Robert Callahan considers himself a Christian before any the other labels people would put on him: a conservative Republican, an American, a black man with a mixed-race family.

But as someone who is all those things, he feels out of place among evangelical believers who helped propel Donald Trump to the White House.

“I’m hurt,” Callahan said. “I’m somewhat resentful. Even still I’m processing through forgiving, because I know that’s my obligation. I’m not personally fearful, though I know people who are.”

Callahan, a Waco attorney, is a “values voter” who would love to see another pro-life Supreme Court justice, as Trump has promised. But he said almost everything else about Trump is an affront to the values he thought he shared with other evangelical Christians. Trump’s recorded boast that he could grope women with impunity is just the start of his list.

“In this election he degraded women, he talked about their menstrual cycles, he made fun of handicapped people, and he said a federal judge who was Hispanic wasn’t legitimate,” Callahan said. “We heard him calling for mass deportations and encouraging followers to assault peaceful protesters at his conventions. There’s so much wrong with the fruit of his tree.”

Now Callahan worries that the witness of Christians is damaged.

“In this election, we have paired ourselves with immorality in order to try to achieve morality,” he said. “We have people in the church, big ‘C,’ that have aided, solicited and encouraged what Donald Trump stands for.”

He’s not alone. After a bruising and nasty campaign season, many evangelicals are struggling to heal wounds within their own congregations, while pondering their place in the greater culture.

Thomas Kidd, a Baylor University history professor whose books include a definitive history of Baptists, said the strong identification of white evangelicals with Trump in this election could hurt their outreach to the world and to other Christians.

“To the extent that large numbers of older white evangelicals did support Trump, it is damaging among many millennials, who were dismayed about election 2016 (though not just about Trump),” Kidd said in an email interview this week. “Many younger people suspect that politics actually comes first for these ‘evangelical’ Republicans.

“Likewise, many (though not all) Hispanic and African-American evangelicals are deeply disturbed by Trump’s success among white evangelicals. How could fellow evangelicals back him, they wonder, in spite of Trump’s litany of comments that many interpreted as racist?”

Eighty-one percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump, according to the Pew Research Center, and it’s no surprise that group would support a Republican presidential candidate. They went 78 percent for George W. Bush in 2004, 74 percent for John McCain in 2008, 78 percent for Mitt Romney in 2012.

The term “evangelical” originally was a unifying term for a variety of Protestant traditions — from conservative Calvinists to Baptists to Pentecostals — that stress the authority of the Bible and personal salvation through Jesus. Evangelicalism has evolved in recent decades beyond a theological idea into a potent political force around social issues such as abortion and gay rights, representing about a quarter of American voters, according to Pew.

But few observers expected their overwhelming support for Trump, given how furiously evangelical leaders debated over him. Supporters included Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church of Dallas, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and Jerry Falwell Jr. of Liberty University. Opponents included the magazine Christianity Today, Southern Baptist Convention ethicist Russell Moore and conservative theologian John Piper.

Ramiro Pena, a pastor of Waco’s Christ the King Baptist Church, summed up the pro-Trump argument in a July appearance on “The Jim Bakker Show.”

“If we don’t elect Donald Trump as president, we’re going to end up electing someone we absolutely know will put justices on the U.S. Supreme Court that will be pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, who will rob us of our religious liberty and take away our right to bear arms,” Pena said.

He could not be reached this week for comment.

Matt Henderson, a Baylor sociology graduate student who is writing a dissertation on religion, race, politics and health care, said he thinks evangelicals’ embrace of Trump remains ambivalent.

“I don’t know that evangelicals so much supported Trump as much as they held their nose and made a transactional and strategic decision,” said Henderson, who identifies as an evangelical himself. “Younger evangelicals are not universally enthusiastic about continuing this tack of political participation. They don’t seem as excited about falling in step with the Republican Party. Even among older evangelicals, I sensed a lot of frustration that their witness was undermined by supporting Donald Trump.”

Henderson said Hillary Clinton had been “loathed” in evangelical circles for years, and her pro-choice statements during the campaign left them feeling they had no place in her party. Meanwhile, Trump appeared to appeal to some “neo-Pentecostal” Christians who subscribe to the so-called prosperity gospel idea that God grants health and wealth to the faithful, Henderson said.

Callahan, who voted for an independent candidate, is skeptical of Trump’s promises about the Supreme Court.

“If he does, you still have the problem of, to get what you wanted, you’ve caused the equivalent of a cultural nuclear fallout,” he said. “Now people like myself, we’re hurt. We feel disenfranchised. We’re frustrated. I challenge anyone who voted for Trump solely because they wanted a conservative on the Supreme Court to kneel down at eye level with my children and tell them that you are OK with how they are being publicly spoken of, how they are being treated, how they will be marginalized and accosted, that it was all worth it because they got a conservative Supreme Court judge.”

Callahan said his African-American identity is not usually at the top of his mind, but he can’t ignore it right now.

