One of the things I realized early in my career is that you do what you believe, in knowing that if you don't, you will never like yourself. When you compromise out of fear or ambition, it eats inside you.
I was a chronically shy child. That kernel of my younger self is still there, but I've developed mechanisms to deal with it.
Evangelical Christians, who once were a ridiculed irrelevant sectarian movement, have, over just three decades, become a powerful voting bloc that can no longer be ignored.