For Evangelicals, A Year Of Reckoning On Sexual Sin And Support For Donald Trump
Evangelicals in 2018 had to defend their views on sexual sin, given their willingness to overlook Donald Trump's infidelity and reports of sexual misconduct by their own pastors.
Americans in 2018 got an overdose of stories about marital unfaithfulness. President Donald Trump was accused of making hush payments to at least two women with whom he allegedly had affairs, and the #MeToo movement highlighted sexual misconduct at all layers of U.S. society.
For conservative Christians, such stories were especially disturbing.
"Evangelical Protestants very much subscribe to the idea that sexual sin is the mother of all sin," says Samuel Perry, a sociologist of religion who trained at an evangelical seminary. "It is the most dirty, the most damning, the most shameful."
Despite that reputation, evangelicals
