One of the many curiosities about American Christianity is how a godless man like Donald Trump has managed to gain more devoted support from white evangelicals than any other president in the nation’s history. Not known to be a member of any church, one might think his fraud, philandering and serial mendacity might disqualify him from praise by the righteous.

But, counter-intuitive as it may seem, they love the guy. They not only vote for him in droves, many believe he was anointed by God to save the country and make it great again. He is fulfilling a divine purpose—you gotta vote for that.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. There are two broad tribes of Christians. There are those we might call Christ Christians, New Testament Christians, those who are motivated primarily by the teachings of Christ. And then there are those more motivated by the Old Testament, more in tune with the stern ways of the patriarchs than with the gentle ways of Jesus. Evangelicals seem to fall into the latter group.

According to New York Times columnist David French, himself an evangelist but no fan of Trump, the more fundamentalist the Christian, the more likely they are all in for the Don. Because, writes French, “in his certainty, ferocity and demands of loyalty, he’s a far more culturally familiar figure than a person of restraint and rectitude.”

Pastor of the evangelical megachurch First Baptist Dallas, Robert Jeffress, explained, “Frankly, I want the meanest, toughest son of a gun I can find. And I think that’s the feeling of a lot of evangelicals.”

They have even compared him to biblical figures such as the ancient Israelite king Jehu. Jehu was a “mean, tough son of a gun,” notorious for murdering Jezebel whom evangelicals have compared Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris to. None to my knowledge have compared Trump to Jesus—who might not share his view on immigrants.

With other religions it’s a very different story, as shown in the chart above right. The chart is from a survey by the Pew Research Center. After white evangelicals, the next highest support for Trump is from white Catholics although those in favour drop from 67 to 51 percent. Among Hispanic Catholics and Muslims, favourability drops to a third. Among Jews it’s down to under a quarter and among Atheists a mere 12 percent have a favourable opinion of him.

One wonders if this range serves as a scale to judge the moral integrity of the various beliefs or of their believers. Trump is a thoroughly disreputable human being with no apparent sense of simple human decency. Would it not be fair to assume that the more a set of believers supported him the less their sense of simple human decency? He represents moral integrity at its lowest—the base line so to speak.

If so, the scale would place evangelicals with Trump at the low end and atheists at the high. Atheists more Christian than Christians? What an idea.

In any case, at election time that’s were this cohort of Christians makes their X. What, I wonder, would Jesus do?