Trump grabbing white, born-again Christian voters

The bloc of voters powering the real estate mogul through the Republican primaries is significantly weighted with white born-again Christians.

In eight of the presidential primaries, he won more evangelicals than Ted Cruz, a Southern Baptist who has made appeals to conservative Christians the core of his campaign, according to polling.

"There's a form of cultural Christianity that causes people to respond with 'evangelical' and 'born-again' as long as they're not Catholic, even though they haven't been in a church since Vacation Bible School as a kid," said the Rev. Russell Moore, head of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Trump's biggest evangelical endorsement of the race — from Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, who said the billionaire businessman "lives a life of loving and helping others." — reflected the rift among Christians and even within the university itself.

In remarkably public criticism, Mark DeMoss, a Liberty board member and longtime adviser to the school's founder, the late Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., called the endorsement a mistake.

While Moore and others are urging Christians to evaluate candidates using the Bible, many evangelicals are using other criteria, such as seeking a candidate who can protect them from the Islamic State group, liberalism, growing secularism among Americans and economic insecurity for the country and their families.