CLAYTON, United States: Churches dot the green hills of Rabun County, Georgia, where American flags flutter and God is everything — but Donald Trump is not far behind. In the southern battleground state, the faithful are well aware that the Republican former president is hardly a model Christian.
But they are quick to forgive him because he appointed three conservative-leaning justices to the Supreme Court that voted in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminating a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. Yance Thompson, a strapping 40-year-old with piercing blue eyes, lives on one of those sun-dappled green hills of the Appalachian Mountains. A Bible rests on the table of the patio of his spacious house.
He and his wife Meredith — who have 10 children, nine of them adopted — speak with one voice on faith and politics. "I believe that abortion is wrong. I would say he did a great job on that,” Yance Thompson says of Trump. "I do not like abortion at all. I feel like it’s not OK. I feel like a child is a child as soon as conception happens,” adds Meredith, 38. "I do not agree with abortion at all. It breaks my heart. It makes me very sad.”
Nearly half of Rabun County’s residents identify as evangelical Christians, and more than 70 percent call themselves religious. As a kid whose father was a preacher, Yance says with a smile, "I was always in church. I grew up in church.” "You get this real sense of community,” he said of Rabun. "You see families that have stayed in those churches, and just been faithful, for hundreds of years.” "We kind of live in a little bubble around here,” says Meredith. Both say they will vote Republican in November.
Bible Belt
Of course, Yance is not blind to some of Trump’s failings. He says the real estate mogul is "not a bad” politician — while admitting he might not be as good a Christian. In 2023, Trump was found liable for sexual assault; this past May, he was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments to a porn star on the eve of the 2016 election. He has owned casinos and been married three times.
Trump, who was targeted in an assassination attempt in July, has nevertheless played the divine intervention card on the campaign trail, saying God saved his life. That stump speech line is certain to play well among the most pious voters, including those in Rabun County in the heart of America’s Bible Belt, which runs from southeastern states like Georgia all the way out to Texas.
Some residents fly Confederate flags from their pickup trucks, often alongside a Trump 2024 sign. Trump won Georgia in 2016 and evangelical Christians were key to that victory. In Rabun, eight of every 10 people voted for him in 2020, when he lost narrowly to Joe Biden. Meredith Thompson, who runs a furniture store, went to Christian school and a Christian university. She says she prays whenever she can. Her opposition to abortion has led her to vote Republican consistently, she says. "It seems like a lot of the, you know, Democratic nature is very controversial, is very angry. You know, protesting, burning down buildings. I don’t like violence,” she says. "I lean obviously Republican. I want our freedoms to remain intact.”
‘On pins and needles’
In the town of Clayton, the Rabun County seat tucked away in the woods, Sunday is for prayer. The Baptist church in the center of town is packed — more than 400 people occupy chairs in a gym that has been turned into a place of worship, with a large screen overhead and plenty of music.
The Thompson family sits in the front row as Yance delivers a sermon. Everyone remembers what happened four years ago when Biden narrowly defeated Trump to claim Georgia — a state divided between primarily Democratic urban areas like Atlanta and conservative rural zones — by less than 12,000 votes. Trump was indicted in the state last year for trying to overturn the result.
Will Griffin, the young pastor of the Baptist church in Clayton, says people are still angry about that loss. "They feel like their rug was jerked out from under them in the last election,” Griffin says. "And so everybody is on pins and needles,” wondering what will happen this time, he said. "They’re going to vote for their candidate. And they’re going to hope and really pray that the process is faithful.” — AFP