Opinion | MAGA Has Devoured American Evangelicalism

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

79% : Trump captured the spirit of this movement when he shared a video on his Truth Social site titled, "God Made Trump.
74% : Tim Alberta's recent book about the Christian nationalist takeover of American evangelicalism, "The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory," is full of preachers and activists on the religious right expressing sheepish second thoughts about their prostration before Donald Trump.
52% : "From this wreckage has emerged a version of evangelicalism that sometimes seems like a brand-new religion, with Trump at the center of it.
51% : Evangelical leaders who started their alliance with Trump on a transactional basis, then grew giddy with their proximity to power, have now seen MAGA devour their movement whole.
46% : (Iowa's culture-warring governor, Kim Reynolds, has also endorsed DeSantis; she recently used a private social media account to contrast a photo of him and his wholesome family with a picture of Trump surrounded by glamorous women at a New Year's Eve party.)
45% : The power of Christian-right operatives like Vander Plaats came from their ability to move their followers, but Trump has taken that power away from them, absorbing it into himself.
43% : Absent the sort of miracle that would make me reconsider my own lifelong atheism, Trump is going to win Iowa's caucuses on Monday; the only real question is by how much.
40% : But this year, according to FiveThirtyEight's polling average, Trump leads his nearest Republican rivals by more than 30 points.
40% : Those convinced that Trump is touched by divinity, however, are unlikely to think he needs another politician to shield him.
39% : "The forces of political identity and nationalist idolatry -- long latent, now fully unleashed in the form of Trumpism -- were destroying the evangelical church," wrote Alberta in his book.
38% : Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, enthused to Alberta about the way Trump had punched "the bully that had been pushing evangelicals around," by which he presumably meant American liberals.
34% : Like many influential evangelicals in Iowa, Lubinus wants to see an alternative to Trump.
34% : Vander Plaats has been reduced to arguing, as he did in a Des Moines Register essay this week, that Iowans should choose DeSantis because it would position him to protect Trump from his persecutors.
28% : "There's no way to know if evangelical leaders could have prevented this devolution of their faith by joining together to stand up to Trump before he became such a mythic figure.
27% : Mike Evans, a former member of Trump's evangelical advisory board, described, in an essay he sent to The Washington Post, leaving a Trump rally "in tears because I saw Bible believers glorifying Donald Trump like he was an idol."
27% : "A DeSantis presidency ensures justice for Trump," Vander Plaats wrote.
20% : Vander Plaats has been particularly critical of Trump for suggesting that Florida's six-week abortion ban is "too harsh.

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