“There's a self-identifying factor these new-school evangelicals have with Donald Trump”

With the state’s primary just four days away, Trump is reaching out to new-school evangelicals, whose pastors become celebrities and best-selling authors and whose church choirs can rise to become chart-topping Christian pop-rock bands.
In new-school churches, altars are often replaced by elaborate stages with light shows that rival backdrops from American Idol performances. Holy water fountains are converted into jacuzzi-sized baptism pools. For the purveyors of this flashier packaging of Christianity, it’s all part of an effort to shepherd disenfranchised Christians back to Jesus, much in the same way that Trump is able to convert his own celebrityhood and financial success into a political following that attracts first-time voters.

“There’s a self-identifying factor these new-school evangelicals have with Donald Trump,” said Dean Nelson, chairman of the Douglass Leadership Institute, a socially conservative Christian coalition network based in Washington that is not affiliated with any candidate.