The peculiar potency of American evangelicalism came home to me about nine years ago, in a one-two-punch combination. In 2014 my wife died young, of cancer; during her illness and afterward, the people of our church in Alabama rescued us daily. They fed our girls, propped me up, and carried us on a tide of love. They saved us. This, I thought, is true Christ-likeness.
Soon afterward I threw myself into work, covering the rise in American politics of a new figure: Donald J. Trump. On the campaign trail I watched him whip crowds into snarling, chanting anger. And back home the people I knew best transformed into something unrecognizable. The principles they had taught me in a thousand Sunday-school lessons—compassion, sacrifice, humility, honesty, kindness—all fell away in favor of one Christian-nationalist aim: winning.
