The ‘true evangelical’ defense was definitional gerrymandering that polls refuted

Evidence

Still, the narrative of “true evangelicals” resisting Trump endured among establishment types. Outside critics pushed back, accusing defenders of “respectable evangelicalism” of “evangelical gerrymandering”—of tinkering with definitions in order to avoid asking hard questions about the nature of their own movement, even as the movement “they helped conjure burns down the country.” Subsequent polls offered little support for claims that “real evangelicals” weren’t true supporters; one hundred days into Trump’s presidency, 80 percent of churchgoing white evangelicals still approved of Trump (a figure that was slightly higher than that for evangelicals who attended less frequently). — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 602

Categorization

• DEFINE: The term ‘evangelical gerrymandering’ names the elite strategy of redefining the category to avoid confronting the movement’s actual composition.