PhotoI RISE to offer a defense — not a full-throated defense, more of a limited one — of the beleaguered, battered, all-but-broken religious right. Advertisement Continue reading the main storyFirst, serious religious conservatives didn’t want Trump. The bottom line is that if it weren’t for the religious right, the Trump takeover would have been far easier, the G.O.P.’s surrender that much more abject. Trump is exposing the folly of certain old-guard evangelicals, but he’s also exposing a major generational struggle over what the religious right should be — one that matters to the country and not just the participants, because …America needs a religious right. Maybe not the religious right it has; certainly not the religious right of Carson and Falwell Jr.

Source: New York Times October 15, 2016 18:22 UTC