Does Mike Pence give Donald Trump the credibility among Christians he craves?

Campaign-trail citations of “Two Corinthians” and the Bible as his favorite book (just ahead of “The Art of the Deal”) notwithstanding, something about Donald Trump’s professed Christianity strikes many people as less than authentic.

Can Mike Pence change that? Early reviews from readers on the presumptive Republican Party nominee’s pick of the Indiana governor and former member of Congress as his running mate suggest Trump might have overdone it.

Many of the reader submissions reacting to the No. 2 pick so far focus on Pence’s appeal to religious conservatives. They’re especially hard on him for signing and then defending an Indiana law last year that opponents decried as discriminatory toward LGBT people.

Here are some of those letters.

Kendra Strozyk of Cameron Park, Calif., hits Pence for supporting discriminatory policies:

Yes, Pence seems the perfect fit for Trump’s running mate.

Like Trump, his primary political accomplishment appears to be ceaseless self-promotion — a most useful skill if one is to perform capably as a narcissistic candidate’s “yes man.”

But unlike Trump, Pence has garnered solid support from religious conservatives. Never mind that he shamelessly contrived their backing through his state’s insidious Religious Freedom Restoration Act, adopted to legalize discrimination against married gay couples and other LGBT people.

Hallelujah! Credulous evangelicals may well view Pence as a vice presidential candidate divinely dispatched to dispel lingering doubts about Trump’s professed piety.

Santa Monica resident Gary Dolgin says Trump may win over the blindly faithful thanks to Pence:

Trump doubtless sees Pence as more than a garden-variety “yes man.”

Unable himself to strike convincing poses as a man of faith, Trump needs help reeling in evangelicals. He knows well that the huge evangelical voting bloc reliably supports conservative candidates who earnestly play the “God card.”

Pence got an enthusiastic “Amen!” from this devout bloc by billing himself as “a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order,” and ramrodding enactment of Indiana’s so-called religious freedom law.

To have such staunch faith-based support for a running mate answers Trump’s prayers. Heaven knows that hardcore evangelicals’ unquestioning belief in their faith’s core tenets means they’ll buy into political snake oil, provided it’s pitched piously.

Nothing like blind faith to fall for laughably vague and incoherent campaign rhetoric.

Ronald Paulinski of Ventura fact-checks Pence:

Pence is off to a bad start. Earlier this week the Indiana governor offered this misleading statistic on employment in his state: “Today, there are more Hoosiers going to work than ever before in the 200-year history of the great state of Indiana.”

So what? The population of the state has grown in the past 200 years. The meaningful numbers clearly show that as recently as 2000 49.7% were going to work. This year it’s down to 47.3%, according to PolitiFact.

Do politicians think voters are stupid?

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook