What People Get Wrong About Christian Women Who Voted for Trump
He said, “I want to protect the women.” They believe him.
Nina Martin
You probably saw the cartoon that went viral before the election: A long line of women enter the voting booth wearing handmaiden-esque robes and bonnets, only to emerge in slinky black dresses and take-no-bullshit pantsuits. Or the ads in which white women accompany their obviously GOP husbands to vote, blinking each other a silent signal of solidarity behind the men’s backs: “Actually, I’m with her.” The disobedient-trad-wives trope reflected Democrats’ conviction that Donald Trump’s misogyny and temperament—not to mention his relentless assaults on reproductive freedom and the rule of law—must be deeply, albeit secretly, alienating to many Christian women. All they needed was a Liz Cheney–size nudge to cast their ballots for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Not only did that notion turn out to be utterly deluded, it was “a profound misreading” of how Christian women view themselves and their role in American society, says sociologist Katie Gaddini—a mistake that helped cost Harris the presidency and could resonate throughout US politics and policy for years to come.
On election night, Gaddini, an associate professor at University College London who studies Christian women in US politics, was at San Francisco International Airport, boarding a red-eye to Virginia to do research for her next book, due out in 2026. “Trump had just won Georgia,” she recalls. “It was like a funeral in that airport. Faces were drawn. It was silent.” When Gaddini arrived the next morning at the far-right Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, Trump had retaken the White House, and the mood was euphoric. Decked out in MAGA gear, women students were just as thrilled as the young men—maybe more so. “They felt like this was God’s will,” Gaddini says. “He has spared the nation by giving us Trump. Even after we’ve made so many mistakes, He’s giving us one last chance to get it right.”
These young women aren’t just relying on Trump to transform the country into a Christian bastion—this is their fight, too. “A new generation of them are entering politics,” Gaddini says, “influencing and controlling this country.” Yet many on the left, she says, dismiss Christian women “as being kind of brainwashed, just servants to the patriarchy and not free-thinking,” thus minimizing both their agency and their effectiveness. Among progressives, “there’s an inability to see how intelligence and political acumen could lead you to a place of supporting Trump,” she adds. “And yet it has for millions of women, and they’re not going away.”
Gaddini’s mission is to “disrupt” that longstanding (and, she points out, “sexist”) narrative about Christian women and “understand them a little bit more generously.” And not just in the United States; Gaddini helps run a network of scholars studying religion and politics across the Americas and in parts of Europe.
I count myself among those who’ve never understood the appeal of Trump and the misogyny-fueled MAGA movement for women, especially young, religious ones, who I imagined would find the well-documented sexual misconduct offensive. In the wake of the November election, with its vast implications for reproductive and gender justice, I was more mystified than ever. But I was also deeply curious. So I reached out to Gaddini at her home office in Northern California, where she is a visiting scholar at Stanford University. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you become interested in Christian women in politics?
I have a personal connection. My father was a Baptist minister. I have two uncles, an aunt, and a cousin who are pastors as well. The Sacramento suburbs where I grew up are known as the Bible Belt of California. There is a huge conservative presence there—it’s very Republican and very evangelical.
There wasn’t any moment where I became conservative. It’s just what happened if you were a woman in this kind of environment. Then I left the faith, and my personal politics changed, but I’ve always had an interest in who I could have been if I had remained in that world—in the women who have stayed committed to conservative politics and have moved even further to the right.
What about the Trump effect?
When Trump won the presidency in 2016, I wanted to understand why so many women voted for him. I’m really interested in this idea of paradox, of things that don’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense to a lot of progressives or feminists that women would vote for Trump, right? It doesn’t make sense that evangelicals would vote for him. And then you put the two together: Why would a female evangelical vote for Trump? I wanted to untangle that seeming paradox—to understand not only why do they like him, but why do they like him so overwhelmingly and so enduringly?
I’ve also been looking at Christian women more broadly—not just evangelicals, but also Catholics and mainline Protestants. Because what I’ve seen over the last few years is that those groups have come together to do politics in a new way. They’re putting aside some of their theological differences and focusing on the larger political project.
Democrats find it almost impossible to see past Trump’s failings as a leader and a human being. The 2024 campaign hammered on those failings: “He sides with fascists and dictators. He’s corrupt. He’s trying to destroy democracy. He’s misogynistic, he’s racist. Oh, and he’s incoherent and falling apart.” What are the strengths that Christian women see in Trump that others are blind to?
