From Reagan's Revolution to Trump's Insurrection: The Role of the Religious Imaginary in American Politics
Our 6th Annual Wolfe Lecture on Religion and American Politics
Diane Winston
University of Southern California
Date: Thursday, October 17, 2024
Time: 5:30 - 7pm
Location: Devlin 101
There will be a booksigning following her lecture. The BC Bookstore will be on hand selling copies of her book.
How did Ronald Reagan’s vision of the American Dream lead to Donald Trump’s success? Looking back to 1983, Diane Winston will discuss how evangelical religion, the news media, and social turmoil culminated in MAGA’s Second Coming.
Diane Winston is a professor at the University of Southern California, where she holds the Knight Chair in Media and Religion. A former religion reporter, she received a PhD from Princeton University where she focused on American evangelicalism. Her monographs and edited collections include Righting the American Dream: How the Media Mainstreamed Reagan's Evangelical Vision, Red-Hot and Righteous: The Urban Religion of The Salvation Army, Religion in Los Angeles: Innovation, Diversity and Experimentation, Religion and Reality Television: Faith in Late Capitalism and Small Screen, Big Picture: Television and Lived Religion. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, and The Baltimore Sun among other media outlets.
Braunstein, Ruth. “The ‘Right’ History: Religion, Race, and Nostalgic Stories of Christian America.” Religions 12, no. 2 (2021): 95. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12020095
Gold, Howard J. and Gina E. Russell. “The Rising Influence of Evangelicalism in American Political Behavior, 1980–2004.” The Social Science Journal 44, no. 3 (2007): 554-562. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2007.07.016
Green, Steven K. “The Legal Ramifications of Christian Nationalism.” Roger Williams University Law Review 26, no. 2 (2021): 430-494. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3742965
Hummel, Daniel. “Revivalist Nationalism since World War II: From ‘Wake up, America!’ to ‘Make America Great Again.’” Religions 7, no. 11 (2016): 128. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel7110128
Marley, David John. “Ronald Reagan and the Splintering of the Christian Right.” Journal of Church and State 48, no. 4 (2006): 851–868. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcs/48.4.851
Perry, Samuel L., Andrew L. Whitehead and Joshua B. Grubbs. “‘I Don’t Want Everybody to Vote’: Christian Nationalism and Restricting Voter Access in the United States.” Sociological Forum 37, no. 1 (2022): 4-26. https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12776
Perry, Samuel L., and Cyrus Schleifer. “My Country, White or Wrong: Christian Nationalism, Race, and Blind Patriotism.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 46, no. 7 (2022): 1249–68. doi:10.1080/01419870.2022.2113420
Posner, Sarah. Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump. New York: Random House, 2020.
Stroope, S., Paul Froese, Heather M. Rackin and Jack Delehanty. “Unchurched Christian Nationalism and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.” Sociological Forum 36, no. 2 (2021): 405-425. https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12684
Turek, Lauren Frances. “Ambassadors for the Kingdom of God or for America? Christian Nationalism, the Christian Right, and the Contra War.” Religions 7, no. 12 (2016): 151. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel7120151
Winston, Diane. Righting the American Dream: How the Media Mainstreamed Reagan’s Evangelical Vision. Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2023.
On April 6, 2022, Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham co-wrote a piece for the New York Times about the presence of Christian rituals at conservative rallies. The authors describe that at one Trump rally in Michigan, an evangelical priest led a prayer affirming that Trump was and should be the acting President. This is just one example of religious symbolism at conservative rallies. Contemporary evangelical songs are becoming the songs of “a new fight,” according to Dias and Graham. However, the use of music is not unique to the political right in the United States; Canada's political left and protestors have also utilized religious music to garner enthusiasm and reach supporters. The difference is that some members of the religious right believe they are defending God and desire to create a country based on Christian ideals. Religion was also used by the conservative right in protests against the COVID-19 mandates because, according to one protestor, the mandate to wear masks and embrace vaccines was part of an effort to undermine Christian morality. Former President Trump reached out to evangelical leaders who opposed COVID-19 restrictions to commend their actions, seeing them as “natural allies.” Religion, Christianity, and conservatism’s relationship continue to grow post-Trump as more right-wing Christian groups use religion to justify their harmful beliefs. At this year's annual Wolfe Lecture, Dr. Diane Winston will explore the evolution of the U.S. religious imaginary from President Ronald Reagan to President Donald Trump.
Diane Winston speaking at the podium in Devlin 101 delivering her Wolfe Lecture on Religion and American Politics.
Diane Winston speaking at the podium in Devlin 101 delivering her Wolfe Lecture on Religion and American Politics.
Crowd shot during Diane Winston's Wolfe lecture on Religion and American Politics.
Dr. Diane Winston, who delivered our 6th Annual Wolfe Lecture on Religion and American Politics, began her lecture with a joke about a pastor and politician in heaven. After the joke found a lot of laughs in the audience, Winston revealed that the joke was a favorite of Reagan’s, and she used it to segue into an interesting discussion about the role of religion in Reagan’s political vision. Winston highlighted the ways in which Christianity was an important element of Reagan’s campaign, while also showing that it was used in a very different way than it has been by Donald Trump in recent years. Winston focused on the religious imaginary that each president crafted during their time in office. She noted that America has always had an implicit or explicit religious imaginary, but different presidents have taken this on in different ways. Reagan’s religious imaginary portrayed the United States as a shining city upon a hill blessed by God, and the apex of the blessing can be seen in the individual economic freedoms of daily life. Reagan also used cosmic language in speeches (e.g. calling Russians evil for being totalitarian). Winston noted that the news media normalized this extreme language by circulating his rhetoric. Similarly, Trump’s divisive rhetoric of white supremacy dominates the news cycle. However, Trump’s language and use of the Christian imagination has become radicalized and oriented toward stirring hatred against members of our own country. While many journalists are not buying into these harmful ideas, they are spreading the messaging and forcing it into the mainstream. An imaginary that in Reagan’s time was marked by broad platitudes about the exceptional freedom of the United States is now marked by statements about individuals within who are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Winston’s thought-provoking lecture sparked many questions from the audience. For example, one gentleman asked about the seemingly paradoxical solidarity of the radically individualistic MAGA movement. Winston responded by outlining Trump supporters’ sense of shared connection about these individualistic beliefs. The rich question-and-answer session demonstrated the interest of the crowd in the role of the religious imaginary in American society.