Evangelicals embraced Trump as one of a long line of fighters

Evidence

Perhaps Gerson hadn’t been paying attention. Trump was hardly the first man conservative evangelicals had embraced who checked off this list of qualifications. With the forces of evil allied against them, evangelicals were looking for a man who would fight for them, a man whose testosterone might lead to recklessness and excess here or there, but that was all part of the deal. Not all evangelicals were as puzzled as Gerson and Moore. “Evangelicals see what’s going down,” explained a senior advisor to Huckabee, before Huckabee—the onetime Baptist pastor—exited the race; they were looking for somebody “to be strong and stern,” somebody with an aggressive leadership style. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 587

Categorization

• XREF: This is the book’s core continuity thesis in miniature — directly relevant to the reader’s central claim that Trump support was continuity, not hypocrisy. — connects to: Leading evangelical figures framed Trump’s presidency as divinely ordained kingship — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 212
• SEED: Could be an essay angle: ‘why the puzzled-evangelical hand-wringing gets the history wrong’ — the contrite or shocked reaction itself evidences how rapidly the militant-masculinity strand became dominant.