Activists and leaders in the social conservative movement, after spending most of the past year opposing and condemning Donald J. Trump, are now moving to embrace his candidacy and are joining the growing number of mainstream Republicans who appear ready to coalesce around the party’s presumptive nominee.
Though their support for Mr. Trump is often qualified, this change of heart is one of the more remarkable turns in an erratic and precedent-defying Republican campaign. It reflects the sense among many Republicans that, flawed as they may see him, the thrice-married billionaire is preferable to the alternative.
“Oh, my, it’s difficult,” said Penny Nance, the president of Concerned Women for America, a group that has openly campaigned against Mr. Trump. “He’s not my first choice. He’s not my second choice,” she added. “But any concerns I have about him pale in contrast to Hillary Clinton.”
And Mr. Trump — whose litany of offenses against cultural conservatives include support of Planned Parenthood, past positions on abortion rights and his more accepting views on gays and lesbians — is winning over this once deeply skeptical constituency.
He has made overt moves, such as suggesting last week that he would name Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, and sent subtle signals, like employing people for his campaign who are well known in the movement.
Mr. Trump has, to a large extent, placated a vocal and powerful element of the Republican Party’s base, whose backing he will need if he wants to wage a general election campaign leading a united conservative movement.
In him, they see a convert to their cause, not a transgressor.
The support of social conservatives is not just symbolic. It means getting assistance from groups that plan to spend millions of dollars mobilizing voters, people who lead influential faith-based organizations and Republican activists who will help craft the party’s platform at the national convention this summer.
And it has required a good deal of pride swallowing on their part.
“Didn’t know we’d be here,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group. Ms. Dannenfelser began the year in Iowa with a group of other politically active conservative women like Ms. Nance who tried to stop Mr. Trump because, as they said at the time, he “disgusted” them.
Now, as Ms. Dannenfelser contemplates the possibility of the next president appointing one or more justices to the Supreme Court, she said, “My feelings about him, whether I’m happy or not happy about how he speaks, doesn’t matter an iota.”
The Susan B. Anthony List is planning to spend $6 million to $8 million this year on a nationwide campaign, including hundreds of canvassers to knock on doors for Mr. Trump. “It’s more about rationality overcoming feelings than anything else,” Ms. Dannenfelser said.
For others in the movement, acceptance is rooted less in practicality than in forgiveness. Many religious and evangelical voters are taking what amounts to a leap of faith: willingly looking past Mr. Trump’s three marriages, his irreverence in referring to the Holy Communion as having “my little cracker” and even his apparent inability to ask God for forgiveness, which he said he had never done.
Many of them want to believe he is someone who has evolved to become more conservative and religious.
Graphic: Where Trump Breaks With the Republican Party
“They love a convert because it’s what their faith is all about,” said Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith & Freedom Coalition and a friend of Mr. Trump.
“Contrary to the stereotype that is often assigned to them by the larger culture,” Mr. Reed added, “evangelicals are far more forgiving and extend far more mercy to political figures and others than is understood.”
By mollifying many social conservatives, Mr. Trump could prevent some uncomfortable defections in July at the Republican National Convention, where anti-abortion activists and others from the religious right have significant sway.
“My counsel — and I have spoken to others — is let’s not be premature in jumping to conclusions,” said Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, a conservative policy group. “Rather,” added Mr. Perkins, who is also a member of the committee that will write the party’s platform at the convention, “let’s give Donald Trump the opportunity to make the first move.”
Mr. Trump has already roused some suspicion after saying last month that he would “absolutely” favor reworking the party platform to include certain exceptions to a ban on abortion. The platform does not currently address the issue of exceptions.
Many Republicans say revising the abortion language is a nonstarter. “It’s my hope that the Trump campaign and the presumptive nominee will understand that we’ve addressed this,” said James Bopp, a lawyer from Indiana and a longtime member of the platform-writing committee. But Mr. Bopp said he was nonetheless comfortable with Mr. Trump.
With every nominee, Mr. Bopp said, there are differences in policy that are difficult to reconcile with the platform. But, he added, in the case of Mr. Trump and the platform, “They pale with the differences in policy between Trump and Clinton. They pale.”
Mr. Trump generated a lot of attention last week for suggesting that the Supreme Court justices he would appoint would overturn Roe v. Wade. And in interviews last week, social conservative leaders frequently mentioned lesser-known examples of his attempts to reassure them.
He named two judges who are respected in conservative legal circles — William H. Pryor, a former Alabama attorney general, and Diane Sykes, a former justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court — as potential picks.
The Trump campaign, it said, also recently announced that it had hired a veteran of the culture war fights, John Mashburn, who once worked for Senator Jesse Helms, a North Carolina Republican who remains a hero of the religious right.
“He’s a smart guy,” said Mr. Reed, noting how Mr. Trump often condemns the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, a major cause that many Christians feel is being overlooked in Washington. “I think this is deliberate. It’s purposeful. But I also think he believes it.”
The skepticism has hardly vanished, however. Prominent religious conservatives like Erick Erickson, the radio host and commentator who has likened Mr. Trump’s support to that of a cult, are trying to organize enough delegates at the convention to block his nomination. That effort would seem futile at this point given Mr. Trump’s delegate lead.
But conservatives like Mr. Erickson appear to be part of a shrinking minority.
“With anybody who’s a new convert, you’re going to have people saying, ‘Do they really mean it?’ ” said Frank Cannon, the president of the American Principles Project, a conservative policy group. Mr. Cannon said he could recall friends who were initially wary of Ronald Reagan, then a candidate, asking him in 1980, “Can you really support someone who’s been divorced?”
“I can agree that in the primary you could find people more ideal,” Mr. Cannon said of Mr. Trump. “But he’s now the presumptive nominee. And I think it’s time we actually examine where he says he’ll take the country versus where Hillary says she’ll take the country, and make our judgments based on that.”