I must begin by admitting that, yes, some Canadian evangelicals actually do like Donald Trump.
There is, for instance, a push in the western province of Alberta (where I was raised) to secede from Canada. The leaders of the secession movement, impressed by the president’s anti-Canadian rhetoric, have been meeting with representatives of the Trump administration.
Alberta separatists don’t necessarily want their province to become the 5st U.S. state, but they feel a certain affinity with the American MAGA movement. Alberta secessionists don’t wear their religion on their sleeves, but evangelical Christians are well-represented in the movement.
Caveats aside, most Canadian evangelicals are bewildered by the Trumpian zeal of their American co-religionists. My wife, Nancy, and I recently returned from a weeklong cruise down the western coast of Mexico with 20 Canadian Baptists. They wanted to know why American evangelicals are so attracted to a narcissistic and manifestly immoral clown. They don’t get it. At all.
Alan Bean
The cruise was organized by Bob Krahn, a recently retired North American Baptist executive who works as a travel agent in his spare time. I first met Bob in 1971 when he joined our class at the Baptist Leadership Training School in Calgary, Alberta. Bob was fresh from a Manitoba prison, having blown up a police car with dynamite while high on LSD.
Bob came to faith while in prison and dedicated his life to Christian service. Bob still wonders how a guy with his reputation was given a get-out-of-jail card. It had to be a God thing.
I knew Bob as a fun-loving, plain-spoken, blue-collar kind of guy who loved hunting, fishing and riding his Harley. After graduating from BLTS (known to alumni simply as “BL”) Bob and I did bachelor’s degree work at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, then headed to Louisville, Ky., for seminary. I had no idea back then that Bob would blossom into a first-rate administrator with a passion for detail, but he did, and it was largely thanks to him that our Mexican cruise came together.
Nancy and I had a great time. I worked out almost every day but still gained 3 pounds. We got up close and personal with the whales of Cabo San Lucas, we took a tour of Mazatlán and visited the Walmart in Puerto Vallarta. Mexican armed forces, armed to the teeth, stood at virtually every street corner. We had just dropped anchor in Puerto Vallarta when reports of the conflict between the military and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel hit the news.
Almost everyone who sailed with us had attended BLTS, and those who hadn’t were married to someone who had. It was delightfully strange to meet people I hadn’t encountered in half a century. Everyone called me “Al,” even though, here in the USA I go by Alan. Everyone agreed the year we had spent at the tiny, unaccredited Baptist school had given our lives a solid moral foundation.
“Listening to the stories shared during the cruise could be overwhelming at times.”
I was surprised, and delighted, to learn how many had spent time doing relief work in Africa with faith-based organizations. One woman had been a Mennonite missionary for a decade. Another had opened her home to at-risk foster children, relationships that still shape her life. Almost everyone had served, at one time or another, as pastor, teacher or nurse. In short, this was an all-star team; hardly a representative sample of Canadian evangelicalism.
Listening to the stories shared during the cruise could be overwhelming at times. Many, especially those with experience in pastoral ministry, had faced incredible hardship, disappointment and humiliation. Two of our members had recently lost a beloved spouse, and several others were wrestling with life-threatening illnesses. We spoke of these things face-to-face and in larger gatherings.
And it was in the course of these intimate conversations that the questions about MAGA Christianity surfaced. My cruisemates couldn’t understand the appeal.
My Canadian friends knew a lot more about American politics than I know about the Canadian scene. To my surprise, many of them were familiar with James Talarico, the progressive Christian who is the Democratic nominee for a U.S. Senate seat in Texas. They were impressed that a progressive politician felt so free to speak openly about his faith.
Several told me they listened to Never-Trump evangelical podcasts like “The Holy Post” where they find an attractive mix of theological orthodoxy, traditional social values and cautiously progressive politics. American evangelicals, my Canadian friends realize, are a diverse bunch.
The same is true of my cruisemates. One woman now attends a small-town Alberta congregation formed by the union of two dwindling Mainline congregations, one Anglican, the other affiliated with the United Church of Canada. Another person was looking for a congregation that affirms same-sex marriage.
“My Canadian friends knew a lot more about American politics than I know about the Canadian scene.”
In general, however, the group was theologically conservative. They spoke of God’s guidance in their lives using phrases like, “God told me I was being selfish,” or “God led me in a different direction.” They weren’t claiming God spoke to them audibly; but they had no doubt of the divine presence in their lives.
“I’m not praying that your lives will be free of pain,” one woman said at the conclusion of a group sharing time, “I don’t think God always wants us to be happy, just faithful.”
In other words, I was cruising with a crew of genuine, unreconstructed, true-blue evangelical Christians who wanted nothing to do with the MAGA movement.
Canadian evangelicals have been understudied. Constituting between 6% and 10% of the Canadian population, they aren’t likely to swing elections any time soon. Traditionally, Canadian evangelicals have been uncomfortable mixing religion and partisan politics. My parents refused to tell me who they voted for. For them, it was a private matter.
The gap between American and Canadian evangelicals is nothing new. When I was in high school, my Baptist parents were heavily influenced by the charismatic movement. They supplemented worship at their Baptist congregation in Edmonton with Full Gospel Businessmen Fellowship and Women Aglow gatherings.
