Back to a White Future: White Religious Loss, Donald Trump, and the Problem of Belonging

The 2016 election of Donald Trump as President of the United States necessitates an interrogation of complex and interlocking constructs of race and religion, and the impact on racial and religious minorities. In this paper, I describe the social situation of White loss, which I understand to be the existential crisis of White Christians in light of myriad issues, including, a globalized society, a precarious economy, and the declining of racial and religious majority status. The first half of the paper discusses both religious and racial demographic shifts that intensify White loss, and the role that Trump plays in ameliorating these racial and religious anxieties. The essay concludes with a reading of Trump and White, evangelical Christians' authoritarian theological constructs through Howard Thurman's notions of neighborliness and estrangement.