TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — As an evangelical Christian, an Alabamian and a Republican, I’m ashamed of Roy Moore and upset that so many people are determined to defend him against sexual assault allegations, no matter what. I’m even more bothered, however, by what Mr. Moore’s popularity says about the sorry state of evangelical Christianity.

Evangelicalism is a Christian movement committed to the authority of the Bible, the necessity of personal conversion and evangelism and the exaltation of Jesus Christ, especially his death on the cross. (I’m paraphrasing a definition offered by the British theologian Alister McGrath.)

Evangelicals believe, among other things, that Jesus offered himself as a “full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice” for the sins of the world. After his resurrection, he ascended into heaven, and he will come again to judge the living and the dead, and he will reign “forever and ever.”

What does this have to with Roy Moore, the Republican running for Senate in Alabama?

To begin with, sin is a problem from which no one is exempt. If God’s love required the suffering and death of the Son of God in order to redeem us, we should not underestimate the consequences of sin in our own lives. The world is not divided into “good people” and “bad people”; to quote St. Paul, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Or, as the Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, “the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts.”