Last week, with over 75 million votes, Donald Trump was re-elected to the office of President of the United States. Religious voters, particularly Christian voters, across denominations, represented a significant voting bloc, which voted largely in favor of Trump. According to the Associated Press’ AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters, about 80 percent of white evangelicals, “a group that represented about 20% of the total electorate,” voted for Trump. Among the Catholic electorate, the percentage of voters supporting Trump increased from 50 percent in 2020 to 54 percent in 2024. But there exists a racial divide:
“About 6 in 10 white Catholics supported Trump, and about 4 in 10 supported Harris. By contrast, about 6 in 10 Latino Catholics supported Harris, and about 4 in 10 supported Trump.”
Among Black Protestant voters, about 80 percent voted for Kamala Harris, along with around 69 percent of Jewish voters and 66 percent of Muslim voters.
Of course, there are myriad reasons why millions of American Christians are so comfortable overwhelmingly choosing to endorse, to vote for, and to (continue to) support a self-professed and convicted sexual abuser—e.g., entrenched racism, sexism, misogyn . One reason, perhaps, is that within so many Christian churches, organizations, and institutions, Christian leaders have so often excused, overlooked, and covered up abuse.
Recently, in the Church of England, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby resigned after an independent investigation by Makin Review “found he failed to alert authorities about a serial physical and sexual abuser,” named John Smyth, who—for over 50 years—had “victimized about 30 boys and young men in the United Kingdom and 85 more in Africa.”
As Keith Makin, who led the independent investigation said via a press release:
“The abuse at the hands of John Smyth was prolific and abhorrent. Words cannot adequately describe the horror of what transpired. . . . Despite the efforts of some individuals to bring the abuse to the attention of authorities, the responses by the Church of England and others were wholly ineffective and amounted to a coverup.”
In the United States, only several weeks ago, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles “agreed to pay $880 million to victims of clergy sexual abuse dating back decades in the largest settlement involving the Catholic Church.” Having previously paid $740 million over a decade, in 2014, to settle lawsuits brought against clergy, the recent settlement puts the archdiocese’s total payout at over $1.5 billion.
The prevalence of abuse within the American Church goes beyond the Catholic Church and extends to American Protestants as well. In 2019, the Houston Chronicle, together with the San Antonio Express-News, published investigative reporting about sexual misconduct and sexual abuse within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Over 20 years, more than 700 victims were left behind, many of whom “were shunned by their churches” and “left to themselves to rebuild their lives” and “urged to forgive their abusers or to get abortions.” The SBC lacked a central database to track ordinations, sexual abuse convictions, or sexual abuse allegations. “At the core of Southern Baptist doctrine is local church autonomy, the idea that each church is independent and self-governing,” so, even when it was recommended, the executive committee of the SBC did not “have the authority to force churches to report sexual abuse to a central registry.”
Abundant evidence of abuse abounds within Christian institutions. Of course, not all. But enough. There is a near steady stream of investigative reports from media outlets like Julie Roys’ The Roys Report. In recent years documentary series and films like Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets, Let Us Prey: A Ministry of Scandals, and For Our Daughters have captured the public’s attention. There are podcasts like Christianity Today’s The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, Peter Bell’s Sons of Patriarchy, and the long running The Bodies Behind the Bus, which “exists to amplify the voices of religious abuse survivors.” It is good and necessary to shine a light on abuses, abuses often committed under the cover of darkness and secrecy. However, these instances of abuse should be incredibly rare. And once discovered, abusers should be expressly exposed and rightly held accountable to the fullest extent possible, including under the law.
Christian institutions are not unique in being places in which abusers seek out victims. Whether in strict hierarchical institutions or more independent institutions, abusers plot in places where they can cultivate trust and power, and they use both to prey upon vulnerable and isolated people. That said, it is one thing for Christian leaders, who “tend to the flock of God,” to be deceived by a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It is another thing entirely to willingly and willfully welcome an obvious wolf in wolf’s clothing into community and fellowship.
For Christians who claim to follow the good shepherd, Jesus Christ, restraining abusers, resisting abuse, and rejecting a culture of abuse should be the rule, not the exception. Christian churches and organizations should be known for being ruthless against abuse, rather than safe havens for abusers. It is deeply troubling, then, that so many American Christians chose Donald Trump—yet again. Christians electing an Abuser-in-Chief says a lot about the state of their institutions. And it’s not good.
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