Resisting a rhetoric of active-passivism: How evangelical women have enacted new modes and meanings of citizenship in response to the election of Donald Trump

Abstract

ABSTRACT Among the most oft-cited statistics from the 2016 presidential election is that 81 percent of self-identified evangelicals voted for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. Scholars and pundits maintain this overwhelming support meant born-again Christians overlooked Trump’s well-documented character flaws to elect a leader who would appoint pro-life judges and otherwise agitate against a perceived progressive agenda. This essay challenges understanding evangelicals as electorally transactional and forwards a new rhetorical theory of active-passivism. This theory maintains that evangelicals justified their support for Trump (and the GOP more broadly) through a narrative that emphasizes voting but de-emphasizes what happens once a candidate takes office. Some evangelical women, beginning with the emergence of the Access Hollywood tape, have begun to resist this narrative of obfuscating blame for harmful outcomes. By practicing new modes of republican motherhood that affirm scripture but also approve of women speaking out against injustice in the public sphere, evangelical leaders such as Beth Moore have begun to enact new modes of citizenship with the potential to join with other marginalized voices in the United States to create progressive change.