The book—which covers much more than sexual-harassment scandals, including everything from Margaret Sanger’s legacy at Planned Parenthood to Alfred Kinsey’s obsession with clergy—comes out in December. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Emma Green: What is up with evangelicals justifying Roy Moore assaulting a 14-year-old as a 30-something?

Marie Griffith: I think what we’re seeing is an extreme politicization of Christianity. It almost does not feel like the evangelical tradition of a generation ago. I don’t want to overstate that, of course—there’s plenty that’s still evangelicalism. But it has become so focused on power.

It looks like hypocrisy to the outside world. I’m not sure I quite see it as hypocrisy, but I do see it as a real politicization of the tradition.

Green: Sexual harassment has long been used as a political tool—just take the cases of Paula Jones and Anita Hill. How did harassment become so weaponized?

Griffith: Conservative Christians rallied around Clarence Thomas and suggested there was nothing believable about Anita Hill’s charges. But with Paula Jones, they came to her defense, legally and financially. Even without judging the truth or falsity of either claim, you can see that a political reaction was at work.

Green: I’ve been thinking a lot about which women’s stories are considered legitimate. Anita Hill was part of the Christian world—she was on faculty at Oral Roberts University. And yet there was a wholesale effort to delegitimize what she was saying.

The women in Alabama who have accused Roy Moore are probably also fairly conservative, and might be Christians. Why are some claims doubted and systematically undermined by conservatives, even when they’re made by Christian women?

Griffith: Maybe it really does come down, even unconsciously, to politics. I hate to make people sound so calculating, but in some ways, that is what it seems.

Those who were already supportive of Clarence Thomas were primed not to believe in any sort of moral failing. By the time Hill’s story became public and widely known, there had already been great controversy over his nomination and very strong support coming from the conservative Christian world. There wasn’t a frame in that world except to disbelieve the story she told.

On the other hand, with Paula Jones, when her story came to light, there was already tremendous hatred of Bill Clinton, and of Hillary Clinton, too, in those same conservative Christian circles. So they’re primed to believe a story from their hatred of him.

In some ways, we forget how primed we are, politically, to believe or disbelieve a story depending on who is telling it.

Green: How did sexual politics become so central to religious discourse in the United States? Why do we have such an obsession with sexual morality?