THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIANITY IS NOT OLD WHITE NATIVISTS:

The latest Dump Trump movement may have gone national, but ground zero was Utah. Rep. Jason Chaffetz and the state's current governor, Gary Herbert, were among the first to pull their tepid endorsements of Trump in the wake of the "grab them by the pussy" videotape leak. Sen. Mike Lee, who had refused to back Trump, along with former Utah governor and onetime presidential candidate Jon Huntsman Jr., who had endorsed Trump, both called on their party's presidential nominee to drop out. Rep. Mia Love, who never backed Trump, also urged him to "step aside," while for now Sen. Orrin Hatch and Rep. Rob Bishop still support Trump. Elsewhere in the Latter-day Saints diaspora, Idaho's Mike Crapo, a Mormon, was the first Republican senator to withdraw his endorsement.

As I've written before, Trump's much-discussed "Mormon problem" is largely rooted in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' past as a persecuted religious community and its present as a church with a growing international--especially Mexican--membership. Mormon politicians, and to a certain extent the Mormon people writ large, have been turned off by Trump's political platform built on scapegoating Muslims and Mexicans. Earlier this year one poll indicated that Utah--home to the GOP's most consistent voting bloc--might actually be a swing state. But since the summer, polls showed Utah's electorate reverting to the mean and rejoining evangelical Christian "cultural war" voters to back Trump, if only reluctantly. As Mormon historian Benjamin Park explained to me, "Mormonism's attachment to the Republican Party has largely been centered on the conservative values of the religious right." As long as Trump (and his running mate, Mike Pence) paid lip service to protecting religious liberty and opposing abortion, "They could mostly escape censure on more questionable opinions" on immigrants and minorities.

Yet on Friday, the swift and definitive Mormon defection from Trump reflected an even more intimate (and particularly male) Mormon impulse than to care for the religious and racial "other"--it was the urge to honor and protect Mormon wives, mothers, and daughters.

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