Few people have done more to illuminate how religion—and particularly white Christianity—shapes American politics than Robert P. Jones, the president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI—subscribe to their Substack here). In our Substack Live chat, Robert and I discussed new findings from PRRI’s 2025 American Values Survey, conducted with Brookings—which shows that Americans are much less divided, and much more opposed to the Trump regime, than we’re led to believe.
Most Americans believe the administration has gone too far on things like ICE detentions, closing government agencies, and cutting funding to research and universities. Strong majorities share basic values about pluralism and inclusion, including the idea that we should give unauthorized immigrants living here a path to citizenship, not round them up and deport them. And when given a choice between calling Trump a “dangerous dictator” or a “strong leader,” even larger majorities choose “dictator” now (including a nine-point jump among independents, two-thirds of whom now choose this option) than the first time the survey asked this question at Trump’s 100-day mark.
The survey helps show that our polarization is asymmetric—it’s not two parties drifting apart equally, but Trump and the Republican Party moving away from most Americans. It also shows what we miss when the media ignores the ethno-religious nature of our political divides. The Republican Party is nearly 70% white and Christian (compared to 41% of the US). Trump’s biggest supporters are white Evangelical Protestants—who make up only 13% of the population but whose power is magnified by numerous structural and organizing advantages. (For more on that, read my 2023 post on “How White Christian Political Might Made the Republican Party Hard Right.”) And among Latinos, being Protestant is the most powerful predictor of Trump support—but while about six in ten of them voted for Trump in 2024, 53% now choose the “dangerous dictator” option.
For more from Robert P. Jones, read his books (The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future, a New York Times bestseller; White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, which won a 2021 American Book Award; and The End of White Christian America, which won the 2019 Grawemeyer Award in Religion.) He also writes weekly at www.whitetoolong.net, a newsletter focused on religion, racial justice, and democracy.
