Kasich is a former Roman Catholic turned evangelical Anglican. He didn't attend the 2016 Republican convention in his home state and declined to support Trump in either 2016 or 2020. He worships at St Augustine Anglican Church in Westerville Ohio and is spoken of as a man of faith and integrity by his ACNA bishop Julian Dobbs.

Known as the man who never gives up, Kasich told Blitzer that evangelical voters in the modern GOP are fracturing American Christianity for the sake of political power.

"One thing bothers me," Kasich said. "There is a split in the evangelical community in this country. And I saw where these evangelicals are washing everything away because now somehow the control of the Senate matters so much."

On Monday's edition of CNN's "The Situation Room," the former governor connected Tuberville's remarks to the behavior of evangelical voters in the modern GOP -- and how they are fracturing American Christianity for the sake of political power.

"What do you think?" asked anchor Wolf Blitzer.

"I think it was outrageous what he had to say. Totally outrageous," said Kasich. "But one thing that bothers me. There is a split in the evangelical community in this country. And I saw where these evangelicals are washing everything away, because now somehow the control of the Senate matters so much."

The pursuit of government control at the expense of Christian values, continued Kasich, is ripping Christian communities apart.

"I happen to be a Christian, okay, and I know the community is split," said Kasich.

"Frankly, the evangelical community ought to stay out of politics, and spend their time in the pulpit teaching the lessons we know in scripture and inviting people in and getting involved in politics and charging their people up. It's a real shame. And yet, it's going to change, and there is a fight inside of the evangelical community about the direction they should go, and politics is not where they belong."

Watch here on how evangelicals tolerate GOP racism for "power" www.youtube.com

The Rev. Dr. Kenneth W. Chalker, retired University Circle UMC in Cleveland said, "I think that one of the single greatest destroyers of our American soul will be identified as the 'Institutional Church.' Specifically, institutional right-wing Christian evangelicals, so-called spiritual counselors to the president, mega-church gospel-misrepresenters, and the loosely affiliated church organizations which are built around a nationalistic, white-supremacist ideology. Together, they have waged and are waging a culture war based on fear, not the care of others. It could be seen as our own version of the extremist Taliban'."

"It is soul-breaking that evangelicals have endorsed an immoral man for president and supported his hedonistic behavior by claiming to have given him 'a pass,' or by calling him a 'baby Christian,'" he said.

"Institutional evangelical churches have effectively endorsed and campaigned for -- if not verbally, certainly tacitly -- all that Donald Trump represents; lying, cheating, manipulation of the legal system, abuse of women, sexual misconduct, disregard for positive, American tradition, flouting of the U.S. Constitution, racism, devaluing people of color, religious bigotry, fearmongering for personal gain, undermining science in medicine, and a tortured nationalism resulting in promotion of insurrection, conspiracy, and the furtherance of Trump's Big Lie."

Some evangelical leaders are waxing cool on Trump. Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom coalition, a conservative Christian organization, who played a key role in convincing evangelicals to put aside their skepticism of Trump and back him in the 2016 general election also urged them to support Trump's reelection in 2020.

But Reed isn't yet committing to endorsing the former president in 2024, should he seek the nomination again and face a field of other Republicans in a primary.

Reed sees it as the evangelical group's role to remain neutral during the primary, like in 2012 and 2016, and offer potential 2024 candidates an opportunity to make connections with the Christian voters who will play an outsized role in deciding the nominee.

"We've never really tried to be the churchgoing version of the party bosses in a smoke-filled room trying to figure out who the nominee ought to be," Reed said. "We figure the best thing to do is to provide a platform for those candidates and assist them, informally, by letting them know the best way they can connect with and make their case to those voters and pastors.

"After that, we let the market decide."

John Fea, who teaches American history at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania writes; "I am sorry to say that we have made little headway in convincing my fellow evangelicals to think more deeply about the relationship between faith and politics and the links between Christianity and American identity."

"Well-funded pseudo-historians such as David Barton and Eric Metaxas continue to have success in selling evangelicals a faulty view of American history. In my view, the dubious historical claim that America was founded as, and continues to be, a Christian nation undergirds the entire Christian Right, pro-Trump agenda. Evangelicals continue to gaze nostalgically into a past that is never coming back and, in the case of America's supposedly "Christian roots," may have never existed in the first place. It will take a lot of work to turn the tide."

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