In other words, Burge explained, more people are “conflating evangelicalism with Republicanism — and melding two forces to create a movement that is not entirely about politics or religion but power.”

A striking 71 percent of these voters think the country has gone downhill since the 1950s (when women were excluded from most professions, Black Americans faced barriers to voting, 50 million Americans still used outhouses and only about 5 percent of Americans were college-educated). Because White Protestant evangelicals make up such a large share of the GOP, that means 66 percent of Republicans want to go back to the time of “Leave It to Beaver.”

Half of White evangelical Protestants also think God intended America to be the promised land. Nearly two-thirds say immigrants are a threat, and 61 percent say “society has become too soft and feminine.” And they are the only discrete religious group polled to support overturning Roe v. Wade.

On race, only 19 percent of the group agrees that “the legacy of slavery and discrimination have limited Black Americans’ upward mobility.” They are the least likely to accept that African Americans disproportionately receive the death penalty. And here’s the kicker: Unlike a majority of Americans, “six in ten white evangelical Protestants (61%) agree that discrimination against white Americans has become as big a problem as discrimination against racial minorities.”

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In a nutshell, this group’s beliefs clash with the essence of the American experiment and conflict with objective facts, demography and economics. White evangelical Protestants’ outlook is warped by right-wing media and refracted through a prism of visceral anger and resentment.

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Last year, Eastern Illinois University professor Ryan Burge wrote for the New York Times, “In essence, many Americans are coming to the understanding that to be very religiously engaged and very politically conservative means that they are evangelical, even if they don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ.” In other words, Burge explained, more people are “conflating evangelicalism with Republicanism — and melding two forces to create a movement that is not entirely about politics or religion but power.” (This helps explain how evangelicals can embrace views that fly in the face of Christian theology; it’s not about the religion.)