Sarah Palin has endorsed Donald Trump for president and now it’s official: the Republican Armageddon has begun. While the Ted Cruz campaign licks its wounds and remembers the days of hanging out with Palin on the campaign trail, Palin has taken her rightful place alongside Trump as the architect of his 2016 campaign.



Republican leadership and other evangelicals may be shocked, but this has been a long time coming and it shows the fracturing among evangelicals. Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition said it best: “Endorsements alone don’t guarantee victory, but Palin’s embrace of Trump may turn the fight over the evangelical vote into a war for the soul of the party.”

It will be a war, not only for the soul of the Republican party, but for the soul of Evangelicalism too. The group is deeply divided between those who think Trump can bring America back, and those who don’t think he holds evangelical moral and religious values.



This deep rift between evangelical voters goes back to 2008, with McCain choosing Palin as a running mate; she was not a traditional evangelical, but a born-again Pentecostal Christian who attended an evangelical church in Wasilla, Alaska.



McCain courted in 2008 what I would call fringe evangelicals, in part because evangelicals were skeptical of his commitment to values voters. McCain’s embrace of Palin came after having to scuttle endorsements from John Hagee and Rod Parsley, charismatics who believed in Armageddon and fiercely supported Israel.

Then, in 2012, evangelicals were forced to choose between traditional candidates like Rick Santorum and Rick Perry, but Mitt Romney, a Mormon, would become the presidential candidate. They rallied around Romney despite the fact that many in evangelical leadership thought Mormonism was not a true Christian religion. The moment of true capitulation came when the Billy Graham evangelistic association quietly took Mormonism off the list of apostate religious groups.



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Now, in 2016, the Republican party and evangelical leadership have been stymied by the fact that Trump is drawing in the “religious right”. Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Liberty commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, has been very vocal in his criticism of Trump. Other traditional evangelical choices have practically disappeared from the 2016 Republican roster.



Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal already proved that prayer meetings and courting traditional evangelical leadership are a non-starter. Rick Santorum is barely visible on the campaign trail, along with Mike Huckabee, who at one time led in 2008.

That’s largely because evangelical leadership is no longer found in denominational leadership, but in reality television and televangelists. Even Phyllis Schafly, a longtime evangelical leader, supports Trump. Evangelicalism’s moral values are now articulated by reality stars like the Duggar family, who Mike Huckabee embraced, and Duck Dynasty, whose patriarch, Phil Robertson, endorsed Cruz. Palin herself, an evangelical darling in 2008, has had two reality TV shows: Sarah Palin’s Alaska and Sarah Palin’s Amazing America. These are the evangelical leaders of the 2016 election.



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Meanwhile, Trump has courted so-called ‘prosperity gospel’ preachers like Pastor Paula White, a good friend of Trump, who arranged for other prosperity preachers to meet the candidate. These leaders are the new conservative Christian support, which is predicated largely on wealth restoration, preserving the constitution and second amendment rights and spreading Islamophobia. Moral values such as pro-life and opposition to same-sex marriage are taking a backseat to these issues.

While Cruz and Trump are both trying to court evangelicals in Iowa, this evangelical split will follow both candidates into the primary season long past the Iowa caucuses. Cruz is the establishment evangelical choice, but it is questionable whether that will help him gain voters in southern states. Trump’s courtship of the prosperity gospel leaders, reality show Christians and Palin will likely take him much further than the traditional evangelical leadership.

This is a seismic shift in how the Republican party relates to the religious right. Most political pundits will be derisive about the Palin endorsement, but it is time for them to ask themselves what her alliance with Trump means for the 2016 election cycle. It is certainly more than the amusing side-show that many are treating it as.

