Open AccessThe Religious Rhetoric of Anti-Trump Evangelicals in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
Author(s) -
Martin J. Medhurst
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
res rhetorica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.101
H-Index - 1
ISSN - 2392-3113
DOI - 10.29107/rr2017.2.1
Subject(s) - rhetoric , presidential election , candidacy , political rhetoric , witness , political science , politics , politics of the united states , character (mathematics) , religious studies , sociology , law , theology , philosophy , geometry , mathematics
This essay examines three arguments made by anti-Trump evangelical Christians in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. By explicating the arguments from character, policy, and evangelical witness, I show how this group of minority rhetors – a minority both within American evangelicalism and within the American electorate at large – used their minority status to project a prophetic warning against the Trump candidacy and in so doing developed a rhetoric that was politically potent while remaining faithful to evangelical theology and history. Paradoxically, it was by losing the election that these anti-Trump rhetors won the opportunity to articulate clearly and forcefully an evangelical political rhetoric and an implicit policy agenda.