A recent carefully choreographed meeting between Mr. Trump and evangelical leaders provided a window into the ways many are trying to square this circle. Most notably, James C. Dobson, the founder and former director of Focus on the Family — who remains an influential figure in conservative Christian circles — claimed that he had secondhand knowledge that Mr. Trump had recently come “to accept a relationship with Christ” and that Mr. Trump should be “cut some slack” as “a baby Christian.”
The former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister whose daughter, Sarah, is a senior adviser to Mr. Trump, checked the “family values” box by testifying to Mr. Trump’s closeness to his adult children. Mr. Huckabee described their relationship as “one of the most admirable I’ve ever seen from any father with children.”
But while Mr. Dobson and Mr. Huckabee strive to help evangelicals justify their default support of the Republican candidate, the Rev. Robert Jeffress, the influential senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas and a prominent member of Mr. Trump’s evangelical advisory committee, provided a more utilitarian motive for backing Mr. Trump for president. Rather than trying to defend Mr. Trump’s Christian credentials, Mr. Jeffress bluntly said that in the face of perceived threats facing evangelicals, “I want the meanest, toughest, son-of-a-you-know-what I can find in that role, and I think that’s where many evangelicals are.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/11/opinion/campaign-stops/the-evangelicals-and-the-great-trump-hope.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1
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