Evangelicals Traveled to Their Country in Record Numbers. Then Trump Said They Were Evil.

Illustration by Rey Velasquez Sagcal Faith-based I Was a Stranger, and Ye Took Me In American evangelicals traveled to Haiti in record numbers for years. Then Trump said that evil had come to Springfield, Ohio. By Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Alexander Sammon? Oct 30, 20265:40 AM Read Part I and Part II of Slate’s dispatches from Springfield, Ohio. Part III Pastor Marty Robbins took the stage in the worship center at High Street Nazarene Church in Springfield, Ohio, and told his evangelical congregation that he had an update, and a surprise, about Haitian Pastor Adrien Joubert. At High Street Nazarene, English-language Sunday service usually began right at 10:15 a.m., led by Robbins, and Haitian Creole service started at 11, led by Joubert. The songs and prayers and announcements from the first service would be repeated, but with a Haitian cast for a 130-strong congregation in the gymnasium, which adjoined the worship center. Often, the Haitian evangelical service was so lively the English-language evangelicals could hear them through the wall. But then, as part of the first wave of Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps that ran through Springfield, agents had detained Pastor Adrien at a Sunoco gas station on the morning of Aug. 20. He had been held in detention at Butler County Jail in the weeks since. “Pastor Adrien ran into some problems doing everything legally right until rules changed, and then he was apprehended over four weeks ago and has been at Butler County lockup,” Pastor Marty explained to his flock, emphasis on the rule-following, as everyone listened intently. “Wednesday evening, the greatest thing I got to do was to drive to pick him up and bring him back to his home,” Pastor Marty said, adding, “Why don’t you come up?” And then Pastor Adrien, dressed in a tan suit, with his daughter Linsay, his wife, and his sister, rose, to everyone’s surprise. They left the pew in the second row and proceeded to the stage, joined by Pastor Adrien’s son. Pastor Adrien had been released on bond. Beneath his suit pants, he wasn’t even wearing an ankle monitor. Pastor Marty had been driving Pastor Adrien’s kids to school every morning. Now he was finally home. The two pastors hugged. Pastor Adrien was saved. At least for now. “Praise the Lord,” said Pastor Adrien. “Good morning, High Street.” The congregation clapped, and many rose to their feet, though the reaction maybe wasn’t quite as ecstatic as it had been for some of the Christian rock songs that had opened the service, nor quite as rapturous as the response to some of the early preaching. The American evangelical church has had a long, close relationship with Haiti. But visiting the congregations across Ohio, you wouldn’t know it. When Pastor Carl Ruby, who heads up Central Christian evangelical church, also in Springfield, founded an immigrant support group called G92 to assist the local Haitian community, he struggled to gain any traction. “I could not get a single white evangelical church to join. Black evangelical churches would, mainline Protestant would,” he told me. “But there are several large white evangelical churches, and they wouldn’t go anywhere near it.” In this sense, he told me, High Street Nazarene was an exception. In halting English, Pastor Adrien spoke of his time in lockup. “God used me in the jail to speak with other people,” he said. “Yesterday I receive call from the jail. He [said] I have to help find his family,” he said, of another man with whom he was in lockup. This was met with muted applause. Pastor Adrien’s story was an outlier. According to the Springfield News-Sun, most Haitians put on ICE holds at the Butler County Jail remain there, while some are sent to a private detention center hundreds of miles away in Michigan. That was the fate of a second, unnamed Haitian pastor, whom ICE also picked up in late August and whisked away to an out-of-state facility. Linsay, Pastor Adrien’s daughter, a more fluent English speaker, read prepared remarks from an iPad. “To the entire congregation, thank you for every prayer. They reminded us that we were not alone,” she said. “God does not forget your love, your service, or your generosity towards my family.” Pastor Marty and Pastor Adrien hugged again. In some sense, American evangelicals know Haiti better than any other foreign country. According to MinistryWatch, the Caribbean island nation has received more missionary aid from evangelicals than has any other country over the past five decades. And evangelicals have made the island into a