Back in my evangelical daze, the common defense against this was to see it as "a few bad apples" and "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" rather than to see it as evidence of widespread and systemically entrenched corruption, dishonesty and hypocrisy. Even followers confronted with such perfidy often called for "compassion" and second chances, in an attempt to try to salvage their illusions.

That worked for me (sort of) when I wanted (and needed!) to see my fundamentalist overlords as mostly good, if flawed. It would not work today however, when even the pretense of morality has been cast aside to rationalize such obviously and self-evidently corrupt and immoral leaders as Trump, Roy Moore, Kavenaugh, and so many more. Not to mention the aggressively incompetent and inept like Betsy DeVos.