Evangelicals Hate Stormy Daniels But Love Trump. Here’s Why.

He’s been found liable for committing sexual abuse. He’s bragged about grabbing women by the you-know-what. He’s in the middle of a court case over paying hush money to a porn star with whom he allegedly cheated on his wife — the third woman he’s married. And he’s the de facto leader of American evangelicalism.

How could Christians embrace a leader who has seemingly treated half the “thou shalt nots” in the Bible as a challenge? The typical answer is that it’s a matter of political convenience. Donald Trump may not be a choir boy, the conventional wisdom suggests, but he offers Christians wins on socially conservative policies, and he appointed Supreme Court justices who delivered for evangelicals by overturning Roe v. Wade.

But anyone who’s so much as set foot in an evangelical church over the last eight years knows that Christians don’t describe Trump as an unfortunate necessity, but a literal God-send. Political convenience alone doesn’t explain that.

Sex might.

According to Samuel L. Perry, a sociologist of religion who has written several books on conservative Christianity including Addicted to Lust: Pornography in the Lives of Conservative Protestants, Trump’s sinful behavior may actually reinforce his support among at least some evangelicals.

Trump’s sexual misdeeds may break religious doctrine, Perry says, but they also affirm his masculinity — at least in the evangelical view. They demonstrate that Trump is a virile, red-blooded man, afflicted by God — like all “real men” — with lust. Not just lust for sex, Perry says, but for power. And much like Biblical warriors who themselves struggled with sexual temptation, Trump can wield that power to lead the faithful to glory.

In an interview for POLITICO Magazine, Perry spoke about how evangelical ideas about masculinity, pornography and sexuality help explain the most unusual but politically potent alliance in modern politics.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How do you see evangelical theology and views of masculinity and sexuality impacting support for Trump?

In the Old Testament, you have these examples of flawed but wild and effective warriors for the Lord’s work, who also happen to be womanizers. Of course, you’ve got David, who is somebody who’s celebrated as the leader of Israel, who has his affair with Bathsheba. You’ve got Solomon, who has 1,000 concubines. But then you also have this character of Samson. I actually think Samson is the best metaphor for Trump.

Samson is just a full-time ass kicker. He’s this rampaging wild man who is like the John Wick of killing Philistines. That’s his favorite thing to do. His other favorite thing to do is to visit prostitutes, and his downfall ends up being this prostitute, Delilah. But that is often glossed over within the evangelical space — he’s still talked about as a hero, because God used him to fight the enemies of his people, and to do it fearlessly and even happily. So there was plenty of precedent in evangelical readings of the Old Testament to celebrate flawed but effective leaders who fail sexually. Maybe they aren’t representative of the best sexual morals, but God used them, and we still celebrate them as heroes.

Samson is another example, though, of something else. Samson is also thought of as this uber-masculine hero: He’s big, and he’s strong, and the representations of Samson are of this hyper-masculine guy. And part of that is his huge and enormous sexual appetites. The guy was the embodiment of physical superiority, and that includes his sexual superiority as well.

So Samson’s sexual appetites are sinful, but they’re also part of what makes him a strong man. Is sexual temptation seen as a fundamental part of the male evangelical experience?

In my research, I found that evangelicals tend to see sexual temptation as just a normal part of being a Christian man — that God gave men tremendous sexual appetites because he wanted them to be leaders and initiators and people who take charge. And this isn’t just about sexuality; this is about every area of life. This is what’s called complementarianism, that the ultimate male goal is to lead — in terms of politics, is to lead, in terms of moral authority, is to lead, and also in terms of sexual initiation. And that comes with a risk of those appetites being too strong, and somebody being overcome by their own sexual temptation — like a Samson.

