One of the questions vexing the mediocre punditry of American discourse is how Donald Trump—a former star of the tabloids with a track record of scandal and little history of religious affiliation—is polling so well with evangelical Christians. Poll results vary, but Trump consistently has 20 to 30 percent support among Christian conservatives. The numbers are impressive considering his opponents include Ben Carson and Mike Huckabee. Recent reports indicate that many evangelical leaders are uncomfortable with Trump’s candidacy, but the most recent national poll has Trump at 24 percent among white evangelicals (although Cruz has recently pulled ahead of Trump in Iowa, thanks in part to the evangelical vote.)

But Trump and America’s religious right are not as different as one would think. If any corner of American Christianity encourages narcissism, it’s conservative evangelical Christianity.

One of the oddest traits of many deeply religious people is their self-professed humility even as they claim to understand the plan of the creator of the universe as well as their own special role in its development. The late Christopher Hitchens perfectly summarized the brand of arrogance that wears the mask of modesty: “Don’t mind me—I’m only on an errand for God.”

Despite the attempt religious believers often make to monopolize morality, it turns out that teaching children they are the center of the universe is not healthy. A large study recently published in Current Biology, found that the more religious the child, the less likely they are to behave altruistically with peers. In fact, religion in children correlates strongly with selfishness and mean-spiritedness. In the study, children were given stickers and instructed to share them with their classmates. The religious children shared far fewer stickers.

Of course, religion-affiliated charities like food banks demonstrate that the influence of faith is, like most things, complex and contradictory. But the Christian right in America has a long history of encouraging narcissistic, intolerant ideology.

Trump, meanwhile, is the rock bottom of Republican decline from a political party with a coherent policy agenda to a loosely connected network of nativists and extremists. The party’s loss of credibility is the predictable outcome of its transformation into a vehicle for the self-promotion and theocratic advocacy of white evangelical Christians. In order to appeal to evangelical voters, candidates like Carson and Cruz have to project narcissism and selfishness. They do it very well, but Donald Trump is the demagogic master of it.

Having perfected his personality through years of reality television performance, Trump is able to successfully sway evangelicals to his side, despite his lack of Christian credentials, because narcissists take comfort in each other. His meanspirited attacks on minorities, disabled reporters and women who disagree with him do not subtract his support: quite the opposite. It actually makes him more appealing to those who, like the children in the study, believe they are special and that those who are different are inferior.