Fumes of bewilderment are still rising above the academic swamp. Nerds like me just can’t figure it out: Why do white evangelicals love President Trump so much? Why, that is, do they not merely hold their noses and grudgingly support Trump as the least-worst candidate, or the practical-but-boorish choice, but actively embrace his leadership? New poll numbers suggest that white evangelicals are the only group that is liking Trump more and more as the scandals roll out.

Lovin the Donald.

The contradiction that seems so obvious to me is apparently a false one. To me, it would make sense if white evangelicals became disaffected with Trump’s in-your-face leadership style, with his reputed sexual dalliances, and with his hazy patriotism.

Among white evangelical respondents, there is no problem. A whopping seventy-one percent of white evangelical women like Trump. An even higher eighty-one percent of men do.

Could this be a division between “faculty-lounge” evangelicalism and the popular sort? The numbers suggest otherwise. True, college-educated white evangelicals support Trump in lower numbers, but still at a very high sixty-eight percent. Among those who have not been to college, seventy-eight percent of white evangelicals are pro-Trump.

Why so much Trumpism? One of my conservative evangelical friends offered his two cents. As he put it,

Adam, it is very simple why Trump has such wide-spread support among conservatives, we finally have a president on our side in the culture wars.