Donald Trump’s only real interest in Christianity is that he’s heard it can involve the laying on of hands. Sorry, Donald, but groping one’s way toward faith is not what you think it is.

While it is flabbergasting to me that so many evangelical Christians will hold their noses and vote for Trump, it is even more astonishing that they have to. The fact that evangelicals only have bad choices is a failure of the Republican Party and of the party’s primary voters.

More generally, evangelicals find themselves in a straight-jacket of their own making. They want something they should not have — namely, a theocracy. They want lawmakers, executives and courts that turn the Gospels into law and impose secular punishment on those who do not obey. The fact that such an outcome is un-American does not stop evangelicals from pursuing it.

The trend, at least nationally, is against them, no matter how many state Legislatures attempt to restrict abortion and gay rights to comply with lawmakers’ religious views. Public attitudes are becoming ever more tolerant. Even if Trump were to win the presidency and appoint Supreme Court justices who ruled as evangelicals wished, the effect would be to delay, not stop, the decline of social conservatism.

Still, evangelicals would settle for delaying the inevitable. That’s why so many will control their gag reflex long enough to vote for Trump. They reason that Hillary Clinton’s Supreme Court choices would be “worse” than Trump’s. So they’re voting for Trump even if they think he is a serial assaulter of women.

By forcing that choice and that reasoning on evangelicals, the Republican Party once again has failed them miserably. First and foremost, the GOP has failed evangelicals by not leveling with them, by not telling them they can’t and shouldn’t have a theocracy.

But aside from that honest assessment — which is too much to expect from the GOP — there were literally a dozen other people running for president whose judicial appointments would have satisfied evangelicals and whose personal morals would not have offended most Americans.

Not only would the nomination of Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio or John Kasich have been morally better, it would have been politically better. Any one of those three, I think, could have beaten Clinton.

As it stands, not only has the party forced evangelicals to vote for an adulterer and probable groper, it likely is forcing evangelicals to do so futilely. The polls say Trump is going to lose.

The Trump camp holds out hope they’re wrong. Some say — and it is plausible to me — that Trump has enough closet supporters to pull off an upset. People who intend to vote for Trump aren’t admitting it to pollsters, this theory goes, because they are afraid of the stigma.

While Trump has emboldened some racists to openly bark at his dog whistles, others remain closeted. If Trump surges to victory, it will be because the level of secret racism in America is higher than many of us have expected — and that’s after the very fact of Trump’s nomination already indicated a higher-than-hoped-for level.

Because most evangelicals are not racists, it is a shame this election is leading them to keep company with racists by voting for Trump. Blame for that falls mainly on primary voters, although the GOP establishment shares blame for employing those dog whistles for so many decades.

But I have hope that if there are closet racists who will vote for Trump they can be offset by the closet feminists among evangelicals who will not support Trump. OK, perhaps “feminist” is not the right choice of words. But I suspect there are many women in evangelical households who are not letting on that they will vote for Clinton or, at the very least, will withhold their support from Trump when they get into the voting booth.

In fact, the evangelical movement might find many of its women will feel betrayed by leaders — overwhelmingly male — who say evangelicals must overlook Trump’s vile attitude toward women and vote for him anyway. Such women are doubly betrayed, by the GOP that takes their evangelical votes while knowing the party can’t deliver a theocracy and by theological leaders who want their votes but won’t deliver the respect women deserve.

Jac Wilder VerSteeg is a columnist at the Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.).