The praise music is blasting, and so is the air conditioning, as 50 or so people gather for Sunday morning service in the small worship hall of Freedom Church Assembly of God in Fredericksburg, Virginia. It is a casual affair; I’m wearing jeans but my accompanying blazer makes me a bit overdressed in a group where cargo shorts and Hawaiian shirts are the prevailing sartorial choice, at least for the men. Pastor Steve Weber is preaching today about service: service to God, service to the community, even service to the church (he needs volunteers to help mow the broad lawn that surrounds the small church).

Politics never enters Pastor Steve’s sermon and it seems distant this blazing-hot Sunday morning. But in truth, politics is never that far away in Donald Trump’s America. Despite speculation that evangelicals would have a hard time supporting a thrice-married locker-room jockey who bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy” and who had in the past supported abortion rights, white evangelicals rallied to Trump as they had to with Republican presidential candidates before, breaking 80-20 for him in 2016. The evangelical vote was critical to Trump’s victory, and will be a factor in any Republican success in 2018 or 2020.

To be fair, the evangelical support for Trump has always been a bit equivocal, at least among the seriously religious. I’ve visited Freedom Church a number of times over the past few years, and everyone I have met there supported Trump, but, with only one exception that I can remember, only as a fallback after their first or second or even third preferred candidate (think Ben Carson or Ted Cruz) dropped out of the race. They voted for him in the general election because he seemed a better bet on the issues that most mattered to them, and because he was the “lesser of two evils,” a phrase that was independently repeated to me time and time again.

I came back to Freedom Church this past Sunday to see whether anything had changed, whether Trump’s family-separation policy at the border, his warm embrace of North Korea (the country rated most hostile to Christians), or simply 18 months of punishing headlines had engendered any buyer’s remorse. I wasn’t expecting much change: John Inazu, a professor at Washington University School of Law and a board member of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, a national evangelical college ministry, had already braced me with his observation that “there has not been a ton of movement” and that increasingly white evangelicals, like virtually all identity groups, have retreated into their political foxholes. Recent polling backs him up: according to an April poll from the Public Religion Research Institute, 75 percent of white evangelicals hold a positive view of Trump’s performance, compared to only 22 percent that disapprove.

The continued support for Trump was borne out in my morning at Freedom Church. Jeff Thompson, an accountant and comptroller, tells me of his continuing, if not entirely enthusiastic, support for Trump. Thompson gives him modest marks for doing an “O.K. job,” but it is clear that Trump’s judicial appointments and the overall success of the economy score points with him. The things that drew praise in the past continue to draw support in the congregation: Trump’s volubility on economic issues and the positive functioning of the American economy, his willingness to dispense with political traditions and courtesies, including sticking it to the mainstream media that many view with suspicion, and most of all, his ability to meet his end of the bargain on key social issues like abortion.

Trump prays with pastors during a visit to the International Church of Las Vegas, October 5, 2016. By Evan Vucci/AP/REX/Shutterstock.

It is not surprising that support for Trump remains steady. It is consistent with the overall political entrenchment in the country, and Democrats, in rapidly decreasing numbers, offer few palatable alternatives for social conservatives. But there are some cracks in the facade. Everyone I interviewed for this article expressed some misgivings about Trump’s personal actions, ranging from exasperation at his Twitter habit to the more comprehensive indictment that “we don’t like him [as a person] and don’t want to be around him.” Caridad Eshevarria, a young evangelical from Eastern Kentucky, complained that Trump’s boastfulness and itchy Twitter fingers were damaging America’s global reputation, turning us into a “quack nation.” If Freedom Church is any indication, Trump retains the votes of many evangelicals, but certainly not their hearts.