So in Trump, you’ve got this guy who, yes, he has failed sexually. He has a history of being a womanizer. The Stormy Daniels thing is something that reflects poorly on him. And yet, it also reflects positively on his masculinity. Because this guy, he’s a man’s man. This guy is an initiator, he goes after what he wants. He’s going after women, and he now has a supermodel wife who looks like the embodiment of a kind of “trophy wife.” So Trump is representative of a kind of masculinity that is so masculine that his sexual appetites cannot be contained. That’s almost a good sign. In other words, he’s not Mike Pence — a kind of asexual, Ned Flanders kind of Christian that is effete and ineffective. No, Trump is power personified. He is a warrior. And with that comes all of the temptations of being a warrior.

What are some ways you see these gendered dynamics playing out in evangelical spaces?

The classic example — and this is such a cliche that we in evangelical spaces often joke about it — but you have the insecure youth pastor who’s getting up in front of the church or getting up in front of his students and says, “Hey, at the back, check out my smokin’ hot wife, Tiffany,” or whatever. And it’s almost inviting you to imagine him having sex with this woman. And that is an example of what I’m talking about, that a Christian man, a leader, would be the one who gets to have sex with hot ladies. And that is a benefit of being the kind of man that God wants you to be.

One response that we’ve seen in evangelical spaces is the phenomenon of the “tradwife.” So the tradwife movement, you see social-media influencers embracing this idea of Godly femininity. And they’re going whole hog into this — baking bread and sewing clothes and really leaning into this identity of, “My man is the strong man, and he is the leader of our home. And even though I’m a social media influencer who is now making YouTube videos making money from that, let me just stress that I am a submissive wife and he is the strong, masculine husband who leads our home and our house spiritually.”

I think this is a response to a perceived loss of masculinity, of the idea that Christian men are no longer viewed as strong warrior-soldiers, that they are people who are passive and nice guys. That’s where you have pastors like Mark Driscoll, who was able to find that niche. He looked like a weightlifter. He always talked about how, in his former life as a non-Christian, he would beat people up. And he carried that persona: He was a tough guy, some kind of badass. He wore leather jackets and he cussed all the time. And with that, he was able to put on this persona of, Christians are tough; Christians are wild. Even before Trump, I think Driscoll was actually the example of what would eventually be the kind of masculinity Trump would sell — an untamable, virile leader who is flawed but gets the job done.

What role does pornography play in evangelical communities?

They call it a cancer — that’s a really common word they use for it. And some of them would say it’s the most dangerous threat to the church in history, primarily because of the way it fosters addiction among young people. This is in their words; there’s a lot of debate in the scientific community about the extent to which pornography is addictive. As somebody who’s spent a lot of time researching these things, I’m more inclined to feel that pornography is actually just fuel for a masturbation habit that is developed at young ages — it just carries on, and pornography just happens to be that visual stimulus that people seek out. It’s readily available and convenient. But among evangelicals, pornography use is thought of like heroin: It causes addiction, it ruins people’s lives, it ruins their marriages.

And yet, at the same time, it is something that is reflective of just being a natural man, being a red-blooded male that God made to initiate sexually. And so if you were to enter into a men’s accountability group or some kind of community group at an evangelical church, and you were to say, “You know what, guys, I don’t really understand where you’re coming from: I’ve never struggled with this temptation. I’ve never looked at porn. I’ve never masturbated. I’ve never been attracted to that at all. And, frankly, y’all are weird.” They would look at you as if you are the weird one. Like, “What is wrong with you? Are you asexual? Are you a closeted homosexual? Like, is this something that you are not attracted to women?” Because it’s such a common part of evangelical male life to struggle and fight against lust and sexual sin.

In that sense, Trump’s affair with Stormy Daniels makes him relatable. Because the battle with lust is something that every Christian man is supposed to deal with.

They’re supposed to be pursuing sex; God made them to do that so that they can make more babies — arrows in the warriors’ quiver for the kingdom.

