In October 2016—the very week, in fact, that Jeffress sneered at the notion of turning the other cheek—the Public Religion Research Institute released a new survey that asked the same exact question. This time, incredibly, 72 percent of white evangelicals responded that, yes, a politician who behaved immorally in their personal life could still perform their public duties with integrity. Five years earlier, white evangelicals had registered the lowest rate of support for that idea; now they were registering the highest.
