Why the Christian Right Is Triggered by Their Presidential Ticket Being Called Weird

Activists, pundits, and writers on the right are incensed that the Harris campaign and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz have called Donald Trump, JD Vance, and GOP policies "weird." They've sprung from their fainting couches to their keyboards to declare Trump and Vance (each obsessed, respectively, with fictional serial killer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter and "sociopathic" "childless cat ladies") the very essence of normal American manhood. Necessarily, then, the Democrats must be the "weird" ones because no un-weird person would question the American-ness, the manliness, the godliness of these men, especially Trump, God's anointed one and their spiritual battle commander.

American Family News, the news site of the American Family Association (of late exhibiting a totally normal fixation with the Pride Month merchandise of retail giants Target and Wal-Mart), deems Vance "normal," and the Democrats the outliers because "the talking point now is the married father of three children is somehow a weirdo for praising child-rearing and for making fun of miserable 'childless cat ladies' in the Democratic Party."

The Christian right, in particular, is incensed because central to their decades-long quest to restore a "Christian America" is the claim that they represent the true America that God ordained. They've spent decades disparaging secularism and liberalism (often conflating liberalism and communism to inflame their followers) as not only anti-American, but anti-Christian. Using organization names like the Moral Majority in the 1980s and labels like "values voters" in the 2000s, they have worked relentlessly to present themselves as the guardians of middle American norms, berating anyone who questions them for being anti-religious bigots.

The "values voters" tag emerged in the 2004 election, when white evangelicals powered George W. Bush's reelection, along with constitutional bans on same-sex marriage in 11 states. Like "moral majority," the moniker (falsely) suggested that they had, if not an actual majority, at least a claim to represent "traditional" Christianity and the principles they claim undergird America.

The tables turned just 11 years later. Amid evolving public opinion favoring marriage equality, the Supreme Court struck down those 2004 bans in Obergefell v. Hodges. The Christian right swiftly shifted into persecuted victim mode. Leaders set off a panic, and launched new campaigns to expand the concept of "religious freedom" and crack down on trans rights. Marriage equality and other rights for LGBTQ people, they argued, violate the religious freedom and conscience of conservative Christians who have a "biblical worldview." Their support for Trump was fueled by a backlash against the court, and his promise to stack the court in order to overturn Roe v. Wade.

When Walz used the "weird" argument on MSNBC last month, he referred specifically to the right's infringements on the freedoms of others. "There's something wrong with people when they talk about freedom: freedom to be in your bedroom, freedom to be in your exam room, freedom to tell your kids what they can read," he said. "That stuff is weird.”

And by weird, he means wildly unpopular. Just nine percent of Americans think that abortion should be illegal in all cases, according to the Public Religion Research Institute. A clear majority, 64 percent, think it should be legal in all or most cases. Even more, 68 percent, oppose banning the sale of abortion pills like mifepristone through the mail. Only 29 percent of Americans want to ban the sale of these medications through the mail. Yet Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation policy roadmap for the next Republican president, lays out multiple tactics for a Trump administration to impose such a federal ban.

It is not anti-religion or even more specifically anti-Catholic to point out how outside the mainstream the GOP abortion position is. (The GOP position remains extreme, despite Trump's disingenuous and clumsy efforts to gaslight America about his supposed "moderation," or to distance himself from Project 2025.) According to PRRI, "the only major religious groups in which a majority do not support abortion legality in all or most cases are white evangelical Protestants (27%), Latter-day Saints (30%), and Jehovah’s Witnesses (25%)." Majorities of other religious groups, including Catholics, support legal abortion: "Unitarian Universalists (93%), Jewish Americans (81%), Buddhists (79%), other Catholics of color (73%), Black Protestants (71%), white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants (68%), white Catholics (62%), Muslims (60%), Hispanic Catholics (57%), and other Protestants of color (52%)."

Trump and his right-wing Christian supporters have launched an attack on Harris as being "militantly hostile to Americans of faith," and in particular, "anti-Catholic," because of her record defending abortion rights. But it is Joe Biden and Harris, a Catholic and a Protestant who support abortion rights, who are well within the mainstream of American public opinion, and of American Christianity.

As PRRI has also documented, the main drivers of the argument that Christians' religious freedom is under siege are white evangelicals, who are the core of Trump's base. Most Americans, roughly 70 percent, support marriage equality and other LGBTQ rights. And even bigger majorities oppose giving religious exemptions from nondiscrimination laws to health care providers, companies, or other organizations who claim providing services to LGBTQ people violates their religion.

Book bans are driven by an even astonishingly smaller number of Americans. In 2023, the Washington Post reviewed over 1,000 challenges to books in public schools nationwide. It found that just 11 people had filed the majority of the challenges, and the leading objection was to LGBTQ themes and characters.

Is it any wonder that Christian right leaders are so freaked out by the prospect of Americans finding out where they and the Trump-Vance ticket really stand?