Why Many Evangelicals Support Donald Trump

[markomalley]

From the Federalist:

With his presidential hopes on the line, Ted Cruz and his allies called again on a key constituency within Indiana’s GOP electorate: evangelicals. They were ironically the very same constituency that had frustrated his campaign in the Southern primaries. Despite the joint attempts of Cruz’s evangelist father, Glenn Beck’s call for a time of prayer and fasting, and the support of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Cruz’s efforts fell well short of winning the Hoosier state.

As in many other primaries in the months prior, Hoosier evangelicals as a whole preferred Donald Trump over Cruz. Indiana evangelicals—who represented 60 percent of the GOP electorate—gave more than 50 percent of their votes to Trump, which helped him win all the state’s 57 delegate votes. By the end of the night, Cruz had bowed out of the race, with Kasich following the next day, leaving the path to the GOP nomination secured for Trump.

(snip)

Perhaps this support for Trump is not so surprising after all. The results we have seen this primary season may be precisely because of and not in spite of what is going on in our churches each week. We are most likely observing the product of bifurcated lives driven by an erroneous secular-sacred dichotomy that evangelicals have imbibed for years.

The rest of the piece is very enlightening.