Trust me on this. If you want to visit Sioux Center, Iowa, you really need to want to go there.

Even by Midwestern standards, this town is remote. There’s a popular stereotype that many Christian liberal-arts colleges are found in lovely small towns in the middle of cornfields. That’s what we’re talking about here.

However, if you have visited this Dordt University and Sioux Center, you know that this trip is worth taking. This is especially true if you are interested in learning about the fine lines and complex divisions inside American evangelicalism and the Christian Reformed Church, in particular.

I bring this up, of course, because of a magisterial New York Times analysis that ran the other day that ran with this epic headline: “ ‘Christianity Will Have Power’ — Donald Trump made a promise to white evangelical Christians, whose support can seem mystifying to the outside observer.”

Friends, as strange as it sounds, it appears that we have found a topic on which the Times and America’s 45th president appear to be in agreement, for the most part. They share a common, simplistic view of evangelical Christianity in which everybody Just. Loves. Trump.

Before we go there, let me share part of a column that I wrote about the book “Alienated America” by journalist Timothy P. Carney. It appears that he visited the same Sioux Center that I did and what he learned there about evangelicals and the 2016 election didn’t surprise me one bit. This is long, but essential:

Research into (2016) primary voting, he noted, revealed that the "more frequently a Republican reported going to church, the less likely he was to vote for Trump." In fact, Trump was weakest among believers who went to church the most and did twice as well among those who never went to church. "Each step DOWN in church attendance brought a step UP in Trump support," noted Carney.

Reporters could have seen this principle at work early on in Sioux County, Iowa, where half of the citizens claim Dutch ancestry. According to the Association of Religion Data Archives, Sioux County has the highest percentage of evangelicals in Iowa. …

Trump didn't win a single Sioux County precinct in the Iowa caucuses.