It’s this sense of having a protector and a defender in Trump. That operates on a symbolic level in terms of: “He’s going to protect us from this woke liberal elite that wants to take us down and destroy us.” This idea was captured by one of the Trump campaign’s most effective ads: “She’s for they/them. I’m for you.”
It also operates on the material level: “The left is concerned with wokeness and identity politics, while Trump is concerned that you can’t afford a tank of gas. He’s going to protect our country from China. He’s going to protect our economy. He’s going to protect our borders.” That protector identity operates on so many different planes, and it’s hugely effective with these women.
Trump said at a few campaign rallies, “I want to protect the women.” One Christian woman I interviewed said she wept when she heard that because it was so resonant with what she needed.
Meanwhile, the feminist mantra is very different: Do not rely on any man to take care of you. Why do women on the Christian right feel that they need to be protected?
Within their gendered system of how women and men are meant to operate, women are the soft, nurturing ones, the caretakers. Men are the strong ones, protectors, and defenders. This gendered system is built into conservative Christianity, it’s built into their whole worldview, so it makes sense that they would apply that to politics and want a candidate who fits that mold. They can behave like traditional women if they have a traditional man fulfilling that protector role.
Among these women, there’s also a deep feeling of being under attack. This isn’t new—the religious right has been saying it’s under siege from a secular left for decades. But this sense of being embattled has become more inflamed since 2016. Several of the [Liberty] students I’ve interviewed told me that when they were younger, they were bullied by liberals in their home state or high schools. I’ve had them sit across from me and read me the messages they got on social media from classmates calling them horrific things because they posted a picture with a Trump sign. These experiences pushed them even further to the right and reinforced the sense that they needed to be protected. And who’s better to do the job than someone who’s got blood streaked down his face and a fist in the air, saying, “Fight!”
The assassination attempts were key in securing Trump’s support among Christian women. They solidified the belief that the left is out to get us, they will stop at nothing, and we have to make sure we win.
How does the idea of protection resonate differently if you are, say, a 20-year-old college student versus a 35-year-old mom, versus a Baby Boomer retiree in the suburbs?
The younger women are getting a lot of their news from social media. They don’t check mainstream news at all. Some women tell me they get their news not just from a single conservative outlet, but from a single influencer. And what they’re hearing is that the liberal left hates them. I think the online sphere is where a lot of their sense of attack is coming from.
For the moms’ cohort, their sense of needing protection is all around children. It’s a sense that critical race theory, trans rights—which they would call gender ideology—and, to a much lesser extent, gay rights have infiltrated their schools and are trying to indoctrinate their children. They need to protect their children as mothers, and they need a paternalistic figure as president to protect their children on a larger scale. This sentiment also plays out in some of the movements to ban books and put conservative activists on school boards.
With older women, their primary concern tends to be immigration. A lot of their focus is on defending our borders, keeping our country safe, keeping our neighborhoods safe, keeping women and girls safe from perceived physical threats from immigrant men. Trump is going to protect us in that way.
But what is the response to people who point out: “Donald Trump is a criminal, a corrupt bully, an abuser. Trump is a sinner, and he’s unrepentant. Why does he get a pass?”
On a literal level, people on the right would say those accusations and criminal charges have been fabricated and are part of a larger attack program against Trump and his allies. On a symbolic level, I would point to an event I attended at Liberty two days after the election. The speaker, who was a professor, gave a talk about a somewhat obscure character from the Old Testament. After an hour, she finally came to the point: This imperfect king had made all these mistakes, yet God had used him to deliver His promises. Nobody at that event said Trump’s name. Nobody mentioned the election. But the message was clear: That is our situation now.
I have a sister who is an ardent Trump supporter. In 2016, her reaction to the Access Hollywood leak and the multiple accusations of sexual assault was weirdly positive: “All men do that” and “It shows his power.” She loved Trump’s swagger—that he was the type of person who does what he wants and if you don’t like it, fuck you.
I think “swagger” is a really good word for how a lot of people I interviewed saw Trump in 2016. To them, he projected a kind of devil-may-care masculinity they found quite attractive. Whereas in 2024, especially amongst these conservative religious women, he’s seen as more of a protective, fatherly, or grandfatherly figure. In terms of his appeal, the sexualization has dialed down, and there’s more of a sense of him being older, strong, and reliable.
