How the ‘Prosperity Gospel’ drew some Latino voters to Trump

Beside him, his best friend Willy J. Castillo, 39, who owns the store and others, worked the register as he talked about Trump’s desire to succeed, to overcome and to survive. Castillo, who also voted for Trump, can relate: “The Bible says, ‘God helps those who help themselves,’ right?”

The combination of hope, drive for success, and faith in a God who rewards faith, sometimes with financial achievement, became dominant in the United States and Latin America, say Latin religion experts. The belief system is sometimes called the “seed faith,” the “health and wealth gospel,” or the “prosperity gospel.”

In the last half century, led by larger-than-life pastors, surpassed others more traditional theologies centered on God’s priority being the poor and disenfranchised, some experts said. That belief system, they said, helps explain what exit polls have shown has been a significant shift among Latino Christian voters toward Trump, whom they see as a super-successful fighter. strong and focused on God.

“If you take Trump and all his characteristics, he’s almost exactly like any prosperity gospel preacher,” said Tony Tian-Ren Lin, an Asian-Latino pastor in New York who has written a book about Latin Americans and the gospel prosperity. “The big personality, talking a big game, saying things like ‘no one can do that’ but him… If you’ve listened to someone like that for years, you’re not surprised when a political leader says these things.”

Nationally, the network’s exit polls showed that between 2020 and 2024, Trump won 14 points in Latino support, although Harris, the Democratic nominee, was favored by a clear majority. During the same period, he gained 25 points among Latino Catholics and 18 points among Latino evangelical Protestants.

The change is evident here in Lehigh County, just east of the Pennsylvania capital. It is the county with the state’s highest proportion of Latino voters — 29 percent, according to the U.S. Census. Democratic Party margin in presidential contests over Trump decreased in Lehigh by 4.9 percentage points, from 7.6 percentage points in 2020 to 2.7 percentage points in 2024. But in predominantly Latino Allentown, the county’s largest city, the move toward Trump was even more pronounced. The city’s 10 precincts with the highest proportion of Latino voters have shifted to Trump by an average of 20 percentage points since Trump faced Biden in 2020, according to a Washington Post analysis of precinct results in Lehigh County and L2 demographic data, electoral data. supplier.

The prosperity gospel has its roots in American Pentecostalism and evangelical Protestantism, but experts say it has become huge in the faith in general, and especially among the unaffiliated. often spiritual influencers online. Trump grew up in the church of Reverend Norman Vincent Peale, whose book The Power of Positive Thinking was a huge bestseller and is considered a prosperity gospel classic.

A 2014 Pew Research poll found that broad majorities of Protestants and Catholics in nearly all of Latin America agreed that “God will grant wealth and good health to believers who have sufficient faith.” In the Dominican Republic – the ancestral or natal home for many in Allentown – 76 percent of Protestants agreed and 79 percent of Catholics agreed. The firm PRRI asked a similar question in March and found that 44 percent of U.S. Latinos agreed, more than any other group except African Americans. What this means politically is that wealthy candidates like Trump are seen by some as both credible and worthy of emulation.

The the movement began in the United States with healers and televangelists such as Oral Roberts and Benny Hinn, who told followers that giving them money would lead to God’s blessings, conjuring a transactional God. By extension, personal wealth was seen as a goal for believers. It focused on the power of self and the idea that God would do it it rewards positivity, hard work and confidence.

The acceptance of the prosperity gospel has been fueled by the fact that many followers view institutional religion as corrupt, for various reasons.

Christian broadcasters and evangelical missionaries decades ago took the ideas overseas, where University of Pennsylvania religion scholar Anthea Butler said The prosperity gospel went “oversized,” especially in Latin America and Africa, and then returned to the United States with new waves of immigrants. Experts say that his ideas now are like this widespread in spiritual and secular life that it has become the gospel of the American dream.

And few had more faith in the American dream than religious immigrants.

Maria Perez, 53 years old, who emigrated from the Dominican Republic 20 years ago, pushes his granddaughter in a stroller at the church in downtown Allentown. She said that she she voted for Trump because she believes God chose him for economic and political success — a belief underscored by the two assassination attempts that survived, she said. Trump’s lifestyle shows he is very wealthy, she said, dismissing his multiple business failures as low points in a booming career.

