The support that Donald Trump has received from legions of evangelicals has puzzled and “surprised” many people. After all, the presumptive Republican nominee is exceptionally vulgar and, despite claiming to be a devout Christian whose favorite book is the Bible, knows little about scripture and has emphasized, “I don’t like to have to ask for forgiveness” from God. One common explanation for this apparent contradiction is that numerous evangelicals embrace Trump’s agenda, from eviscerating Obamacare to cracking down on undocumented immigrants and barring Muslims from entering America. But Trump and his evangelical supporters think alike in more ways than people realize. Fundamentalist approaches to evangelicalism have long fostered anti-intellectual, anti-rational, black-and-white, and authoritarian mindsets—the very traits that define Trump.

The historian Richard Hofstadter explored the roots of the issue in his 1966 book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, which described how the spread of evangelicalism since the eighteenth century fostered the notion that education is an obstacle to faith. Not all evangelicals thought alike, although many were convinced that people need not read any book except the Bible. As the influential preacher Dwight L. Moody (1837-99) proclaimed, “I do not read any book, unless it will help me to understand the book.” Hofstadter concluded that this anti-intellectual conception of religion extended to life outside the church. Hardline evangelicals became particularly disdainful of reflection and refined ideas, leading some to be drawn to “men of emotional power or manipulative skill.”

Evangelical traditionalists played a key role in the backlash against Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859), whose theory of evolution exacerbated evangelicals’ skepticism of education and led them to further defy objective evidence and rational thought. Moderate evangelicals warned against this mindset. In a memorable 1922 sermon, Harry Emerson Fosdick, a prominent evangelical pastor based in Manhattan, accused evangelical fundamentalists of making anti-rationalism a litmus test of faith. To Fosdick, fundamentalists were hostile to science and solely accepted thinking that “brings you to certain specified, predetermined conclusions.” “[T]he new knowledge and the old faith had to be blended in a new combination,” Fosdick argued, a process that evangelical fundamentalists resisted and that liberal or moderate Christians accepted.

Leaving aside other factors behind the evolution of evangelicalism, this history helps explain one of the most intriguing dimensions of contemporary America, where approximately a quarter of the population belongs to white evangelical churches. Around 42 percent Americans are creationists who deem that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago, and the same proportion expects the prophesied Second Coming of Christ to occur by 2050. No other modern Western democracy has such a huge share of Biblical literalists. Although Americans of diverse denominations hold these beliefs, evangelicals are disproportionately represented among them.

Trump is not an evangelical, yet he too routinely defies rational thought and is unabashedly skeptical of education. While there are numerous reasons behind Trump’s political success, these circumstances shed additional light on why evangelicals have been among the citizens most receptive to Trump’s systematic misinformation. Evangelicals are not only heavily represented among creationists, but also among citizens who perceive climate change as a “hoax,” accept calculated falsehoods about the evils of “socialized medicine,” and think that Obama is a covert Muslim.