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Next week\u2019s Iowa Republican caucuses formally launch the 2024 primary race that will almost certainly end with a third GOP nomination for former president Donald Trump. When Iowans caucus on Monday, recent polling suggests<\/a> Trump will easily claim the state\u2019s 40 delegates<\/a>, with rivals Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis jostling<\/a> for second place.<\/p>\n Whatever the exact results, the decisions of Iowa\u2019s white evangelical<\/a> caucus-goers will be much scrutinized in the days to come. But for most of them, I suspect, those decisions<\/a> have been long since made. American evangelicals\u2019 conversation around Trump has changed dramatically since 2020, splitting along a kind of class line and all but disappearing<\/a> as an active consideration for the average voter.<\/p>\n In most evangelical circles, the Trump debate is dead.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with the exception: Among what some call the \u201cevangelical elite,\u201d this is still a live question. Whether it\u2019s permissible (or required) to support (or oppose) Trump for president is still actively discussed among evangelicals who write books<\/a> and articles like this one, who attract followings online, who know what \u201cBig Eva<\/a>\u201d means and how they feel about it, who attend seminary (but probably not for pastoral ministry), and who otherwise participate in The Discourse\u2014wherever they land politically or theologically.<\/p>\n Trump support is a live question for self-proclaimed Christian nationalists on X (formerly Twitter). And it\u2019s a live question for \u201cnever Trump\u201d evangelicals at The Atlantic<\/em> or The New York Times<\/em>. In Iowa, it\u2019s a live question for Republican kingmaker Bob Vander Plaats, who told CT<\/a> he\u2019s holding out hope for a DeSantis win.<\/p>\n But for the average white evangelical Republican, my strong impression is that this debate is basically finished. Very few evangelicals will vote or caucus this year having freshly<\/em> agonized over whether to back Donald Trump.<\/p>\n That\u2019s so for several reasons, none of them especially unique to evangelicals. One is the reality of how millions of Americans routinely vote: by partisan default and after relatively little research into the policy and personal history of the candidates on offer.<\/p>\n The raging politico who can\u2019t seem to log off, touch grass, and love his neighbor has become a stock character in American politics. But there\u2019s another character better represented in our democracy: the party-line voter (and sometimes nonvoter<\/a>) who really does intend to do her civic duty but just has so much else to do first. There\u2019s dinner to cook, laundry to sort, that email to answer, the dog to wash.<\/p>\n Low-information voters get a bad rap, and the part of me fascinated by politics is sometimes tempted to join in that denigration. But another part of me recognizes that<\/a> this mode of political engagement makes sense for many people. After all, my job means I can spend a whole day researching a candidate\u2019s record\u2014and get paid for it. Probably 99.9 percent of America can\u2019t do the same. People have limited time and energy, and they can\u2019t spare much for distant political dramas, so they vote the party line.<\/p>\n That includes many evangelicals. Much has been made of \u201cthe 81 percent<\/a>\u201d of white evangelicals who voted for Trump in 2016. But, depending on exactly<\/a> which data set<\/a> you use, that figure is statistically identical to the proportion of white evangelical votes for the Republican nominees of 2020, 2012, 2008, and 2004. As difficult as it is for those of us in the chattering class to fathom, a lot of this story is simply Republicans voting Republican<\/a>.<\/p>\n And for all the same reasons that people cast low-information votes, relatively few voters have comprehensive political ideologies to uphold. Default partisan voting doesn\u2019t rest on an exhaustive policy platform undergirded by mutually reinforcing theses about the purpose of the state, the grounding of human rights, the nature of the common good, and so on. It rests on a few high-profile issues (right now: abortion, education, immigration, inflation, Israel, Ukraine) and, well, vibes<\/a>.<\/p>\n In that sense, the evangelical decision to back Trump was at once a very big deal and<\/em> a comparatively small one. It was big when done by evangelical elites\u2014the kind of people who are still talking about this, who do have a political ideology supposedly informed by Scripture, who spent the 1990s putting out statements<\/a> about the importance of character in politics and then forgot all about it when Trump came on the scene.<\/p>\n The Book of James warns us that those \u201cwho teach will be judged more strictly\u201d (3:1), and high-profile Trump supporters knew better.<\/p>\n Yet many ordinary voters knew rather less<\/a>. I\u2019ll never forget mentioning Trump\u2019s Access Hollywood<\/em> tape to an older relative\u2014a white evangelical Republican\u2014shortly before the 2016 election. I said I couldn\u2019t believe people still supported him after hearing what he\u2019d said. She said she hadn\u2019t heard of it at all. That was the first time I\u2019d have an exchange about Trump along those lines. It wasn\u2019t the last.<\/p>\n Political division feels worst when it\u2019s close, when it comes between us and loved ones who taught us the very ethics that make<\/a> enthusiasm for Trump inconceivable. But the \u201cservant who knows the master\u2019s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows,\u201d as Jesus taught, while \u201cthe one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows\u201d (Luke 12:47\u201348).<\/p>\n Error is judged in proportion to knowledge, that is. And almost a decade into this saga, I\u2019ve come to hold in tension a big-picture dismay over American evangelicalism\u2019s embrace of Trump and a recognition that the rationale behind any one evangelical Trump vote may be complicated, surprising, and even sympathetic.<\/p>\n The final factor bringing the Trump debate to its close is sympathetic too, if only because it reflects a common human failing\u2014one I too often find in myself: We don\u2019t like to admit we\u2019ve been wrong.<\/p>\n This factor isn\u2019t about making the decision to back Trump, then, but about what happens after that decision has been made. It\u2019s something of an ethical sunk cost fallacy<\/a>: If you\u2019ve voted for him once, why not again? If supporting him puts you in the wrong, you\u2019re already there.<\/p>\n The tricky thing about sunk cost is that it doesn\u2019t feel like a fallacy, and that\u2019s especially true when we\u2019re talking not business but politics, ethics, and their implications for personal identity. To refuse to vote for Trump in 2024 after voting for him in 2016 or 2020 is to admit error\u2014and that\u2019s uncomfortable.<\/p>\n Indeed, in the political realm, perhaps even more than elsewhere, the human instinct is to justify ourselves (Luke 10:29), to reassure ourselves and each other that we got it right the first time, to recommit even when we would do better to repent. Trump\u2019s on the ballot anew for 2024. But who wants to keep debating a decision already made?<\/p>\n Bonnie Kristian is the editorial director of ideas and books at Christianity Today<\/span>.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n