of God’s impossible standards, as one does when one’s heart is “deceitfully wicked.” All of this would be taking place “soon and very soon,” as one song puts it, certainly within our lifetime. The Bible was written for us, with our time in history in mind, and descriptions of terrifying events that, unbeknownst to us, had already taken place during biblical times were understood to be in our future. Deciphering these prophecies was a challenge, but we were always finding connections with our time and place. E.g., around the time of the Gulf War, reading Ezekiel was “like reading the front page of the latest newspaper.” There was, and is, a never-ending effort to tie events like Chernobyl, turmoil in the Middle East, blood moons, HIV/AIDS, the year 2000, 9/11, Katrina, etc. to divine activity or God’s “end times” calendar.
God was perpetually offended, and the US is “racing toward judgment” for its many sins of the pelvic region (primarily abortion and homosexuality), so naturally the E5 tornado that killed >150 people in Joplin, MO was “the start of God’s judgment on America for abortion,” despite MO being a deeply Red state and Joplin not having a clinic that performed surgical abortions. But this God was never into precision, as we all knew from hearing about the flood Noah survived, the Canaanite genocide, and other fun Bible stories for kids.
Growing up passively accepting eschatology.
Thus as children we were tormented by fear, not only of missing “the rapture,” in which sufficiently spiritual Christians would evacuated before “the great tribulation,” but also of being sent to hell, which could happen because we’d unintentionally committed “the unpardonable sin” or by dying suddenly with unconfessed sin, thus missing out on the final opportunity to “get right with God.” This fear was reinforced by compelling accounts of near-death experiences; in one story a man on his death bed screamed in agony as he “slipped into an eternity without God,” if I recall. As any terrified child would, many of us “got saved” countless times and obsessively tried to recall every minor infraction so we could secure forgiveness. As one preacher joked, we believed “The rapture is coming—and nobody’s going!” He wasn’t far off. The way was narrow; few would be saved; most would “fall away.” Our eternal destiny depended on constant vigilance against being deceived, falling into sin, or “backsliding.” Those whose passion or faith waned risked being “swept away by demon hordes,” as one well-known writer put it.
You can imagine the psychological effects that a steady diet of this would have on children, and how they would be affected by continuing this diet for decades as adults. Every non-Christian classmate, co-worker, and loved one is destined for eternal conscious torment courtesy of our loving God the moment they die, and only we can save them. God is love; love slaughters infants and children; love oversees an eternal torture chamber. Why should we be surprised if our Christian parents’ “love” whipped us with a belt or emotionally abused us? And if as Christians our heart is so deceitfully wicked that God is ready to drop us into hell, how much more deceived and wicked might our fellow citizens be? What might evil leaders like Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama from the “party of Satan” be plotting against us? Why wouldn’t the scientific community deceiving us about evolution and the age of the Earth also deceive us about COVID and implant us with microchips? And why wouldn’t the medical community that “supports killing babies” inject us with tiny bits of them?
A whole new world (sort-of)
This isn’t just a set of strange beliefs. It’s an all-consuming way of seeing the world and understanding one’s place within it, and an alternative epistemological system where claims by scientists, journalists, politicians, and internet strangers else are evaluated by a different set of criteria. As insiders we have access to supernatural insight, allowing us to look beyond evidence to see what’s really going on.
Donald Trump was held up as the last hope for the US to avoid God’s judgment. Those who spent decades longing to “take this country back for God” found a champion willing to protect them from the ominous and growing threats of persecution, secularization, gun control, socialism, same-sex marriage, and, of course, the much-feared One World Government that will signal the final, terrifying chapter of human history. This distorted, irrational, fear-addled way of seeing and thinking may seem crazy to outsiders, but when you’re inside and it’s all you know, it can be utterly compelling.