Callahan grew up in an Air Force family around people of all races. He began attending majority white, nondenominational churches when he was a teenager and now attends Antioch Community Church, a megachurch of about 3,500 congregants, about a third of whom are minority.

He and his wife, Mollie, who is white, have three children.

But he said he now fears discrimination and hate speech could make a comeback, along with racial conflicts and unrest, even in places like Waco.

“The fringe now feels as though they have a voice,” Callahan said. “That otherwise dead Civil War, Southern mentality — ‘we will rise again’ — has found its place again. It is our duty, and this is bipartisan, to speak up and say no, it’s not OK. I didn’t hear it enough in this election, and I didn’t hear it soon enough.”

The Sunday before the presidential election, Antioch Community Church’s founding pastor Jimmy Seibert preached at length about the election, calling both Trump and Clinton “two very flawed, immoral candidates.”

In a 45-minute sermon, Seibert urged Christians to participate in the democratic process and to consider four key values at the voting booth: Abortion, “traditional marriage,” religious freedom and the “value of the individual,” which he said includes “care for the immigrant and foreigner.” He also raised concerns over transgender children being able to choose which restroom they use at school.

He suggested Christians are in danger of being “pushed out” of public life for standing for their traditional beliefs, and he described his horror at late-term abortions.

“As a human being, if you can stomach that, I have a problem with that,” he said to applause. “That does not exclude other issues, but for me, that’s enough. I cannot stand by and be silent when lives are being destroyed.”

In an interview, Seibert said the sermon is similar to the one he gives in every presidential election year and was not intended to push people toward voting for Trump.

But Grecia Cantu, an Antioch member who was in the audience that morning, couldn’t help reading something different between the lines.

“It was very difficult for me,” Cantu said. “I walked out of the church three times. I couldn’t take it anymore. . . . I felt personally attacked. I know it was never meant to be that way, but it was very hard to take.”

She said she hoped to hear more than a passing reference to the immigration concerns that keep her in a state of anxiety. Cantu, who used her mother’s maiden name for this story, is among some 750,000 young adults who came this country without authorization as children and have been granted “deferred” status by the Obama administration. That status has allowed her to work and travel freely after graduating University High School as valedictorian and getting a degree from Baylor University.

She is afraid that in a Trump administration that protection will go away and she will have to go into hiding again.

“His presidency affects our lives tremendously,” Cantu said. “It’s the unknown. That’s why it’s affecting our community and my family. Everyone is like, ‘This doesn’t happen until Jan. 20.’ But our plans are affected by this. My husband and I were looking to purchase a house. I don’t want to do that now.”

Cantu said she has relatives who have gotten residency here by marriage and who voted for Trump because of their evangelical affiliations.

She said she hasn’t spoken to them or been back to Antioch since the election, though she hopes to reconcile with them in time.

“I feel betrayed,” she said. “I feel my safety was disregarded. I feel like my safety and my family’s was sacrificed for the sake of enforcing traditional evangelical values on the nation. I’m heartbroken. It’s been a very difficult week.”

On the Sunday after the election, Seibert appeared onstage with black and Hispanic members of the congregation and called for healing and reconciliation after an election that stirred fear and animosity. He urged congregants to listen to each others’ concerns face-to-face and to pray for each other.

“It’s a very imperfect situation,” he said in an interview this week. “It’s heartbreaking. Our question is how do we respond. We’re really encouraging people to pray, pray personally, pray for people who are hurting. President Obama needs our prayers. Donald Trump needs our prayers. . . . Let’s make sure we love one another. Being kind, being empathetic, it’s all about relationships. . . . If anyone should be reconcilers, it’s us, the people of God.”

Seibert said he wants to assure members such as Cantu that the church will stand with them and advocate for them in an uncertain time. He said Antioch has long been active in ministries to help the distressed, including immigrants, ex-offenders and victims of human trafficking.

Across town in East Waco, the Rev. Gaylon Foreman of the historically black Carver Park Baptist Church said Christians shouldn’t allow this election to drive a wedge between them. But he said it’s a challenging time.

“Listening to what some of what he has said publicly, and the people he’s aligned himself with, it leaves room for the question whether he can truly be the president for all people,” Foreman said of Trump. “Some of the things he has said have made people question whether he respects the rights of women, minorities and others.

“I believe this is the worst presidential campaign in the history of campaigning. There’s been nothing positive about it. At the same time I never lost sight of the fact that even for those that I’m in total disagreement with, I’m not going to fall out with them. . . . We cannot allow the election to make us forget that we’re the family of God, that we’re connected.”

Callahan, the Antioch member, said he will do his part to seek reconciliation. He has appreciated fellow believers who have reached out to him after the election. In any case, he said no election will cause him to turn his back on his evangelical faith.

“Jesus is all we have,” he said. “You strip away my law degree, my undergrad degree, my marriage, my family, my skin color, make me like Job, and all I have is Jesus. Jesus is the hope of the world.”