VS. GODLESSNESS:

Believe it or not, Southern Baptists have become the loudest chorus of anti-Trump voices within conservative evangelicalism. And as has happened in other precincts of the right, the real estate mogul's candidacy has forced evangelical leaders to confront the contradictions between their values and their political allegiances. "My concern is not so much about the presidential election," Moore told me. "I'm more concerned about the witness of evangelical Christianity, which I see compromised in the apologies from some Christian leaders for Trump and his behavior."

Moore effectively announced his new mission in September, when he published a searing op-ed in the New York Times in which he compared Trump to a "Bronze Age warlord" and concluded that evangelicals embracing him were promoting the idea that "image and celebrity and money and power and social Darwinist 'winning' trump the conservation of moral principles and a just society." In February, he wrote in the Washington Post that he had temporarily stopped calling himself an evangelical because the ugly election had turned the word meaningless:

I have watched as some of these who gave stem-winding speeches about "character" in office during the Clinton administration now minimize the spewing of profanities in campaign speeches, race-baiting and courting white supremacists, boasting of adulterous affairs, debauching public morality and justice through the c[***]no and pornography industries.

Meanwhile, Moore's very active Twitter feed has maintained a rolling boil of anti-Trump sentiment for months: [...]

And Moore is hardly the only Southern Baptist leader to speak out against Trump. The ERLC's policy director, Andrew Walker, wrote in February in the conservative Federalist, "The Christian alliance with Trump sets the political witness of evangelicals back by several generations." Others at the ERLC have spoken out against Trump's immigration policy and against his "folk Marxism."

Leaders in Southern Baptist higher education have been sounding the same alarm. 

As our attention shifts from the primaries to the general election, for the first time in years religiosity looks like it's going to matter less than gender in determining the presidential vote.

Between men and women the divide is huge when it comes to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. According to the latest GW Battleground Poll -- which has Clinton leading Trump 46 percent to 43 percent -- women favor Clinton over Trump 54 percent to 35 percent while men go the other way 52 percent to 37 percent. Adding the two differentials yields a 34-point gender gap that far outstrips the 20-point gap between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney  in 2012 -- itself the largest such gap in Gallup Poll history.

By contrast, the Battleground Poll has the Clinton-Trump God gap at under 15 points, with those who say they go to church at least once a week preferring Trump to Clinton by nine points and those attending less frequently preferring Clinton to Trump by less than six. That compares to a God gap in 2012 of nearly 40 points.

Since the God gap became salient in the 1990s, it's always exceeded the gender gap. Not, evidently, this year. Between women's support for one of their own and the misogyny of the other candidate, gender identity is trumping religion.

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