Influence of faith on presidential politics dominated religion news in 2024
Evangelicals remained loyal to Trump despite adverse jury determinations
Donald Trump all but abandoned his opposition to abortion during this year’s presidential campaign, but that appeared to make no difference to white evangelicals, who continued to give him their overwhelming support despite his legal woes that included jury findings that he had sexually abused a woman and had committed dozens of felonies tied to dishonesty.
Trump won the backing of about 80 percent of white evangelicals in November’s election, making them the demographic group that gave him the strongest support.
This loyalty — which pushed traditional norms of Christian civic involvement past the breaking point — was the top religion-related news story of 2024. While white evangelical activists continue to claim that they are under persecution by government and society, they showed themselves to be one of the most influential political powers in the country.
The presidential race wasn’t the only news story of 2024 where evangelicals played an outsize role. Issues of particular importance to evangelicals — such as sexual mores and the role of the Bible — took center stage in a variety of ways. But sometimes evangelicals themselves were the center of attention, such as in a series of sex scandals.
Here are our selections for the top religion-related news stories of 2024 in the United States:
1. Evangelicals unfazed as Trump abandons abortion fight
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump’s first serious race, evangelical Christians were slow to come around to supporting him, partly because of his sexual lifestyle that, to put it mildly, violated evangelical norms. But his insistence that would oppose abortion, partly by appointing conservative Supreme Court justices, was the key factor in gaining evangelical support.
Two presidential elections later, as the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade had helped make abortion a losing issue for conservatives, Trump all but reversed his stand. In fact, he single-handedly gutted the Republican platform plank on abortion, limiting it to opposing late-term use of the procedure. He also rejected calls for supporting a national abortion ban and refused to say how he voted on a Florida abortion measure.
But that didn’t change the trajectory of evangelical support. Criticism of his changing stance, most of which came from the Catholic wing of the anti-abortion movement, was muted, and support from white evangelicals was as strong as ever on Election Day.
2. Trans issues replace abortion as evangelicals’ rallying cry
While evangelical foes of abortion came to see their stance as a losing issue, that wasn’t the case with their opposition to the T (for “trans”) of the LGTBQ community. Evangelicals waged fights in state legislatures over “bathroom bills,” parental rights and pronoun usage, and the issue was prominently featured in evangelical news media. (The current homepage of The Christian Post has five news articles about trans issues, and none about abortion.) The anti-trans rhetoric reached a peak with a Trump campaign ad that said: “Kamala is for they/them. Trump is for you.”
3. United Methodists welcome gays as ministers
The General Conference of the United Methodist Church voted 692-51 on May 1 to eliminate the church’s ban on the ordination of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals.” The conference was the denomination’s first since thousands of congregations had met a 2023 deadline to depart the denomination in a schism over interpretation of the Bible as it relates to homosexuality.
4. Role of Bible in public schools is focus of debate
Political or judicial fights were waged in at least three states — Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana — over the role of the Bible, particularly the Ten Commandments, in public schools. Plans to promote use of the entire Bible advanced in Texas and Oklahoma; Oklahoma’s plan is tied up in court. A federal court has halted Louisiana’s plans to post the commandments in classrooms; the case goes next to a federal appeals court. Plans by the Oklahoma state school superintendent to post the commandments and promote use of the Bible are also tied up in court.
5. Texas pastor resigns after accusation of sex abuse
Sexual scandals struck various churches and ministries during the year as various leaders were accused of inappropriate conduct. The one that drew the most attention was the case of Roger Morris, who was pastor of the Gateway Church in the Dallas area of Texas. A woman claimed the she had been molested repeatedly by him beginning in 1982, when she was 12. The church is one of the largest evangelical megachurches in the country. Morris resigned his position, and the church promised a full investigation over conflicting information about how much was known by members of the church’s board. Sunday church attendance fell by the thousands afterward.
Other scandals included those of apologist and writer Michael Brown; Mike Bickel, founder of the International House of Prayer; and leaders in the Daystar TV ministry.
6. States increasingly pay for religious education
A 2022 Supreme Court decision, Carson v. Makin, which limited the ability of states to refuse to fund religious-based private education, appears to be making a difference. The Washington Post reported in June that about 900,000 students nationally are benefiting from taxpayer-funded vouchers that can be used for private education; Catholic schools and student appear to be among the biggest beneficiaries. Meanwhile, a proposal to create a publicly funded virtual Catholic charter school in Oklahoma has been rejected in court; the school’s future ultimately could be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
7. Israel-Hamas war has repercussions in U.S.
As President Joe Biden sought to steer a middle path in the Middle East — encouraging Israel to take a more humanitarian approach while not denying it military support — the Israel-Hamas war continued to be divisive in the U.S. There were continuing complaints about anti-Semitism, particularly on college campuses. There were also divisions among both Jews and Muslims, complicating Kamala Harris’s election prospects among groups that had previously been more sympathetic to Democrats.
8. Democrats get religion
Democrats sought to use Harris’s Baptist background along with her running mate Tim Walz’s Lutheran affiliation to bolster their support among religious voters. Her supporters included interest groups organized by members of conservative religious groups, including evangelicals and Latter-day Saints, but their efforts did not appear to have much success.
9. Southern Baptists split with Republicans over IVF
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled in February that embryos produced through in vitro fertilization have legal personhood, threatening use of the procedure as a treatment for infertility. Alabama legislators quickly passed a law nullifying the decision, a position that was supported by Trump and the Republican Party’s platform. The Southern Baptist Convention, however, denounced the procedure based on the view that personhood begins at conception.
10. Super Bowl ad, Olympic parade among year’s controversies
Religion-related controversies would frequently flare up during the year and then quickly disappear. Among them were a Super Bowl ad of the “He Gets Us” series that drew fire from both the right (for showing kindness to an apparently nonbinary person) and the left (for being sponsored by conservatives). A few months later, evangelical and Catholic activists denounced an Olympics parade entry featuring drag queens in a scene reminiscent of da Vinci’s Last Supper.