The Atlantic

Christian Support for Roy Moore ‘Looks Like Hypocrisy to the Outside World’

Recent allegations against the aspiring Alabama senator fit a long and complicated history of religious debates about sex.
Source: Marvin Gentry

Before this month, Roy Moore was best known nationally for refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama state supreme-court building. Now, the aspiring senator is accused of hitting on teens at an Alabama mall and inappropriately touching a 14-year-old girl.

These allegations may be the end of Moore. Congressional Republicans have started disowning him, and he’s tentatively dropping in state polls. But it’s possible that the reputation of evangelical Christians will also suffer. Despite condemnations from a number of nationally prominent Christian leaders and a few in Alabama, many of the state’s faithful continue to back the controversial candidate.

To outsiders, the support might seem like a stark contradiction in values. Even to insiders, it can seem that way. “I’m … bothered,” William S. Brewbaker III, a law professor at the University of Alabama, in , “by what Mr. Moore’s popularity

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