Religious Liberty

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2020 was an election year in which many Christians felt torn and politically homeless

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2020 was an election year in which many Christians felt torn and politically homeless

Conservative patriarch Edmund Burke died in 1797 in Beaconsfield, England.

This didn't prevent columnist Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal, a Catholic conservative, from making Burke her write-in choice in the 2020 White House race. She wasn't the only voter who felt politically homeless, due to religious and moral convictions that clashed with the political and personal choices of President Donald Trump and, the odds appear good, president-elect Joe Biden.

Once again, there was no way to ignore issues linked to faith, morality and, yes, character. This was especially true with Catholic voters who frequent church pews.

Considering Trump, Noonan stressed the coronavirus crisis, where the president finally "met a problem he couldn't talk his way out of. I believe that's what happened: He played down the pandemic, lied, made uninformed claims at briefings that serious people were struggling to keep useful. He produced chaos. The country can't afford any of that in a crisis that is sudden and severe."

What about the Democrat, a lifelong Catholic? Noonan predicted Biden would be a "hapless and reluctant conductor" on a "runaway train," especially on moral and cultural issues.

"The progressive left," she argued, "endorses and pushes for the identity politics that is killing us, an abortion regime way beyond anything that could be called reasonable or civilized and on which it will make no compromise; it opposes charter schools and other forms of public school liberation; it sees the police as the enemy, it demonstrates no distinct fidelity to freedom of speech and, most recently, its declared hopes range from court packing to doing away with the Electoral College and adding states to the union.”

The bottom line: The political realities of 2020 left many Catholics and other active religious believers torn between political options that no longer seemed acceptable.


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What role does religion play in U.S. Supreme Court justices' nominations and decisions?

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THE QUESTION:

What role does religion play in Supreme Court justices’ nominations and decisions?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

By a thin margin, Amy Coney Barrett won confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court without the quizzing about her devout Catholicism — like Senate Democrats Diane Feinstein raised with Barrett’s lower-court nomination and Kamala Harris with another judicial nominee.

Nevertheless, the media pushed this theme, including her involvement with People of Praise, a close-knit community of “charismatic” Catholic families.

This was perhaps the most intense discussion of a nominee’s religion since Louis Brandeis (a justice 1916-39) became the Court’s first Jew following the agony of history’s longest confirmation process, with 19 hearings. Ostensibly, critics questioned his entanglements as a Boston lawyer, but Democratic stockbroker William F. Fitzgerald gave the game away by regretting the nomination of a “slimy fellow” with a “Jewish instinct.”

A smaller dustup involved Democratic nominee Hugo Black (on the Court 1937-71). He was denied the usual automatic deference granted a fellow U.S. Senator when reports emerged that as a young lawyer he joined the Ku Klux Klan, with its hatred of African-Americans, Catholics and Jews. Journalists only proved his KKK membership after a strong Senate vote for confirmation.

The Brandeis breakthrough launched an unwritten tradition of the Court’s “Jewish seat,” also filled by the religiously agnostic Benjamin Cardozo, who overlapped with Brandeis (1932-38), Felix Frankfurter (1939-62), Arthur Goldberg (1962-65) and the unfortunate Abe Fortas (1965-69). After a long gap, Ruth Bader Ginsburg began her celebrated tenure (1993-2020). There was also a “Catholic seat” line with Pierce Butler (1923-39), Frank Murphy 1940-49), William Brennan (1956-90) and Antonin Scalia (1986-2016).

The first Catholic on the Court was Chief Justice Roger Taney (1836-1864), who is not loudly hailed because he wrote the Dred Scott decision that’s widely blamed for precipitating the Civil War.


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Election 2020: It ain't over 'til it's over, but familiar religion-news hooks are already obvious

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The political recriminations will be flowing in coming weeks, months and years.

Why was the Joe Biden campaign effort so astonishingly (yes) "sleepy"? How could Donald Trump do so well when so many people kept telling pollsters they find him unnerving if not repellent, and bemoan his handling of the COVID-19 crisis? And speaking of polls, why did the nation’s elite media — once again — let them slant coverage, and can their distortions ever be remedied?

With control of the White House and U.S. Senate still undecided as this is written, The Religion Guy underscores a quote: "There's something going on out there that most of the media have been missing." That's from Jim VandeHei, the savvy co-founder of both Politico.com and then Axios.com, speaking on devoutly Democratic MSNBC Wednesday morning. He added, "Obviously Donald Trump and the Republicans are the big beneficiaries of that as we sit here today, even if Trump loses the presidency."

The Guy chimes in with the related observation that Democrats and sectors of the media continue to miss or misplay the religion factor in America’s cultural divide. This will require careful reconsideration following the recounts, legal games, Electoral College vote December 14 and state certifications of Senate winners.

