Trump and the Exceptions of American Evangelicalism

Not long ago, these evangelicals told us that a candidate’s being a Christian was important to them, so they expressed reservations about Mitt Romney, a faithful Mormon who was thus beyond the pale for some evangelicals — the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not, in their lexicon, a Church of Jesus Christ at all, but a cultic counterfeit of the true faith. These evangelicals told us that being a person of good moral character was important, so they vehemently opposed Bill Clinton as a mendacious adulterer — and then Hillary Clinton as, among other faults, his enabling wife and partner in crime.