Survey finds evangelicals are more accepting of politicians’ unfaithfulness, but disprove of flirty texting.
Alabama governor Robert Bentley went far beyond what most Americans—including his evangelical supporters—consider cheating, according to a new survey.
Bentley resigned Monday amid an investigation into administration-wide efforts to cover up his ongoing affair with an aide who previously attended his Sunday school class. Among the evidence against the former governor are logs of romantic text messages the two exchanged while Bentley was still married to his wife of 50 years.
His sloppy communication revealed his secret. His wife saw the messages on her iPad, which had been synced over the cloud to the governor’s phone: “You look beautiful” and “I’m so in love with you,” followed by heart-eyed emojis.
Evangelicals are more likely than Americans on average, but less likely than mainline Protestants and Mormons, to consider such text messages as a form of infidelity, according to new research by YouGov and Deseret News.
Flirtatious messages cross a line into cheating for 58 percent of evangelicals and over half of Americans overall, the survey found. Significantly more—75 percent of evangelicals and 69 percent of Americans—see sexually explicit texts as cheating.
Evangelicals were more likely than any other religious group to say it would be unfaithful to go out to dinner with someone you’re attracted to. The instinct relates to the recent discussion of the “Billy Graham rule,” which bars men and women from spending one-on-one time with people of the opposite sex other than their spouse.
“The results of this survey reveal areas of uncertainty and different definitions of what constitutes cheating in the digital age,” said Allison Pond, a senior ...
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