Meet the Evangelicals Denouncing Donald Trump

While most of Donald Trump's conservative Christian supporters are standing by him despite his boast about being able to assault women with impunity, one has withdrawn his endorsement and another is distancing himself -- somewhat.

Wayne Grudem, an influential theologian who teaches at Phoenix Seminary in Arizona, has published a column saying he no longer supports Trump, while James MacDonald, pastor of a Chicago-area megachurch and a member of Trump's Evangelical Executive Advisory Board, denounced Trump's comments in an email to several other board members over the weekend. But no, they don't intend to switch their support to Hillary Clinton.

Grudem, who endorsed Trump for president earlier this year, repudiated that in a column published Sunday on Townhall.com, a website that carries mostly conservative commentators. "There is no morally good presidential candidate in this election," he wrote. "I previously called Donald Trump a 'good candidate with flaws' and a 'flawed candidate' but I now regret that I did not more strongly condemn his moral character. I cannot commend Trump's moral character, and I strongly urge him to withdraw from the election."

The comments Trump made to Billy Bush of Access Hollywood in 2005 about grabbing women's genitalia and other acts of sexual aggression, a recording of which surfaced Friday, "were morally evil and revealed pride in conduct that violates God's command, 'You shall not commit adultery,'" Grudem continued.

MacDonald, in an email excerpted by evangelical magazine Christianity Today, wrote that Trump's remarks "are not just sophomoric or locker room banter. They are truly the kind of misogynistic trash that reveals a man to be lecherous and worthless -- not the guy who gets politely ignored, but the guy who gets a punch in the head from worthy men who hear him talk that way about women."

MacDonald, pastor of the Harvest Bible Chapel, followed up with a blog post today in which he said he does not believe the Republican presidential nominee is truly repentant, adding, "I am not abandoning my role on the Faith Council [of which the Evangelical Executive Advisory Board is part] with these words I am seeking to fulfill it. If Faith Council members find my insistence unhelpful or uncharitable, I will gladly resign this little bit of influence to their greater combined wisdom." The role of the Faith Council, he said, is to provide "faith counsel" to the candidate, not necessarily to help elect him.

"My only point of divergence from the Faith Council due to conscience came following last Friday's revelation of Mr. Trump's reprehensible 11-year-old recording, which is now familiar to all but cave dwellers," MacDonald wrote in the blog post. "Over the weekend, I wrote to various members of the Faith Council and Trump campaign staff, expressing my view that Mr. Trump's Friday night video 'confession' was quite far from genuine repentance."

Trump's response fell short, the pastor continued, because the candidate did not admit that the actions he boasted of were immoral and criminal, because he tried to change the subject to the behavior of others such as former President Bill Clinton, and because he did not "specifically name and seek forgiveness from the people directly injured by his actions."

"Of course, it is possible that in his confession he merely misspoke or failed to get his true heart across, as we have all done," MacDonald added. "But if Mr. Trump is satisfied with what he offered in terms of regret, it is unlikely he has changed and, sadly, we can only expect similar behavior in the future."

Faith Council members have emphasized that membership does not equal endorsement of Trump -- although some certainly support him -- but it's clear that MacDonald isn't endorsing the Democratic nominee either. "I do not believe Mr. Trump is worse than Hillary Clinton (who is less than believable as some modern Joan of Arc in the abuse and manipulation of women)," he wrote on the blog.

Nor is Grudem. "Hillary Clinton is no better," he contended in his column, going on to make several statements that are open to dispute: "She vilified the victims of Bill Clinton's sexual advances; she abandoned our diplomats to be killed by terrorists in Benghazi and then lied about it; she illegally handled classified emails on her private server and put national security at risk; she left much of the world in chaos after four years as Secretary of State; and she has a lifelong pattern of acting as if she is above the law, protected by the Obama administration's Justice Department, the FBI, and the mainstream media." He said he is not sure who he'll vote for, but he "absolutely will not vote for Clinton."

Many other evangelical types who have backed Trump or served on the Faith Council are sticking by him, based largely on his stated opposition to abortion and marriage equality (by the way, he was once pro-choice and supported domestic partnerships). Among them are Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Gary Bauer of American Values, Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, and former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.

MacDonald and his church, which has multiple locations in Chicago and its suburbs, are certainly in line with these members of the religious right on women's rights and LGBT issues. Harvest Bible Chapel opposes abortion rights and won't let women serve in its most senior positions, such as pastor and elder. And when the Supreme Court ruled for marriage equality last year, MacDonald signed on to a Southern Baptist Convention statement opposing the ruling, asserting that God intends marriage to be only between a man and a woman, and that "no human institution has the authority to redefine marriage."

So is Grudem, who asked in his column, "What if we fail to vote against the liberal support for abortion rights, government imposition of gender confusion on our children, hate speech laws used to silence Christians, and government-sanctioned exclusion of thousands of Christians from their lifelong occupations because they won't bow to the homosexual agenda -- will our failure to oppose these evils also destroy our Christian witness for the future?"