Grim news for Trump as members of huge voting bloc he depends on say they've gone off him

Donald Trump faces a biblical battle to hang on to evangelical voters, as some stray from the Republican base to cast a ballot for Kamala Harris despite her liberal views.

Trump has traditionally maintained the GOP's strong support among white evangelical voters, even selling Trump-themed Bibles. 

Surveys suggest about 8 in 10 white evangelical voters cast a ballot for him in the 2020 election, with two in 10 voting for Joe Biden.

However, Biden performed better with evangelicals of all faiths, winning about a third of those voters. 

Now, groups like evangelicals for Harris have run advertisements and Zoom calls in an attempt to argue she is the better choice this election despite serious policy disagreements. 

'I am tired of watching meanness, bigotry and recreational cruelty be the worldly witness of our faith,' said Rev. Lee Scott, one of those evangelicals. 'I want transformation, and transformation is risky business.' 

Harris remains on an uphill climb with faith-based Christian voters, with around six in 10 'born-again' or 'evangelicals' having an unfavorable view of Harris.

Among white evangelicals, this goes as high as eight in 10 seeing her negatively, with only 33 percent of the entire faith saying they see her in a positive light. 

Scott, a Presbyterian pastor and minister, says he's taking a big risk on the Democrat nominee.

'The easy thing for us to do this year would be to keep our heads down, go to the ballot box, keep our vote secret and go about our business,' Scott told a Zoom call. 'But at this time, I just can´t do that.' 

Scott lives in Butler, Pennsylvania, the same town where a would-be assassin shot former President Donald Trump in July. 

He said that the attack and its impact on his community pushed him to speak out against Trump and the 'vitriol' and 'acceptable violence' he normalized in politics.

Trump has heavily courted white conservative evangelicals since his arrival on the political scene almost a decade ago and has touted the overturning of Roe v. Wade and imploring Christians to get out the vote for him.

While white evangelicals vote strongly Republican, not all evangelicals are a lock for the GOP, and in a tight race, every vote counts. 

However, a high-ranking figure in conservative Christian politics has raised concerns about former Trump's recent positions on issues like abortion and in vitro fertilization (IVF).

Kentucky-based Southern Baptist leader Albert Mohler, 64, made the comments this week, warning the candidate's inconsistency could be his undoing.

The comments came in response to recent statements from Trump on Truth Social, where he said his administration would be 'great for women and their reproductive rights'.

In April, the 78-year-old refused to endorse a national abortion ban, saying it should be up to individual states. In 2020, he said he wanted to overturn federal protections for the procedure, and would support a near-total ban.

In an interview with The New York Times, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary explained why this, along with statements from Trump saying his administration would require insurers to cover IVF, could alienate loyal voters.

'Trump is in grave danger,' Mohler told host Astead W. Herndon on the paper's podcast The Run-Up.

'[He] is basically daring the pro-life movement to turn on him,' he added of the comments on Truth Social.

The Rev. Dwight McKissic, a Baptist pastor from Texas who spoke on the Evangelicals for Harris call, said he saw no 'moral superiority of one party over the other,' citing the GOP´s decision to 'abandon a commitment to ban abortion with a constitutional amendment' and to soften its stance against same-sex marriage in its party platform.

Though he has historically voted Republican, McKissic said he would vote for Harris, whom he said has stronger character and qualifications.

'I certainly don't agree with her on all matters of policy,' said Scott, who identifies as evangelical and is ordained in the mainline Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). 'I am pro-life. I am against abortion. But at the same time, she has a pro-family platform,' citing Harris´ education policies and promise to expand the child tax credit.

Vote Common Good, a similar group run by progressive evangelical pastor Doug Pagitt, has a simple message: Political identity and religious identity are not a package deal.

´There´s a whole group who have become very uncomfortable voting for Trump,' Pagitt said. 

'We´re not trying to get them to change their mind. We´re trying to work with them once their minds have changed to act on that change.'

They are focusing on black Protestants and Latino evangelicals, especially in key swing states. 

Groups are reaching out to Catholics and mainline Protestants across the Rust Belt and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Arizona and Nevada. Butler´s colleagues are working with Jewish and Muslim constituencies.

Catholics for Harris and Interfaith for Harris groups are launching. Mainline Protestant groups like Black Church PAC and Christians for Kamala are also campaigning on behalf of the vice president.

But the chorus of evangelicals who find voting for a Democrat unconscionable remains loud.

Trump-supporting evangelical worship leader Sean Feucht ridiculed the existence of Evangelicals for Harris on X: 'HERETICS FOR HARRIS rings so much truer!'

The Rev. Franklin Graham, a longtime Trump supporter, took issue with one of the group´s ads and its use of footage of his late father, the Rev. Billy Graham. 

'The liberals are using anything and everything they can to promote candidate Harris,' he wrote on his public Facebook page, which has 10 million followers.

But the project of shoring up Democratic evangelical voters goes beyond partisan politics. It gets at the core of what evangelicalism means.

The term evangelical itself is fraught and has become synonymous with the Republican Party, argues Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University.

'More people are probably evangelical theologically,' said Burge, 'but they´re not going to grab that word because they don´t vote for Trump or they´re moderate or liberal.'

For many, evangelicalism has largely been defined along racial and socio-political lines and in endorsing Harris, Rah hopes to 'show that there are other voices in the church aside from the religious right and Trump evangelicals.'

Latasha Morrison, a speaker on the Evangelicals for Harris Zoom, told the AP that as a Black woman, 'I never associated myself with the word `evangelical´ until I started attending predominantly white churches.'

For years her anti-abortion views led her to vote Republican, but now the Christian author and diversity trainer says, 'I feel like women and children have a better opportunity under the Harris administration than the Trump administration.'

Trump, meanwhile, continues to pivot from supporting national restrictions that could prove a hindrance for Republicans struggling to win back key groups - such suburban women - who have strayed from the GOP in recent years.

However, he remains eager to take credit for the reversal of Roe v. Wade, despite deflecting authority on abortion back on the states. 

'The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both. And whatever they decide must be the law of the land,' Trump said of abortion rights in April. 'Now, it's up to the states to do the right thing.'