Perhaps you remember the image: President Trump, head bowed, being prayed over by a group of Christian leaders in the Oval Office. Or, perhaps the quote from Family Research Council head Tony Perkins who, after details of an extra-marital affair between Trump and Stormy Daniels emerged, told Politico that he gave the President a “mulligan.” Perkins’ sentiment was amplified by Liberty University president Jerry Falwell, Jr., who defended Trump as “a changed man” to CNN. These moments have epitomized the strong ties between President Trump and the evangelical Christian community in the United States even as ethical and moral questions have dogged Trump’s time in office. In the aftermath of the 2016 election, the support of Trump by evangelical Christian voters has been scrutinized and is controversial even among evangelical voters. While much of the discussion around the connection between Trump and evangelical Christians has focused on how and why these evangelicals voted for someone who seemingly goes against the paradigm of a family values conservative, scant analysis has been paid to how Trump embodies and enacts evangelical narratives. How does Trump fit into the evangelical worldview and perform as an evangelical character? How does his persona fit within the larger scope of evangelical discourse and framing? In this presentation, I will analyze how Trump’s character works within contemporary evangelical practice as he plays the role of the the redeemed “muscular Christian,” championing evangelicals and evangelical Christian ideology in a secularized world. Rather than searching for reasons why evangelicals coalesced behind Trump, I will demonstrate how Trump’s performance is intimately tied to how evangelicals conceive of the world as well as how they should act in the world.
About the presenterHank Willenbrink
Hank Willenbrink’s monograph Performing for the Don: Theatres of Faith in the Trump Era is forthcoming in November 2023 from Routledge. His essays have been published in Theatre Journal, Ecumenica, Contemporary Theatre Review, Theatre Forum, Response, and online. He co-edited Palabras: Dispatches from the Festival de la Palabra and contributed to HBO’s Girls and the Awkward Politics of Gender, Race, and Privilege. He is a playwright and an Associate Professor at The University of Scranton.