I am very hesitant to state that the Bible supports this or that political position. However, I cannot see how the situation I have just described is in line with the teachings of Jesus Christ. Either something is a sin or it isn’t. Either we should be gracious or we shouldn’t. Slight differences in situations will certainly affect our response, but not to this degree. Remember, the rate of approval more than doubled over the course of five years! This is hypocrisy, plain and simple, and I hardly think that Christ approved of hypocrisy.

Yesterday, I saw something in my Twitter feed that made me cringe: a story in The New York Times titled “Trump Says Jump. His Supporters Ask, How High?” What I objected to had nothing to do with the fact that Trump was elected, although I have previously shared my concerns on that score. It was not even anything particularly new. What caused me to cringe was the article’s mention of a poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution last October, the month before Trump was elected. I seem to recall seeing it when it initially appeared, but being exposed to it again seemed to double the effect.

The issue considered in this poll was whether “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life”. I understand that this is a complex issue. Even in scripture, we see examples of people who did something terrible at one point or another (e.g. Moses or David) and yet were described as godly leaders (though somewhat compromised by their sins). Therefore, I would be willing to accept a certain variety of responses to this question, but what I am not willing to accept is the result of this poll.

In 2011, 44% of Americans stated that an immoral act in a politician’s personal life did not prevent them from behaving ethically in their public duties. That means that 56% disapproved of such actions to the extent that they felt them to be ethically disqualifying. When the same question was asked five years later, 61% believed that the same “politician X” could still behave ethically in their public duties, a shift of 17%. That is a pretty big change in a relatively short amount of time. What accounts for it?

It turns out that voters who identified as religiously unaffiliated felt virtually the same in both versions of the poll: 63% vs. 60%. The sea change came among those who described themselves as more religious. Only 42% of Catholic voters had previously said that a politician who is immoral in their personal life can be moral in their public and professional life. That number jumped to 58%. Among white mainline Protestant voters, the number increased from 38% to 60%. However, the biggest shift of all was among white evangelical Protestants, where the number more than doubled from 30% to 72%.

What caused such a massive change, and why did evangelicals change most of all? Five years ago, a full 70% of white evangelical Protestants were willing to state that an elected who commits an immoral act in their personal life cannot behave ethically in their public life. Now only 28% are willing to make the same claim. Has the Bible changed since 2011? Has there been a major evolution in the substance of our preaching? Are we adapting to the secular culture that quickly? I would submit that the answers are no, no, and no.

This change in responses seems to have been due to the changing political situation. In June 2011, President Barack Obama had been in office for a couple of years and was starting to gear up for the 2012 election. In October 2016, when the second poll was conducted, all of the news was about the 2016 presidential election. You will perhaps recall that near the beginning of that month, some old footage of Donald Trump taping an Access Hollywood segment was released in which he bragged about kissing and groping women against their will. (Warning: That transcript includes all of his obscene language.) Trump claimed that there was no truth in what he said and that it was merely “locker-room banter”. Even so, there is no question that throughout the 2016 campaign, Trump’s personal morality was often called into question.

I believe that in 2011, white evangelicals were thinking of the Democrats then in power when they answered that poll question. In 2016, they were likely thinking of Donald Trump. I furthermore believe that this accounts for the massive shift in their responses. You may be asking, “How can you prove that?” At the same time, a part of you surely knows that what I am saying is true.

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