laboratory of new-school proselytizing and outreach, honing the “short-term mission,” in which believers drop into a community for just days or weeks, and promptly return to the United States. “The shift to short-term missions … may be the first mission movement in church history that is based largely on the needs of the missionary,” Robert Priest, former professor of mission and anthropology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, told MinistryWatch. That change marked a major divergence from the earlier emphasis on the needs of the recipients of the missionary work. Now it was more like tourism. The results were mixed. “It’s possible that more Americans visited Haiti as missionaries than any other country in the history of the world,” the MinistryWatch article continued, “and the country has never been in worse shape.” Still, those short-term missions were effective at keeping up conversions to the faith—the all-important baptisms of the born-again—and the evangelical population of Haiti has climbed steadily regardless. More than ever were getting saved. And so, as Haiti has deteriorated politically, the number of Haitian evangelicals turning up in the U.S. has also increased. But that has put the evangelical church in a difficult position. Because the loyalty of the evangelical church to its mission trips to Haiti is dwarfed by its straight-ticket loyalty to the Republican Party. According to exit-poll data, 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in 2024. “I think there are lots of evangelical pastors who know in their heart that they ought to be supporting Haitian refugees, former TPS holders, but they are afraid to because they serve in churches where 90 percent of their congregation gets all their news from Fox,” said Pastor Ruby. “I think to pastors, many of them see it as a justice issue, but they will not say anything publicly about that. And that’s been a real disappointment to me.” And so Pastor Marty continued cautiously. “That’s pretty good stuff there,” said Pastor Marty of Linsay’s words. He thanked the congregation. “I’m still going to preach—is that OK?” The Haitian family returned to the pews, while Linsay headed off to an alcove. She and a friend monitored the Creole service, which had just begun on Zoom, on two Dell laptops. Four years prior, when the Haitian community in Springfield was growing with new, legal arrivals, Pastor Adrien had met with Pastor Marty, the former telling the latter of a growing Haitian congregation that was still gathering in a living room. Now they were back to gathering in living rooms, and basements, and bedrooms, all separate, spread out, many hiding across Springfield. “It’s his passion to put his trust in God when other people fail or governments fail, there is a God who never fails us,” said Pastor Marty of Pastor Adrien. “I’m just telling you, it’s the reason I don’t like to mince words with politics.” The politics were tricky. The evangelicals loved going to Haiti, and coming back, many of them did not love the Haitians coming to the U.S., and staying, now that Trump and J.D. Vance had turned on them. And it was those same evangelicals who had helped turn Ohio from a purple state to a red one. Some recent polling suggested evangelicals souring on Trump of late—only 63 percent supported him now, said Reuters, and the polls in the midterm elections in Ohio are close. But it was hard to know. Pastor Marty preached some more. The theme of the day’s sermon was identity. Then there were more rock songs. Pastor Marty concluded the service. “I pray for our Haitian congregation that we miss being here so deeply. I sense maybe there could be a way that this ministry could continue.” The evangelicals stood, and filed out of the pews. Everyone returned to the lobby. Some of the worshippers came up and shook Pastor Marty’s hand, and thanked him. Some came up to Pastor Adrien and shook his. Some came up to the new worship pastor and introduced themselves. His son wore an American-flag T-shirt: “Proud of History,” it read. “Proud of Country.” “There is a long, long, long tension between evangelicals and other Christians over whether the main thing churches ought to do is get people saved or serve people who are in need. And evangelicals put all of the emphasis on getting people saved,” Pastor Ruby told me. “But there was a point where I came to see that that’s not an accurate description of what Christians are supposed to be from the Bible. Jesus placed a major emphasis on justice.” “We’re taught to love everyone,” said Joshua, one of the church’s members. “That includes the ICE agents.” Donald Trump Evangelicals Haiti Ohio Religion