Opinion: Why evangelicals should care about Trump's lies (and other sins)

A core component of President Donald Trump's coalition is evangelical Christians -- people who have righteously railed against a lack of character and ethics in the White House in the past and advocated for a return to family values.

But the fact is that conservative Christian voters supported Donald Trump in 2016 at a higher rate than they did George W.

Bush, a born-again Christian whose faith shaped his "compassionate conservative" politics.

The irony is that perhaps the most religious and socially conservative Supreme Court nominee in decades will have been put in place by an abandonment of the basic ethical standard known as the Golden Rule, articulated in the Bible as "Do to others as you would have them do to you."

For many conservative Christians, the ends may justify the means in this case.

But in terms of the sheer volume of lies, we've never seen anything like President Trump.

I asked two priests what role they thought it should play in election calculations.

"How should Christians account for a pattern of lying in casting their vote?" reflected the Reverend Don Waring of Grace Church in New York.

Michael's Church in Charleston, South Carolina, no doubt reflects the views of other conservative Christians by weighing lying against other sins.

This creates a real struggle for many clergy and people of faith with the sin of murder from the perspective of abortion.

...Again, sin is non-hierarchical, but the consequences between lying and murder are so vastly different.

But a look back at the seven deadly sins -- lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride -- is a reminder of just how many Donald Trump embraces as a matter of his core brand.

All of this is to say that if religion and virtue matter when casting your vote, then lying should matter as well.

If we overlook these bedrock virtues to focus instead on one or two policy positions -- no matter how deeply held -- we lose sight of the most fundamental teachings of faith and run the risk of reaping the whirlwind as a society.