The flip side of that — when women exercise any kind of sexual agency, they are in fact acting outside of the balance that God created for them. Women are designed to be sexual responders; they’re not supposed to be initiators. One of the things that I found in interviewing so many women for this book, Addicted to Lust, was that when evangelical women struggled with sexual sin — say, watching pornography or masturbating, those kinds of things — they experienced this as a kind of double shame. One of the shames was failing sexually and watching pornography or masturbating. But the other part of it was what is called “sinning against your gender,” which is the idea that, “I’m weird for wanting this, I’m weird for being turned on visually, weird for liking sex and initiating that.”

So Stormy Daniels and any other women who are involved in these kinds of affairs are usually not given the benefit of the doubt.

How do evangelical leaders and institutions treat women who are cast in this Delilah role?

If you follow the narratives with, say, the Southern Baptist sex scandals that have come out within the last few years, often the counter-narrative that I see, at least on social media and among some Christian right journalists, is to ask, “Well, what was the woman’s role in this?” The Christian right is now so partisan, that any of the darlings of the left — like minorities who are harmed in situations of police brutality, or women who are the victims of sexual assault — the first impulse on the Christian right is to say, “Well, what did they do? Did they have it coming? Did they ask for it? Were they initiating this in some way? Are they lying just to get some godly person in trouble? Are they lying to get the cops in trouble, to get a pastor in trouble?” There is an evangelical suspicion, or a Christian right suspicion, of women involved in these kinds of sexual affairs — that they are probably asking for it, probably tempting, probably not helping the situation, certainly not victims.

Whereas the men in this equation just succumbed to temptation and should be defended or redeemed.

Absolutely. In my book, I talk about how the language of addiction is actually a way that evangelical men can let themselves off the hook. Because when you say that I’m addicted, it creates a rhetorical distance between you and the sexual sin itself. It’s not you making conscious decisions every day to look at pornography. What am I supposed to do? I’m addicted.

It goes even further than this. When you say things like, “I’m enslaved.” That’s a common one. When you say, “I’m enslaved to porn,” or, “I’m enslaved to sexual sin.” You don’t have any agency at that point. It’s involuntary. Like all sin slaves, I’ve been trapped, I’ve been ensnared. It’s like this thing that’s outside of you — the devil or pornography or some temptress or whatever — captured you and dragged you off. And now you’re just a slave to that sexual sin. And it’s a way that you can redeem that sin in a way that sounds more forgivable. This is a common rhetorical move to make a sexual sin that is completely volitional, and very much habitual, conscious and oftentimes very planned out — you can make it seem more, “Oh, it’s kind of accidental.” It’s not something that reflects the character of that person.

Do you think all this has changed evangelicals’ political priorities?

What really matters is the culture war. It’s not family values, unless it’s like anti-LGBTQ values. It’s not being a good neighbor.

Mike Johnson, the House leader, is kind of a dinosaur when it comes to his representation of what a conservative Christian looks like. Because Johnson, he talks in this traditional Southern Baptist style — a good looking, clean-cut guy who would have been a great pastor back in 1995. He’s an old-school throwback to that kind of language and rhetoric about Christian character and leadership.

But that’s not what conservative Christianity looks like anymore. Now, conservative Christianity looks like Trump and his supporters. I think that is changing the character of American evangelicalism. Mike Johnson is a thing of the past and really doesn’t exercise any kind of political leadership in evangelical space. What exercises leadership in evangelical space now is the cultural warrior.

Does that emphasis on tough-guy politics and the sense among conservative Christians that they are under threat mean that the standard for religious leaders is lower — we don’t need you to be perfect, just on our side??

It used to be, when I was in college, you had people like Robert Jeffress, who would have called Catholics and Mormons a cult, and that our number-one task was to try to convert and oppose this kind of influence. And now you’d have those same kinds of religious leaders saying that these are our allies, they’re on the team with us, we’re fighting for family values and freedom and faith and religious liberty. That makes you Christian enough. Trump is an example of that. Could you really nail somebody down and say, hey, Trump never goes to church. Look at the way he talks, look at the way he reacts to people. Has he ever confessed sins? Anything? They would probably say no. But he fights for our values. And honestly, that makes him Christian enough.