Janelle Wong's Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change

Janelle Wong's Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change (2018) provides a new view of evangelicals but also immigrants in the United States. It gets at the question of where Latinx voters fit uneasily within the two party system.

"Nonwhite immigrants seem to be the only source of growth for the American evangelical population" (13). This is an interesting dynamic because demographics shows that in the future, evangelicals will be increasingly nonwhite though for the time being white evangelicals remain much more influential politically. In a Venn diagram, the two are both evangelical but the overlap is not enormous.

"Nonwhite evangelicals in the United States hold a more expansive notion of the "national community" than do white evangelical Americans" (40). White evangelicals feel a strong sense of embattlement, I think in no small part because, as Wong points out, their idea of national community is quite small. Not feeling threatened, nonwhites do not agree with white evangelicals on a host of issues--immigration is a major one--though they are indeed more conservative than non-evangelicals on issues like abortion.

An important lesson is not to think in blocs. Evangelicals are not a bloc--they're racially divided and show different political views. Further, Latinx voters are not a bloc simply destined for the Democratic Party. Latinx evangelicals are conservative and neither party fits them perfectly.