Top Mormon thinkers: Conservative Christians will never again be able to claim the moral high ground after Trump

Two prominent Mormon opinion leaders published a scathing rebuke of the loyalty conservative Christians have shown to Trump in today's Salt Lake City Tribune.

"Donald Trump lies and is faithless to commitments and individuals, abandoning persons as quickly as he does promises, inventing reasons and accusations as though it were his right," they write. "How can believers who condemn false witness and adultery while insisting on the sanctity of the family continue to support Donald Trump? And how can women of any faith or morality support so vulgar, abusive and inconstant a president?"

The piece is by Robert A. Rees, a Mormon theologian, and Clifton Jolley one of Utah's "best loved essayists."

The piece pulls no punches in laying out how conservative Christians reaction—or lack of reaction—to the Stormy Daniels scandal shows that people who have staked their political beliefs on being upright and moral have debased themselves by slavishly supporting a president who is at best amoral.

"What is the president’s character? And who cares? Presumably, Utah is supposed to care. And Evangelicals," they write. "Commentators frequently excuse this as 'voting for issues' rather than for character, while Mormons and Evangelicals talk about the 'lesser of evils' or 'repentance' or a number of other explanations Trump gives no evidence of supporting. The result is that never again will conservative Christians — Evangelical, Mormon or otherwise — be able to claim the high moral ground they have staked out in America over the past several hundred years."

Read the full piece here.