Growing numbers of conservative evangelical leaders are on board the Trump train as the former president chugs his way toward the 2024 GOP nomination. And those numbers could increase more now that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has dropped out of the Republican primary race.
Not all evangelicals currently support Trump. Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, endorsed Ron DeSantis in the Iowa caucuses. And Franklin Graham, who has called Trump “one of the great presidents” and embraced Trump’s claims of election fraud, says he won’t endorse a candidate during the primaries.
But many of the evangelical leaders who backed Trump in 2016 and/or 2020 are back on board for his 2024 run. Here are some highlights.
Evangelist Paula White has been one of Trump’s most prominent evangelical supporters and served as a special adviser in his first administration. White has said Trump “led righteously,” and she now leads his National Faith Advisory Board, which seeks to leverage evangelical support through monthly conference calls.
Ben Carson
Ben Carson, the doctor and author who served in Trump’s cabinet as secretary of Housing and Urban Development, has been campaigning for Trump and is rumored to be up for a position in the next Trump administration should there be one.
Trump “has just been a friend of religion and of faith,” said Carson, one of the few former Trump cabinet members to back the former president, while 17 former Trump appointees say their experience serving him convinced them he is unfit for office.
James Dobson, founder of both Focus on the Family and the James Dobson Family Institute, called Trump a “baby Christian” in 2016 and advised Trump in his first term. During an April call of Trump’s Faith Advisory Board, Dobson prayed that God would “restore him to influence and power.”
In his Feb. 1, 2021, newsletter, the now-semi-retired family values icon claimed the 2020 election remained “unresolved” because “the Supreme Court refused to consider a carefully prepared case” alleging fraud and “didn’t review a word of the overwhelming volume of evidence.”
Three other leaders at Dobson’s JDFI also serve on Trump’s advisory board:
- Gary Bauer, a former presidential candidate who serves as senior vice president of public policy at James Dobson Family Institute
- Tim Clinton, president of the American Association of Christian Counselors and co-host of Dobson’s Family Talk radio show
- And James Dobson Family Institute board member Michele Bachmann
In the Trump advisory board call, Bachmann compared America under Joe Biden to Israel under Pharoah.
Michele Bachmann (far right) with other evangelical leaders in the Oval Office in 2017.
“We cry out now to you, Father, on behalf of the United States of America,” Bachmann said. “We cry out to you and we ask, Father, that you would deliver us just like when your children cried out to you … when they were slaves and captives in Egypt. God, we ask you to deliver us, Lord … from these chains of bondage in this country.”
Pastor Jackson Lahmeyer of Sheridan Church in Tulsa, formerly Kenneth Copeland’s church, founded Pastors4Trump. He’s using the mobilization skills he mastered for evangelistic crusades hosted by Christ For All Nations and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association to mobilize pastors behind Trump through monthly conference calls.
“Our aim is to continue to build the relationship between Christian leaders and President Trump during his bid for the presidency,” says the Pastors4Trump website. “There has been no president in our lifetime that has been as welcoming to Christian leaders as Donald Trump.”
As Rolling Stone reported, Lahmeyer’s social media posts are full-on MAGA:
- “Fauci is a mass-murdering Luciferian”
- “Speaker Pelosi is a DEMON!”
- “Jan 6 = FBI Inside Job”
Other MAGA pastors backing Trump include Jentezen Franklin, Greg Locke, Mark Burns, Darrell C. Scott, “worship warrior” Sean Feucht, and Samuel Rodriguez, founder and president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference.
Southern Baptist pastor James F. Linzey issued a press release announcing his support: “First Minister to Publicly Endorse Donald J. Trump for President in 2016, Endorses Trump Again for 2024.”
Eric Metaxas, a Christian radio host who followed his scorned biography of Bonhoeffer with two children’s books about Trump, attended Trump’s 2024 campaign announcement and says he gets “choked up thinking how good things were under Trump. MAGA!”
Metaxas and other Trump supporters have been charged with defamation over their false claims of election fraud in the 2020 race.
Metaxas sat next to MyPillow founder Mike Lindell at the campaign announcement. Lindell has spent $60 million promoting election fraud claims and is now facing financial duress and defamation lawsuits.
“Trump prophet” Lance Wallnau and Turning Point USA President Charlie Kirk have partnered to mobilize swing-state churches for Trump.
Celebrities on the Trump train include actor Jim Caviezel and reality TV star Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame.
Two high-profile Southern Baptist Trump supporters in the past are so far silent about the 2024 presidential election. Neither Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church of Dallas nor Jack Graham of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, have made public endorsements.