The mysteries of the Latino vote for Trump

I’m furious at white evangelicals today, and especially at my white evangelical neighbors.

A little over a month ago, Hurricane Helene left our neighborhood looking like a disaster zone. To this day, we still have large trees down in our yards and streets. And while the businesses owned by white people were charging normal to above average prices to remove trees, the businesses owned by Latino immigrants were charging my white neighbors a fraction of the typical cost.

My next-door neighbor has a massive oak tree leaning over his house, which could crush his home if it falls. He told me while other companies want to charge him $20,000 to take down the tree, the Latino companies will charge him just $5,000 to do it. He also happens to have a Trump/Vance sign next to the tree.

So as I type, the morning after my neighbor voted to have these men kicked out of the country, he’s hiring them to work for him next to his Trump sign.

Latino support for a white supremacist politician

On one hand, it’s infuriating how my white neighbor would use Latinos for cheap labor to save his home while voting to rip their families from their homes.

But what’s also confounding is how so many Latinos supported a white supremacist politician who trashed their countries, their eating habits and their IQs throughout the campaign.

According to the NBC News Exit Poll, 45% of Latino voters went for Trump, up from 32% in 2020.

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough chalked it up to Latinos being racist against Kamala Harris. He suggested, “A lot of Hispanic voters have problems with Black candidates.” And Al Sharpton agreed with him.

So did Latinos vote for Trump because they’re racist against Black people?

One of the marks of our white supremacist history, as Robert P. Jones details in The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy, is that white supremacists set up racial hierarchies beneath them that serve their political cause and mask their racism. So perhaps there may be some racial hierarchies going on.

But one major part of this conversation needs to be about how worship music has become one of the most powerful weapons for getting Latinos to fall in line and bend the knee in these hierarchies.

‘The Kingdom to the Capitol’

The “Kingdom to the Capitol” worship events I attended in Washington, D.C., 10 days prior to the election kicked off with the worshipers chanting, “Step by step, step by step, step by step we’re taking ground,” accompanied by a worship band and directed by a worship leader yelling, “Come on!”

Despite promoting the white supremacist politics of Trump while waving Appeal to Heaven flags, the group was very racially diverse. Knocking down the walls of racism is a common theme at these Christian nationalist worship events. And “Let Us Worship” founder Sean Feucht prides himself in having Black, Latino and Asian pastors yell with him on stage.

Then as they began taking ground through worship by marching toward the White House, there were large groups of Latino worshipers chanting, “Jesús Cristo.”

The main worship event included a greeting by Trump himself, the National Anthem and a call for God to scatter the enemies, cause them to flee and “blow them away like smoke as wax melts before the fire” while the evangelicals are “glad and rejoice,” “happy and joyful,” and “sing in praise of his name.” Then Feucht declared, “We are here today! The army of God!” And that was just the call to worship.

With Feucht in attendance at Trump’s victory party Tuesday night, the gathering began singing the hymn, “How Great Thou Art.” One line that stood out was, “Thy power throughout the universe displayed.”

To Trump’s army of worship warriors, God’s power is displayed through their power. And their power comes through being enlisted in Trump’s worship army.

God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven means participating in white supremacist hierarchies of authority, submission and violent retribution. And singing worship songs that fuel a passion for voting for Donald Trump is spiritual warfare.

But the racial unity at these events cannot be denied.

So should we ignore the white supremacist politics of Trump and celebrate the unity of racially diverse Christians singing and voting together for him? Has their union proved that white conservatives have solved racism, despite being unwilling to face the trauma they have propagated for centuries?

Identity prioritization

In an episode titled “Latinx Charismatics and the 2024 Election” on the “Straight White American Jesus” podcast, Leah Payne asks, “To what degree, if I’m Latino, am I forming my political attitudes by primarily thinking about my Latino ethnic identity versus a religious identity and religious interests?”

Her question taps into what’s going on here.

The independent charismatic worship experience names walls of racism as a problem. Then it calls white, Latino, Black and Asian Christians to come together in order to knock down those walls. Thus, any mention of ethnic identity is dismissed. And all the worshipers are given new religious identities as worship warriors.

By dismissing any talk of ethnic identity as racist or Critical Race Theory, these worship armies erase the perspectives that communities on the underside of white supremacist power hierarchies have developed over the centuries. Then with the power of liberation in and among the oppressed being erased, the only power that remains is white supremacist power over everyone. And since nobody suspects that’s what’s happening, they respond to the election of Trump by framing their power as the demonstration of God’s power.

The result is very similar to the Latino men working for my white neighbor in order to save his home before they get ripped away from theirs.

The difference is that while the Latino workers next door may be terrified over what’s coming for them, the Latino worshipers across the nation have no idea what they’ve become complicit in. They think they’re simply being an army of worshipers who are knocking down walls of racism and glorifying the authority and power of King Jesus by calling heaven down to earth. But in reality, they’re an army of voters who are living by the sword in the service of white supremacist pastors and politicians.

 

Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a bachelor of arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.

 

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