Looking back at the last three elections, what else shifted in terms of how very religious voters viewed Trump? How did their reasons for supporting him change?
In the first election, immigration was a top concern, specifically focused around Muslims and Muslim Americans. In 2020, top of mind for a lot of conservatives, men and women, was Black Lives Matter, critical race theory—“We need law and order to protect against these BLM protesters.” In 2024, it was immigration again, only this time focused on keeping Latin Americans out of the country. The three elections are an interesting barometer for the way that primarily white Christians have viewed a racial “other”—what group they want to protect the nation from. This year, the anti-Black policies they had been prioritizing fell by the wayside.
So Christian conservatives didn’t reject Harris because of her race or gender?
Oh, I don’t doubt sexism and racism played a role in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. But my sense is, for a lot of religious conservatives, this election was more about love for Donald Trump than dislike for Kamala Harris. That’s different from 2016. Hillary Clinton very much defied the role of what a woman should be, she had a long history of that, and the religious right hated her. This time around, Christians weren’t holding their noses and voting for Trump. I think a lot of Christians genuinely like this man.
For years, I’ve been hearing that fewer and fewer Americans view themselves as religious. And as the numbers dwindle, the think tanks say, the influence of Christian conservatives will fade.
It’s true that the numbers of evangelicals and devout Christians have been declining in this country. But what has stayed steady, or even gone up, is their level of political engagement. If you report being a practicing Christian, you are more likely than the average American to vote and to be involved in politics.
Your next book is a history of Christian women in US politics over the past 50 years. And a lot of the women students you spoke with at Liberty University are envisioning careers in politics and law. Yet much of the work they take on will be aimed at eroding women’s rights. Some on the religious far right don’t even want women to vote.
This has been a contradiction that has entangled right-wing Christian women since the 1970s. On the one hand, they are fighting for traditional gendered roles; on the other hand, they themselves want to be in politics. They’re embracing elements of feminism such as equality in women’s work. But they would never call themselves feminists and in fact, their work is to oppose feminism. Phyllis Schlafly, who led the fight against the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s, then headed the ultra-conservative Eagle Forum for decades, is a great example of someone who really pushed for these traditional gendered roles and yet was out there in public, being active in politics, traveling and speaking.
In other words, not practicing what she was preaching. How does someone like Schlafly compare with this new generation of Christian women?
I think what’s different now is that there’s not such an outward opposition to feminism. That’s not what’s fueling their politics. Feminism has infiltrated their conservative sphere and is propelling these women forward, without them maybe wanting to acknowledge that, and certainly without secular feminists wanting to acknowledge that.
The new role model, and not just for the younger ones, is Amy Coney Barrett. She’s married to a man, she has tons of kids, and yet she’s on the Supreme Court advocating conservative values. It’s a version of having it all. I’ve heard religious women say that line—“we can have it all”—without recognizing that it comes from secular liberal feminism. Similarly, they embrace the choice elements of feminism, for example: “I want to have the choice to work part-time, or to work full-time, or to stay home with my kids and homeschool—I want to have that option available to me.” And yet they very much espouse these ideas that women are the nurturers, women are the caregivers, women have a very different sensibility than men do. Men should be in charge of the finances.
Did the outcome of this election surprise you, as it did so many Democrats? Or did you think, Yeah, it all makes sense?
I’m not surprised that Christians would be so allied with Trump, or that Christian women would view him as a protector. What has surprised me is that Trump made gains with some of these other populations—Gen Z women, even Black women.
Does this suggest Americans are feeling really afraid? That they want a protector?
Maybe. But certainly among the Christian right, I also think there’s a strong desire for outsiders and anti-establishment characters to take charge and disrupt the status quo.
Like Elon Musk?
Yes, exactly. He’s a businessman like Trump who’s been wildly successful. And the people I interview want someone who’s wildly successful running the country, because, deep down in their bones, they believe in capitalism. Musk has that devil-may-care attitude that Trump shares—he is anti-establishment and does what he wants to do. People on the religious right like that. He’s not beholden to the political old guard. And they think he’s going to do what he says he’s going to do, and not just make false, empty promises.
For progressives—and possibly even moderates—the idea that somebody who became a gazillionaire by doing whatever the heck he wanted, with no guardrails, would now take charge of our democracy and run it like he runs Twitter/X is, well, terrifying. Whereas to conservative Christians…?
It’s exciting.
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