Evangelicals Without Standards

Lanny Davis must be dizzy from the déjà vu.

Davis was a famously stalwart defender of Bill Clinton during the scandals of the 1990s. Little did he know that the excuses and rationalizations made for Clinton then would be repurposed by some of Clinton's harshest and most moralistic critics for a Republican presidential nominee.

Such are the gymnastics that Donald Trump requires of his most loyal evangelical backers. One day, historians will puzzle over how a man representing the mores of a debased celebrity culture became not just the nominee of the Republican Party, but the candidate of the religious right. After the "Access Hollywood" tape emerged of Trump bragging about an act of attempted adultery and getting away with groping women, representatives of "values voters" jumped most eagerly to his defense.

In a weird and depressing year, this has to rank among the strangest and most dispiriting phenomena. The salt has lost its savor as the price of a place at the table on the Trump Train.

The leading evangelical defender of Trump is vice presidential nominee Mike Pence, who could sound like he's delivering a sermon when ordering a cup of coffee. The first step in Pence's highly principled, faith-based testimonial for Trump was to wait to see how he did in the second presidential debate-in case Trump blew himself up and Pence had to craft a highly principled, faith-based way off the ticket. The second step was to pretend as though a penitent Trump was Henry IV standing barefoot in the snow begging forgiveness.

Pence said it takes a "big"-not to mention, broad-shouldered-man "to know when he is wrong." As if it were a difficult call whether Trump was wrong to try to seduce a married woman or, as he put it, "move on her like a bitch." According to Pence, "My running mate showed humility, showed what was in his heart to the American people." Actually, Trump expressed the minimum remorse possible.

When the tape first surfaced last Friday afternoon, Trump's reaction wasn't contrite at all. He gave a pro forma "if anyone was offended" apology and slammed Bill Clinton for saying far worse things to him on the golf course. It wasn't until after midnight that his aides extracted from him a fuller apology in a video, although it included another denunciation of Bill Clinton.

Throughout, Trump gave off a sense of underlying anger at being caught. Bill Clinton sounded exactly the same way in the 1990s when he could no longer deny his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Not surprisingly, Trump was in Clinton's camp back in the day (their "locker-room talk" together must have indeed been something to behold). Trump said at the time that Clinton's conduct was no big deal and-true to form-dismissed the women he preyed on as unattractive.

Clinton's defenders used to wheel out the King David defense, and Trump supporters have resorted to it in recent days. It is true that the 10th century B.C. king of the Israelites committed adultery-and in truly spectacular fashion. He impregnated Bathsheba, got her husband killed to avoid discovery and then married her. A hot mic in King David's court might have made Trump blush. But this story doesn't end well-the consequence of David's sin was deadly strife in his family and kingdom.

Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, likes the King David comparison, which he floated even before the release of the tape. Falwell endorsed Trump in the primaries, apparently on the counterintuitive theory that the man with the lowest character in the field who had the least genuine conviction on social-conservative issues would best serve the interests of the religious right. Falwell's take on the tape is that its emergence might be a conspiracy of the GOP establishment, which is a little like blaming King David's scandal on a honey trap set up by the Ammonites.

The other common line of Clinton and Trump defenders is that we are all sinners.

This is, of course, profoundly true. And people do change. But there is zero evidence that Trump has undergone any transformation. Despite all the hours spent with leaders of the religious right, Trump evidently still doesn't have the slightest inkling that Christians aren't supposed to be vindictive, dishonest, insulting, bullying, greedy or boastful, among other things.

All this said, Jerry Falwell Jr. and Co. shouldn't be taken for the entirety of the evangelical world. Christianity Today and World magazine, major organs of evangelical opinion, have blasted Trump. Beth Moore, a prominent Christian author and speaker, has expressed dismay at evangelical leaders giving Trump a pass. Wayne Grudem, an influential theologian who wrote a controversial apologia for Trump a few months ago, has recanted.

The prominent evangelicals sticking by Trump believe that he would be better on the issues-especially Supreme Court nominees and religious liberty-than Hillary Clinton would be. This is a reasonable position, although very few Trump supporters can remain clear-eyed about him. Subtly and often not so subtly, they find themselves defending the indefensible because forthrightly acknowledging all of Trump's faults makes backing him so awkward. They lower their standards and cede ground to the culture in a way they never would have imagined even a year ago.

And they are doing it for a campaign that is sinking, more than anything else, from the character flaws of the candidate. It would be a perfect morality tale for the religious right-if so many of its leaders weren't implicated in it.