In 1988, my parents traveled to California for a charismatic convention keynoted by presidential candidate Pat Robertson. To most of the people in the arena, Robertson was an iconic figure, but my father was appalled by the Pentecostal preacher’s retrograde politics. Dad was a charismatic Christian who idolized his boyhood pastor, Tommy Douglas, the founder of the New Democratic Party. My father’s reaction to Robertson came to mind as I listened to my cruisemates voice their opposition to MAGA religion.
In recent decades, Canadian evangelicals have strengthened their association with the Canadian Conservative Party, but there are signs the connection is weakening.
In the years immediately before and after the turn of the 21st century, the old Progressive Conservative Party I grew up with fractured along regional lines. In western provinces like Alberta, the Reform Party (later known as the “Canadian Alliance”) gained strength. By Canadian standards, leaders of the Reform movement were on the conservative end of the political spectrum, especially on cultural issues like abortion and same-sex marriage and were sometimes mocked by politicians on the left. Which helps explain why Canadian evangelicals, especially in the West, were drawn to conservative politics.
“The evangelical influence in Canadian conservative politics gradually weakened.”
But the times they are a-changing. It didn’t take long for Conservative and Reform politicians to realize that, in a parliamentary system, both are too small to challenge the Liberal Party. When the two came together as the Conservative Party of Canada, the evangelical influence in Canadian conservative politics gradually weakened.
Stephen Harper (prime minister of Canada from 2006 to 2015) advocated links between conservative Christians and politicians, but he never pushed the idea. In the 2025 election, Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the CPC, made it clear to voters he was in favor of same-sex marriage and supported the status quo on abortion policy.
Most of my cruisemates hold conservative views on same-sex marriage and abortion, but they aren’t inclined to demonize those who disagree. Every Christian, they feel, should find a place to worship that works for them.
The Canadian Baptists of Western Canada (the denomination in which I was raised) has been struggling with the same-sex marriage issue for decades. Several task forces have been charged with finding common ground, but consensus remains elusive. In 2023, when yet another task force recommended the small denomination maintain its traditional view on the subject, chaos ensued.
Several conservative congregations, unsure why biblical Christians were even discussing such a “clear-cut” issue, severed their ties with the CBWC. More liberal churches, no longer willing to tolerate a policy that denied the full humanity of LGBTQ people, also withdrew. Several urban congregations split over the issue, sometimes in more than one direction.
Although most Canadian evangelicals have adopted conservative positions on same-sex marriage and abortion, their response to immigration issues, the climate crisis and racial justice is far more progressive. Many of my cruisemates reside in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, a highly diverse urban area anchored by Vancouver where 54.5% of residents belong to visible minority groups. In Surrey, home to several cruisemates, 67.1% of the population belong to a visible minority, while only 33% identify as Caucasian.
Politically, British Columbia is dominated by the socialist New Democratic Party, and only 3% of the population attends Christian worship services on a weekly basis. In neighboring Alberta, 41% of the population identifies as nonreligious. In this secularized environment, evangelical Christians do not dream of seizing the reins of power.
Several of my cruisemates appear to have accepted their minority status. They expressed their discomfort with American-style Christian nationalism, preferring to provide a prophetic witness to a secular culture. Consequently, they had little patience with the dominionist theologies that are gaining popularity within white American evangelicalism.
“They expressed their discomfort with American-style Christian nationalism.”
In her book comparing Canadian and American evangelicals, my daughter, Lydia Bean, noted the political conservatism in white American evangelical circles wasn’t driven by pastors. Instead, lay leaders affiliated with powerful parachurch organizations forced the issue and pastors hopped on board out of necessity. It is hardly surprising that American-based groups like Focus on the Family would struggle to germinate in the secular soil of Canada.
My cruisemates expressed support for Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, especially after his strong performance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Although Carney’s approval rating hovers around 50%, the vast majority of Canadians (90% by one measure) aren’t interested in becoming the 51st American state. Pierre Poilievre lost the 2025 election to Carney because, like Trump, he was perceived as a populist. Carney, a staunch Catholic who served as governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013 and governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020, emerged as Canada’s defender because he was the ultimate establishment man.
Ultimately, Canadian evangelicals dislike Trump because they are Canadians.
In 2008, the year Barack Obama moved into the White House, 89% of Canadians said the U.S. president could “be trusted to do the right thing regarding world affairs.” By 2025 only 22% of Canadians voiced the same confidence. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that my cruisemates held Trump, and the white American evangelicals who brought him to power, in such low regard.
Christian nationalism cannot take root in a highly secularized social environment. This is significant because, with the United States becoming more secular by the day, the future will not be kind to those who insist on religious conformity.
The retreating tide of traditional religious observance may spark a renewed interest in spirituality, but, as Charles Taylor argued in A Secular Age, we should expect a “supernova effect” in which religious belief becomes one option among many.
If Americans want to see the future of religion, check out Canada. That’s us in 15 years.
Alan Bean leads the nonprofit Friends of Justice and lives in Fort Worth, Texas, where he attends Broadway Baptist Church.