Evangelical Support For Roy Moore Strong, But It Isn’t Absolute

In a world filled with strange political bedfellows, there are perhaps few relationships more incongruent than the one between Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for an open U.S. Senate seat in Alabama, and the evangelical, born-again Christian voters who support him. About half of the state’s voters consider themselves evangelicals.

Moore has been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women, many of whom say they were in their teens and Moore was in his 30s when he pursued romantic relationships with them. Moore is dismissive of the claims against him, saying they are retaliatory because he wants to bring God back into politics — and that end goal is enough for some voters to look the other way on the sexual misconduct allegations.

Alabama voters will choose between Moore and Democrat Doug Jones in a Dec. 12 special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Next week’s election is a high-stakes battle for Republicans, who have a narrow margin in the Senate.

The race is a toss-up in overwhelmingly conservative Alabama, according to polling average by Real Clear Politics that gives the advantage to Moore over Jones by a slim margin, 48.2 percent to 45.6 percent.

A November poll by JMC Analytics, taken after Moore was publicly accused by the women, showed his support among evangelicals had dropped, to 57 percent, down from 63 percent in October. The poll also noted that even in conservative Alabama, “the political climate has become less favorable for Republicans.”

Republicans are clearly worried. President Trump, who is also under the cloud of sexual impropriety allegations, this week endorsed Moore, citing last week’s razor-thin Senate tax bill vote as a reason the Alabama Republican should be elected. The Republican National Committee will continue to financial support the Alabama Republican Party’s efforts to elect Moore.

Moore won the favor of evangelicals in a couple of stints on the Alabama Supreme Court, and both times he was removed from office — in 2003, after he fought to keep a Ten Commandments monument at the Alabama Supreme Court building, and again this year, after he ordered the state’s probate judges to ignore a U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriages nationwide. Moore also opposes abortion and is a theocrat who believes Christianity should be established as the nation’s official religion.

“For these evangelicals, politics serves a purpose,” John Fea, professor of American history at Messiah College, told Religion News Service for an article that was published by USA Today. “It’s a means toward a more moral end: reclaiming American as a Christian country, end Roe vs. Wade and gay marriage, go back to a Christian golden age.”

Some evangelicals — notably Alabama state Auditor Jim Zeigler — look to Scripture to defend Moore.

“Take the Bible. Zachariah and Elizabeth for instance. Zachariah was extremely old to marry Elizabeth and they became the parents of John the Baptist,” Ziegler told The Washington Examiner. “Also take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus.

“There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here,” Zeigler said. “Maybe just a little bit unusual.”

Moore’s support among conservative voters who say they are guided by Christian principles at the polls is not absolute, though. Several high profile evangelicals rejected Zeigler’s rationale, including Ed Stetzer, the executive director of the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism.

Stetzer said in a tweet that Zeigler “actually presumes” Moore’s guilt, “but justifies it by pointing to the Bible. EVERY SINGLE CHRISTIAN should reject this.” Kay Warren, the wife of Saddlecreek Church pastor Rick Warren, called the argument “mind-blowing.”

Moore also has been rebuked by several evangelical women, who tend to believe the women who accused him, The Washington Post reported.

“I do think that the current political season and cultural climate has caused many women who have been abused, neglected or treated as objects rather than image bearers to feel like there are certain inappropriate behaviors that Christian men are willing to look past for the sake of the party-line,” Christian author Trillia Newbell told The Post. “No inappropriate treatment of women should be considered acceptable and okay, especially for men who know that Jesus had to die for that sin.”

Liberty University Professor Karen Swallow Prior told The Post that “evangelical women are being confronted — once again — with the poor response by the church to accusations of sexual abuse.”

“Some of them are old enough to have watched conservatives embrace the testimonies of women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault and rape decades ago, and are now witnessing a complete reversal toward Moore’s accusers,” Prior said. “Likewise, we’ve watched some in the church gleefully say ‘gotcha’ as the Hollywood sex abuse scandal has unfolded only to become silent in the present case.”

Nancy French, a four-time New York Times bestselling author who was sexually assaulted by her pastor when she was 12, called on other evangelicals to believe the women.

"When there's a credible accusation or two or three or four and we still bury our heads and cry partisanship, that is intolerable," French told Christian Broadcasting Network.

After the leak of a 2005 “Hollywood Access’ tape that purports to show Donald Trump, at the time host of “The Apprentice,” bragging about grabbing women’s genitals, French wrote in an essay for The Washington Post that “Republicans who have lamented the Clintonian proclivity to malign women are now defending the same activities because … well, they idolize power or their own strategic cleverness. Trump, like the preacher, is too important to abandon. We have become what we despised.”

French wrote a similar essay for The Post after Moore’s accusers went public.

Beth Moore (no relation to the candidate), another sexual abuse survivor and a Bible study leader, tweeted: “This idea that God puts up with secret sins from His servants for the greater good is a total crock. He waits, warns, waits, warns then comes for us with a blazing bulldozer. I know because Scripture says. I know because I’ve experienced it. God will not be mocked.”

And though a crisis of conscience may keep some evangelical voters at home Tuesday, those who do show up at the polls are likely to support Moore, John C. Green, a political science professor and director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, told Religion News Service.

“When (people) face really tough choices, the tie-breaker will be partisanship,” he said. “Sometimes that’s just instinctive. It can also be cognitive. They’ll say, ‘Jones is a better candidate, but he’ll go to Washington and caucus with the liberals,’ or ‘Moore may be a flawed human being but he’ll be a Republican vote….Their religious values and their political views are strongly linked.”

Also See: Trump On Moore: We Don't Want A Liberal Democrat

AP Photo/Brynn Anderson