Those who are not Christian or not sufficiently Christian are accused of undermining the true nature of America. Such thinking also promotes what scholars call “participatory anti-democracy” — mobilizing people to make sure their views win no matter what. This paints fellow citizens who disagree with them as the enemy.
“I don’t think people who follow politics at the national level appreciate sufficiently how pervasive the bullying and name-calling is at the local level,” French said.
A similar movement of outsiders helped turn Colorado Springs into a stronghold of the religious right in the heyday of groups like Focus on the Family, said Will Schultz, a religious historian at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Focus and other evangelical nonprofits moved to Colorado Springs, creating a “Mecca for Evangelical Christians,” as NPR put it, and turning Colorado into a battleground over gay rights and other social issues. Those newcomers, often from more liberal places such as California or the East Coast, teamed up with conservative activists already in the region to oppose LGBT rights.
“All of a sudden, in their backyard, they see the very forces they’d come to Colorado trying to escape,” said Schultz.
Darren Dochuk, a historian at Notre Dame and author of “From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism,” said suburban communities often have the feel of a small town, including a sense of autonomy that is protective of conservative social values and suspicious of the federal government.
That kind of conservatism, he said, is often fueled by fear-driven political rhetoric that motivates people to put their money and connections to work to protect what they see as theirs.
“They are fiercely driven and outspoken and they have institutions including churches around which they can rally and coordinate,” Dochuk said. Add in assets like social media, and it becomes easier for well-off suburban Christians to turn their anxiety into populist action.
He said the influence of the Tea Party — which launched a series of anti-government protests during Barack Obama’s presidency, often in well-off communities like Franklin — has been overlooked in the Trump era. Dochuk said scholars and journalists often overlooked the role that religion played in the Tea Party.
“What we see today in Trump America can be explained in no small part through the success of that movement,” he said. “And that movement was again driven not by the deplorables, but by those with something to lose.”
Calvin University history professor Kristin Kobes Du Mez, who studies conservative evangelicals, said the power of the moms in places like Williamson County should not be underestimated. These affluent suburbs are filled with talented and well-connected conservative women who see political activity — especially when it comes to issues that affect their children — as an outgrowth of their faith.
“Conservative Christian women have long mobilized to protect their children and to protect their families,” she said. “This goes back generations.”