Perez attends church once or twice a month and smiled as she talked about the pastors and spiritual figures she listens to online every day. “I hope that God wants us to do well here. And I know Trump wants us to do well, too.”

In Trump’s first term, Pion said, he built a successful trucking business that made $500,000 in the first year. But during President Joe Biden’s tenure, he said, the market and gas prices have changed, to the point where he now has to sell his two trucks and lay off three employees.

When Pion became a US citizen last year, Castillo gave him a gift: an AI video showing a computer-generated Trump offering congratulations.

“Now we can say, ‘I’m an American and I need my money and I want it now,'” Trump appears to say in the video. “As your 2024 presidential candidate, I will make sure your trucking company thrives.”

Latin American Christian leaders say the prosperity gospel is one of multiple factors that led voters to Trump, including the rising cost of living, abortion, unease over women’s and LGBTQ rights, misinformation, and Trump’s appeals to a group he calls “my beautiful Christians.”

Bishop William Surita, a semi-retired pastor who helps oversee a network of Hispanic evangelical churches in the Allentown area, said the prosperity gospel is part of a nuanced set of emotions that drew people to Trump rather than anything conscious. “They think because you have a businessman, he knows about the economy,” said Surita, who declined to say how she voted. “Anyone who follows Trump knows he was not a good businessman.”

Another factor is the easy transition of Latinos – both in Latin America and in the United States – from Catholicism to Evangelicalism. And evangelical Christianity in the United States is heavily tied to the Republican Party and its candidates.

Nilsa Alvarez, national Hispanic director for the conservative Christian group Faith & Freedom Coalition, has helped coordinate voters in the swing state and said one factor in the state is the story of a pastor who spoke this fall at an event with more than 175 Latinos.

The pastor, she said, shared a story about a transgender boy whose teachers, without parental consent, “took her to have sex reassignment surgery and she died.” When The Post contacted the pastor, Edelmiro Santana, he said someone whose name he did not know came up to him at an event and told him that story and was simply passing it on without proof. Trump has often told a similar unsubstantiated anecdote about schools operating on children to change their gender.

But Alvarez dismissed the prosperity gospel as a factor, saying Latinos are motivated by a desire to change the economy.

Mark Lopez, director of race and ethnicity research at the Pew Research Center, said Latinos’ belief in the prosperity gospel may have made what he characterized as the Democratic Party’s message less attractive.

“Is it that Latinos identify with Trump as a successful person, or is it that Latinos have moved away from the Democratic Party because it doesn’t talk about economic success and focuses more on poverty, on helping those in need help?” he asked.

Butler, the Penn scholar of religion, said the rise of the prosperity gospel helps explain why many Latino Trump supporters have not been disappointed by his promise to deport millions of immigrants. The prosperity gospel, she said, is not just about getting rich.

“It’s about family — I want to keep my family intact, I want to provide for my family, I want to give my kids opportunities,” she said, “And for a lot of immigrants, especially from Latin America, it’s ‘I want to be a part of what America is, which is to work hard and have all these things.”

So when immigrants are portrayed in a negative light — including by Trump — “it’s like, ‘If those people don’t represent me well, I don’t want those people to come!'” she said. The Democrats’ embrace of “these people,” Butler said, showed them voters the party “didn’t fit the version of success”.

Lin noted that Latino immigrants are heavily influenced by the prosperity gospel because I am part of a self-selecting group.

“The more you believe in the prosperity gospel, the more you want to reach. You have faith and you believe you deserve it. You want the American dream. If you stay (in your home country), you don’t act, you lack faith,” said Lin, who introduced the new revenue for his book.

Mike Madrid, a political consultant and expert on Latin American voters, said Trump is successfully selling a kind of spiritually-tinged hope to people struggling to make it to a country where wealth and material success are celebrated.

“There is hope. It is full of hope,” he said. “You’re selling people an element of faith. “Believe in this and you will achieve economic success, God wants it for you.” It becomes a religion in an age where that is what is valued.”

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Scott Clement, Emily Guskin and Lenny Bronner contributed to this report.