In the midst of an intra-evangelical dispute over whether Ted Cruz is indeed consolidating the support of influential evangelical leaders, supporters of Marco Rubio’s campaign are trying to make the case that his appeal to evangelicals is fundamentally different from Cruz’s, and that Cruz doesn’t have a lock on evangelical voters.

At the heart of this simmering stand-off is the divide between evangelicals who hew to, for lack of a better characterization, the David Barton view of America, and those who would instead favor a president who, in their telling, merely relies on his faith in making decisions. That is, those in the latter camp don’t want to hear paeans to the Christian nation, or debunked pseudo-histories of the Founding Fathers, or claims that only a certain candidate or another will bring about the revival the country desperately needs. (Barton, as I reported earlier this week, is a Cruz supporter, much to the chagrin of evangelicals embarrassed by his revisionist history about the “Christian nation.”)

Read the article “Inside the Rubio-Cruz Battle for Evangelical Voters” on religiondispatches.org.