One of the most obscene spectacles of the Trump presidency has been that of evangelical pastors crowding round him to give him their blessing. But this is only a very public acknowledgement that he is very much their man.
The 81 percent of white evangelical Christians, who made up a third of those voting for him, effectively put him in the White House. Not only did a large majority of evangelical Christians vote for him, but tens of thousands of them actively campaigned for him.
How did they come to support an individual as saturated in sin as Trump? A bullying sexual predator and misogynist, a crook and a conman, a racist and an authoritarian, a compulsive liar, someone both profoundly ignorant and at the same time convinced of his own genius, a man who "has no knowledge of the Bible at all. It might as well be a paper brick to him".
In this book, John Newsinger sets out to answer how the Christian right came to have such a powerful voice in US politics and how was it that they came to support someone like Trump.