As a recovering Christaholic, 12 years sober from God, I’ve been asked before to explain why evangelicals stick with Donald Trump. After all, his attempts at appearing Christian are hopelessly pretentious, he’s bragged about his sins, and has built a career on casinos and half-naked women.

Then Trump’s infamous “many sides” remark about the violence at the Charlottesville, Virginia, rally brought denunciations from former supporters and business leaders, leading to two of his business advisory councils disbanding.

But his evangelical advisory board remained intact. So the questions of why come again.

The easy answer is: Evangelicals know he’s not a real Christian, but they’re pragmatic about overturning Roe v Wade, and generally agree with his economic plan of deregulation, lowering taxes, and keeping undocumented immigrants out.

“I don’t think that he’s a believer, but he cares about evangelicals,” said Jay Eike, an evangelical Christian and Trump supporter from Broomfield, Colorado, who was gracious enough to give a rare interview to the untrustworthy media – me. “The tweeting drives me crazy. But evangelicals think his policies are more important [than his behavior].”

Evangelicals knew that Reagan wasn’t really one of them, but he still became their political Moses. George W Bush had possibly lived an even more debauched life than Trump, but those revelations only helped cement his image as a prodigal son who got sober and raised a family.

But beyond the pragmatism and the eagerness to forgive things like “locker-room talk”, I believe that evangelicals recognize a fellow outsider in Trump, someone not only unafraid to shake things up and offend people, but actively goes out of his way to do it.

“One of the reason’s I support him is he doesn’t say what’s politically correct,” Jerry Falwell Jr, Liberty University president and today’s face of political evangelicalism, said on ABC This Week, when commenting on Trump’s outrage-inspiring response to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

For evangelicals, pissing off liberals and defending unpopular opinions makes him appear more like one of them.

Getting a negative reaction from liberals

When I was a young evangelical Christian, I was eager to be oppressed for my faith. The Bible and my pastors had warned me to avoid “worldly” people – celebrities, intellectuals, scientists, the media and liberals. Those were the ones forbid us from praying in school while indoctrinating us with communism and evolution.

Jesus once said: “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven.” So I went out of my way to piss people off – telling the goth kids they were prisoners of Satan’s lies, handing anti-abortion literature to the “loose” girls, and forcing science class to run late while I debated evolution with the teacher.

My entire identity became wrapped up in being disliked by a specific group of people.

So what seems like an imploding presidency to some, appears as a heroic martyr against liberalism to others.

“I never used to watch [political news] much, but when he started campaigning I was watching it,” Eike said. “I’ve been thoroughly angry at the media. I was pleased to see him put them in their place. It was refreshing.”

You can hear the frustration in Eike’s voice when he brings up the sports announcer Robert Lee, who was ESPN removed from a Virginia football game over the similarity of his name to the Confederate general. It’s the sound of disdain for political correctness shared by white evangelicals from coast to coast that Trump taps into every time he outrages liberals on their behalf.

After nearly eight months in office, it’s becoming clear that many of Trump’s actions are not ideologically based, but designed to inspire maximum outrage from climate-scientists, academics, feminists, LGBTQ rights activists – pretty much every demographic that evangelicals hate. Whether he’s banning transgender soldiers from serving in the military, pardoning a vigilante sheriff, or refusing to properly distance himself from white supremacists, it’s not about the act itself, it’s about the negative reaction he gets from liberals.

A sense of persecution

You’ll never get anything done in government with this approach, but that’s not the point. Just as the point of my witnessing to the lost souls of my public high school wasn’t to convert them to Christianity, it was to see how persecuted I could be.

Which is a remarkably addictive sensation, one that became a competitive game for me and my fellow young believers. My youth-group friends and I would share stories of being punched, spit on, or called “the biggest loser in school” the way other kids would brag about sports or sexual conquests. Just as Morrissey fans discovered loneliness to be a fashionable accessory, we wanted to emulate the sociopathy of our messiah, who said in the book of John: “If the world hates you, know that it hated Me before it hated you.”

Justified or not, white evangelical Christians increasingly believe they are the most persecuted demographic in the US today. But I don’t believe that evangelicals are interested in rectifying their status as a hated demographic, and would never protest for better treatment (or consciously demonize any racial minority the way the white supremacists do). For them, being despised by the world is a badge of honor that will ensure them a heavenly reward.

And Trump’s sinking approval numbers only endears him to them all the more.

They’re angling for an agenda to be passed, but in the meantime, all the Meryl Streep speeches, New Yorker cover drawings and Hillary Clinton memoirs are only going to make evangelical voters dig their heels in deeper come 2020.

“I believe we’re on the right side of history,” Eike said. “Trump came into this opposed to the whole Washington establishment. They have bogged him down and are trying to destroy him. But he’s holding them back. The crybabies.”

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