"Being evangelical once suggested regular church attendance, a focus on salvation and conversion and strongly held views on specific issues such as abortion."

"Today, it is as often used to describe a cultural and political identity: one in which Christians are considered a persecuted minority, traditional institutions are viewed skeptically and Mr. Trump looms large.... At a recent rally in Waterloo, Iowa, Mr. Trump cast Christians as a broadly persecuted group facing down a government weaponized against them. Catholics are the current target of 'the communists, Marxists and fascists,' he said, citing a recent controversy about a retracted F.B.I. memo, and adding that 'evangelicals will not be far behind.'... As ties to church communities have weakened, the church leaders who once rallied the faithful behind causes and candidates have lost influence. A new class of thought leaders has filled the gap: social media personalities and podcasters, once-fringe prophetic preachers and politicians...."

From "Trump Is Connecting With a Different Type of Evangelical Voter/They are not just the churchgoing, conservative activists who once dominated the G.O.P." (NYT).

Abortion policy is “one thing I don’t really stress,” said JoAnn Sweeting, who pulled her eighth-grade son out of school to attend a rally for Mr. Trump last month in Coralville, Iowa. Referring to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, she said: “I feel like the policies set for us now seem to be working.”

Ms. Sweeting described herself as an evangelical but does not attend church anymore. She sees Mr. Trump as a man who believes in God and prays. But the reasons she supports him, she said, are his approach to the economy and his progress on building a wall along the southern border.

She also likes his bluntness. “He doesn’t try to sugarcoat things,” she said....

ADDED: My link goes directly to the F.B.I. memo, which I don't remember reading about before. Why hasn't that got much more coverage? The NYT links to a NYT article from December 29th, so that is some coverage, but, though I read the NYT every day and look for material about politics and religion, I had not seen it at the time.

The headline is "Biden’s Christian ‘Persecution’? We Assess Trump’s Recent Claims. Former President Donald J. Trump has repeatedly accused the Biden administration of criminalizing Christians, and Catholics in particular, for their faith. Here are the facts." 

So the focus is on what Trump might have said wrong, not what the F.B.I. might be doing wrong and whether Biden is responsible. Is our Catholic president involved in persecuting Catholics?!

From that December 29th article:

“I don’t know what it is with Catholics,” Mr. Trump said during a rally in Coralville, Iowa. “They are going violently and viciously after Catholics.”

Mr. Trump repeated similar comments days later at another rally, in Waterloo, and in a video posted before Christmas he said that “Americans of faith are being persecuted like nothing this nation has ever seen before.”...

The article quotes Trump: "Under Crooked Joe Biden, Christians and Americans of faith are being persecuted like nothing this nation has ever seen before. Catholics in particular are being targeted and evangelicals are surely on the watchlist as well.”

Here's how the NYT fact-checked that:

Experts say they are unaware of any data to support the idea that Catholics in the United States are being persecuted by the government for their faith — let alone at record levels.

“In terms of the evidence, I find it to be pretty hard to kind of support the idea that there’s a concerted, marked increase in a particular kind of Christian targeting,” said Jason Bruner, a religious studies professor at Arizona State University and historian who studies Christian persecution.

Why do people who are "unaware of any data" count as "experts"? Did Bruner even claim to have studied the current situation as opposed to the history of Christian persecution? His quote merely asserts that he finds it hard to believe there is evidence, not that he looked for it.

There is a second "expert" quoted:

“There’s a long history of discrimination against Catholics in the United States, from the framing way through the 1970s,” said Frank Ravitch, a professor of law and religion at Michigan State University. “And if anything, it’s probably better now in terms of nondiscrimination than it ever, probably, ever has been.” Mr. Trump’s claims, Mr. Ravitch said, show “such an incredible blindness to the history of anti-Catholicism in the U.S.”

He too seems only to be guessing that things are better now — "probably better now" — and to be called an expert because he's studied the history of Christian persecution in America. And why is he insulting Trump as incredibly blind for caring about persecution today? Just because it was worse at other times in history? That's not the standard for when it's appropriate to call attention to problems in the present!

But Trump did say Catholics were "persecuted like nothing this nation has ever seen before," so maybe that vaguely implies that what is happening now is worse than anything that has happened before, but literally he's only saying that what is happening now is different from anything before. Can Professor Ravitch detail what, in the past, was like that F.B.I. memo? 

As for the  F.B.I. memo, Trump had said: “The F.B.I. has been caught profiling devout Catholics as possible domestic terrorists and planning to send undercover spies into Catholic churches, just like in the old days of the Soviet Union.”

Here's how the NYT fact-checked that:

This needs context. Mr. Trump was likely referring to a leaked January memo prepared by the F.B.I.’s field office in Richmond, Va., that warned of the potential for extremism for adherents of a “radical-traditionalist Catholic” ideology. Republicans have criticized the memo for months.

But the memo was withdrawn and the nation’s top law enforcement officials have repeatedly denounced it....

We're told Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said he was "appalled" and  Christopher Wray said he was "aghast." And I'm astounded, amazed, and agog.

That's not reassuring. And it certainly doesn't show that Trump got it wrong.