[Note: This article is based on an actual letter. The recipient’s name and some minor details have been changed.]Aug. 5, 2020

Dear Zachary,

Thank you for your thoughtful, honest email explaining why you felt frustration and anger about my public support of Donald Trump. I'm glad that you wrote as you did rather than leaving the matter unspoken.

Thank you also for writing, as a long-time friend, to express your concerns that my support of Trump might jeopardize the reputation that I have built as a trusted professor of theology and ethics for the last 43 years, and that my pro-Trump stance undermines the credibility of the label “evangelical,” and even of the Christian gospel itself.

I take these objections seriously. I have pondered them for several days. Please consider the following twelve points of response:

1. No consideration of policies

At the beginning of your email, you write, “This email does not concern policy.” The rest of the email concerns what you see as President Trump’s character flaws.

But that means that your email fails to address the entire reason for my support of Trump. In every column that I’ve published in support of Trump, I have explicitly registered my disapproval of his character flaws and previous immoral behavior. I support him because of the policies he has enacted and will enact, and in spite of his character flaws (which I don’t think rise to a level that would disqualify him from being president; more on this below).