Traditionally, Christianity views happiness as a state not guaranteed during earthly life, but promised to Christians in the afterlife. Myriad Old Testament stories make this traditional view clear, from the fall of Adam and Eve to the travails of Job. In the New Testament, the Beatitudes of Jesus's Sermon on the Mount emphasize the blessings to come in the next life and the suffering to be found on earth. Every tradition has a different interpretation of these and other biblical discussions of happiness, but earthly life as suffering tends to be a prominent theme in many Christian understandings. How do contemporary evangelicals— the largest religious group in the United States and a rapidly growing force globally— conceptualize happiness?

This question holds special significance for contemporary American politics because of the strong evangelical support for President Donald Trump. But what connection is there, if any, between evangelical views of happiness and the evangelical political orientation? Alongside a Catholic priest and a Jewish rabbi, four evangelical pastors presided over the Trump inauguration in January 2017: Pentecostal televangelist Paula White- Cain, evangelist and missionary Franklin Graham, pastor and president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership council Samuel Rodriguez, Jr. and Pentecostal Bishop Wayne T. Jackson. If anything, the inaugural invocation and benediction prayers were a high- visibility display of the diversity of evangelical belief in general and views of happiness specifically. The views expressed in [the] inaugural prayers included: the prosperity gospel (White- Cain), the blessing of the poor and humble found in the Beatitudes (Rodriguez), the connection between earthly and divine authority (Graham) and unity among Americans through an allusion to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s recitation of the gospel song “we shall overcome” at his final sermon before he was assassinated (Jackson, 2017). While the prosperity gospel— which sees financial prosperity as a sign of God's blessing (Balmer, 2002)— as well as the connection between divine authority and earthly authority might seem most in line with Trump's political vision, the evangelical movement does not necessarily share the views expressed by the pastors who read at the inauguration.