Why White Evangelicals Abandoned Their Principles for Trump

In a new cover story for the Atlantic, the conservative commentator Michael Gerson examines why America's white evangelicals have gone all in for a president that you might have once thought they would find grotesque. Despite his terrible conduct toward women, his racism, and his disregard for basic human decency, Donald Trump has managed to convince many evangelicals that he will protect what they see as their endangered status in modern-day America. He has also delivered to them a policy agenda rich in social conservativism. Gerson, a harsh Trump critic, looks at the complex history of America's evangelical communities, and comes to the conclusion that the embrace of Trump will ultimately be corrupting and catastrophic. As he writes, “This is the result when Christians become one interest group among many, scrambling for benefits at the expense of others rather than seeking the welfare of the whole. Christianity is love of neighbor, or it has lost its way. And this sets an urgent task for evangelicals: to rescue their faith from its worst leaders.”