A conservative Northern Virginia pastor was holding court with his flock in the narthex of the church. This was in pre-pandemic times, before masks, social distancing, and the shift of most large worship services to online video platforms such as Zoom. “I don’t know that I’d want to have President Trump over for dinner,” he said, “but he has delivered on the issues as well or better than any Republican president in my lifetime.”

This is a common theme among conservative Christians in an election year in which little else appears to be going Trump’s way. They put their faith in a brash New York businessman and reality TV star. When they judge him by the normal standards they apply to Republican politicians — pro-life on abortion, sympathetic to religious liberty, and now with a proven track record of nominating and securing the confirmation of a large number of conservative judges — he has mostly delivered. Although a subset of evangelical Protestant dissenters try to persuade their co-religionists to look at other factors where Trump may be found wanting, this voting bloc seems poised to support the president overwhelmingly once again over Democratic challenger Joe Biden.