Evangelicals are finally getting fed up with Donald Trump’s bad-neighbor behavior, according to an NBC News report published Friday.
Trump received sweeping support from evangelicals in the 2024 presidential election, securing the votes of about eight in 10 white evangelical Christian voters, according to AP VoteCast, which surveys more than 120,000 voters. Trump secured a similar margin in 2020.
His appeal to Latino evangelicals helped him to make inroads among Latino voters, who also supported him with surprising force in the most recent election. Trump’s shockingly ineffectual sidekick Vice President JD Vance has his own ties to the Christian nationalist movement.
But since Trump entered office, some evangelicals are struggling with the incoherent inhumanity of the president’s policies.
Reverend Gabriel Salguero, the president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, said he had been meeting with lawmakers about how Trump and Elon Musk’s efforts to shutter USAID would undermine their work benefiting vulnerable children and families abroad.
Salguero pointed out the clear connection between gutting international aid and cracking down on immigration.
“If we’re concerned with immigration, shouldn’t we also be concerned about how foreign aid helps people stay in their country and flourish?” Salguero told NBC News.
Salguero said that Trump’s actions sent an “inconsistent message,” as they sought to limit both documented and undocumented immigration. He said pastors like him were “trying to seek clarity” on the president’s immigration policy.
At the Gathering Place, the Orlando, Florida, church where Salguero serves as pastor, he said he has witnessed the strife of mixed-immigration-status families, fearful from Trump’s orders ending birthright citizenship and allowing ICE agents to pursue those they suspect of being undocumented in schools and places of worship.
“We need to deal with criminals and violent criminals in ways that keep our community safe. We support that,” Salguero said. “On the other hand, they’re passing memos and executive orders that are way beyond that scope.”
He also pointed out an inconsistency with Trump’s claim that his immigration policies are meant to target violent criminals.
“If it’s true that the administration is worried about violent criminals, why did they pardon over a thousand people who acted violently in the Capitol?” he asked, rhetorically. “Why then try to rescind the Fourteenth Amendment, depriving children of birthright citizenship? They’re not violent criminals; they haven’t been born. They have a right to be citizens.” Salguero noted that he is a registered independent and does not endorse candidates.
Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, also pushed back against Trump’s order allowing immigration enforcement to extend into churches.
“Should churches be law-abiding? Absolutely. Should they be cooperating with agencies to ensure that criminal influences are dealt with? Absolutely,” Kim told NBC News. “But by and large, those communities that are experiencing fear and not going to church is far beyond the very small portion of the immigrant, undocumented criminal segment.”
Despite the widespread support from evangelicals, this rift is hardly surprising given the Trump administration’s distinctly America First interpretation of the Good Book.
Last month, Vance fell into religious crosshairs after he said that it was Christian to “love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world.”
Podcaster Rory Stewart called Vance’s comment “a bizarre take on John 15:12-13—less Christian and more pagan tribal. We should start worrying when politicians become theologians, assume to speak for Jesus, and tell us in which order to love.”
John 15:12-13 says, “This is my commandment: Love one another as I have loved you.”
