Decoding the Digital Church: Evangelical Storytelling and the Election of Donald J. Trump [Hardcover]

This investigation tries to understand why many Evangelical pastors were blamed for endorsing Trump when, in fact, most did not. This book joins other attempts by scholars and journalists to analyze the relationship between Trump and Evangelicals. Recommended. CHOICE

Tracing the digital narratives that shaped evangelical identity in a pivotal political moment.

As a political constituency, white conservative evangelicals are generally portrayed as easy to dupe, disposed to vote against their own interests, and prone to intolerance and knee-jerk reactions. In Decoding the Digital Church: Evangelical Storytelling and the Election of Donald J. Trump, Stephanie A. Martin challenges this assumption and moves beyond these overused stereotypes to develop a refined explanation for this constituencys voting behavior.

This volume offers a fresh perspective on the study of religion and politics and stems from the authors personal interest in the ways her experiences with believers differ from how scholars often frame this groups rationale and behaviors. To address this disparity, Martin examines sermons, drawing on her expertise in rhetoric and communication studies with the benefits of ethnographic research in an innovative hybrid approach she terms a digital rhetorical ethnography. Martins thorough research surveys more than 150 online sermons from Americas largest evangelical megachurches in 37 different states. Through listening closely to the words of the pastors who lead these conservative congregations, Martin describes a gentler discourse less obsessed with issues like abortion or marriage equality than stereotypes of evangelicals might suggest. Instead, the politicaleconomic sermons and stories from pastors encourage true believers
to remember the exceptional nature of the nations founding while also deemphasizing how much American citizenship really means.

Martin grapples with and pays serious, lo