Item one — Andy Crouch, the executive editor of Christianity Today, one of the nation’s leading Christian magazines, penned a powerful essay that excoriates Trump in the strongest terms:

Indeed, there is hardly any public person in America today who has more exemplified the “earthly nature” (“flesh” in the King James and the literal Greek) that Paul urges the Colossians to shed: “sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry” (3:5). This is an incredibly apt summary of Trump’s life to date. Idolatry, greed, and sexual immorality are intertwined in individual lives and whole societies. Sexuality is designed to be properly ordered within marriage, a relationship marked by covenant faithfulness and profound self-giving and sacrifice. To indulge in sexual immorality is to make oneself and one’s desires an idol. That Trump has been, his whole adult life, an idolater of this sort, and a singularly unrepentant one, should have been clear to everyone. And therefore it is completely consistent that Trump is an idolater in many other ways. He has given no evidence of humility or dependence on others, let alone on God his Maker and Judge. He wantonly celebrates strongmen and takes every opportunity to humiliate and demean the vulnerable. He shows no curiosity or capacity to learn. He is, in short, the very embodiment of what the Bible calls a fool.


Item two — writing at World, another influential Christian journal, Marvin Olasky and the editors have declared that Trump is unfit for power and have asked him to step down:

We know that many Christians, including some of our readers, will say that given the judicial stakes it’s wrong this year to draw a line in the sand. Our call for a different Republican candidate will lose us some readers and donors. But, standing before God, we cannot say that what WORLD argued concerning a Democrat in 1998 should not apply to a Republican in 2016. As the Clinton precedent shows, we set the stage for even worse behavior when we ignore blatant offenses. Our journalistic task is to call powerful people to account, regardless of their party, regardless of the politics of the moment. We don’t know if God will rescue our nation from the pit into which our politics have fallen. We don’t know if He will rescue WORLD from the ire some Trump supporters will feel. We hope and pray that He will—but if He doesn’t, He is still God, holding the future of individuals and nations in His hands. May His name be praised forever and ever.


Item three — Beth Moore, a Christian author and speaker far more prominent and popular than the vast majority of Trump’s Evangelical endorsers, has apparently had enough:

“I’m one among many women sexually abused, misused, stared down, heckled, talked naughty to. Like we liked it. We didn’t. We’re tired of it,” Moore said. She also had a word about evangelical leaders still supporting Trump: “Try to absorb how acceptable the disesteem and objectifying of women has been when some Christian leaders don’t think it’s that big a deal.”

Item four — According to Barna Research Group, while Evangelicals still overwhelmingly prefer Trump over Clinton (55 percent to a tiny 2 percent), large numbers are now supporting neither Trump nor Clinton:

“Although Trump has a huge lead over Clinton among evangelicals, the most noteworthy finding in this regard is that more than four out of ten evangelicals currently refuse to vote for either of those two candidates. Nearly three out of ten are presently undecided, making them the largest block of undecided votes still up for grabs. One out of eight evangelicals plan to protest the quality of the major party candidates by voting for a third-party or independent candidate. This behavior by evangelicals is unique over the course of the last nine election cycles.”

Item five — the GOP in Tennessee, one of the nation’s most Evangelical states, is telling votes to “vote their conscience:”

“We’re encouraging people to vote their conscience,” Brent Leatherwood with the Tennessee Republican Party said in a statement to NewsChannel 5. “We view our job as one to continue the advance of the conservative cause by defeating Democrats. So we encourage Tennesseans to vote consistent with their conservative convictions.” The Tennessee GOP stopped short of specifically asking voters to pick Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, for president. Cruz eventually reversed his decision, and stated he will be voting for Trump.


I fully expect that Evangelicals who vote for president will overwhelmingly choose Trump over Clinton, but there is dissent in the ranks — strong dissent — and for the first time since the GOP convention it’s now an open question whether Evangelicals will fall in line in anywhere close to the numbers sufficient to make Trump competitive. We’ll see if their will holds, but it appears that increasing numbers of people of faith are looking at two corrupt candidates and deciding that neither one will advance to power through their support.