Newswriters' analysis of religion and what happened should note data the experts at Pew Research Center posted October 26 and on October 13. Note well that Pew echoed many others in giving Biden a healthy 52- 42 margin over Trump among registered voters.

Pew found predictable pre-election enthusiasm for Democrat Biden among Black Protestants (by 90 percent), Jews (70 percent, though less among regular worshippers while the Orthodox minority leaned GOP), and Hispanic Catholics (67 percent, but hold that thought).

Then there's the big new constituency of "nones" with no religious identification (71 percent). That’s another theme GetReligion has been stressing for a decade. Democratic dependence on non-religious citizens presumably affects the party's lack of affinity for religious interests. The 2020 returns may tell reporters whether that is a mistake.

Trump's coalition per Pew consisted of white "evangelical" Protestants (78 percent support), non-evangelical white (i.e. "mainline") Protestants (53 percent) and white Catholics (52 percent). The Guy figured it would be hard for Trump to eke out a win unless he could do somewhat better with that last group. Repeat after me: Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.


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Concerning Hispanic evangelicals, secret Trump voters and white evangelical women in Georgia

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Life is strange. When I chose the “Groundhog Day” graphic for our 2020 election posts, I did so because I was trying to capture the numbing, “here we go again” nature of the day.

I had no idea that the 2020 results — whether President Donald Trump wins or not — would end up resembling the 2016 race to this degree.

Take Florida. As you may know, everyone in cable-news land last night was talking about Florida as the point of a spear — symbolizing the surprising numbers of Hispanics voting for Trump. It turned into one of the stories of the night. This was part of a rise (small, but significant) in Trump voters in a number of different categories linked to race.

Yes, note the Latino numbers. There may be several layers to that story.

For example, if you read GetReligion, then you know that we were convinced that the rise of Latino evangelicals (and Pentecostal believers) was one of the most important stories of the 2016 race, giving Trump crucial votes that put him in the White House.

Cue the “Groundhog Day” clock. Again.

But let’s note that political-beat journalists would have noticed this trend quicker if they had paid attention, not only to GetReligion (#DUH) but to some important religion-beat reporting elsewhere. Remember that New York Times story that we praised recently? See the post with this headline, “New York Times listens to Latino evangelicals: 'Politically homeless' voters pushed toward Trump.” That post includes a flashback to my 2016 thoughts on Latino evangelicals in Florida.

If you want more input on that issue, and others, please see this new piece by Clemente Lisi: “Election 2020: 3 Things We Learned About Faith And Voting” (at Religion Unplugged). He noted a crucial fact on the Trump campaign calendar:

It’s true that Latinos in general did help Trump (for example, Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade County), the Hispanic evangelical vote mattered, as GetReligion recently pointed out. NBC News exit polling revealed that 55% of the state’s Cuban-American vote went to Trump, while 30% of Puerto Ricans and 48% of “other Latinos” backed the president.


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Here we go again, 2020 version: Five revealing questions to ask on Election Night

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In Tuesday’s big vote, politics matter.

So, too, does religion.

On Election Night, here are five revealing questions that Godbeat pros will be asking:

1. Was President Donald Trump able to maintain his overwhelming level of support — roughly 80% in 2016 — among White evangelicals?

“If that number is significantly lower, I would think it has to do with younger evangelicals and maybe women evangelicals getting fed up,” said Kimberly Winston, an award-winning religion reporter based in California.

The pre-election outlook? Trump is “losing ground with some — but not all — White Christians,” reports FiveThirtyEight’s Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux.

On the flip side, Christianity Today’s Kate Shellnutt highlights evangelical voters who express “more faith in Trump” than they did four years ago.

2. What difference did Catholic voters make, particularly in all-important swing states?

NPR religion correspondent Tom Gjelten notes that in 2016 “it was not the evangelicals who carried Trump to victory but Catholics, a group he had rarely mentioned in his speeches.”

Gjelten explains:

Despite losing the popular vote, Trump reached the presidency in large part because he won traditionally Democratic Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, all states in which Catholics outnumber evangelicals by significant margins.

Religion Unplugged’s Clemente Lisi, The Atlantic’s Emma Green and the Columbus Dispatch’s Danae King offer more insight on this key voting bloc. This is has also been a major topic in GetReligion coverage of American politics for more than a decade, especially in the work of Richard Ostling and Terry Mattingly.

3. How did various subgroups — Mormons, Muslims and even the Amish among them — influence the outcome?

Trump’s campaign has made a “concerted effort” to expand support among Arizona and Nevada members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Salt Lake Tribune’s Lee Davidson reports.


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Why are U.S. voters so wary about electing atheists? What about voting for evangelicals?

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THE QUESTION:

Why are U.S. voters so wary about electing atheists?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Political firsts are piling up!

Joe Biden was America’s first Catholic vice president elected alongside the first Black president, Barack Obama, and hopes to be its second Catholic president. Running mate Kamala Harris would be the first female, first African-American, and first Asian-American as vice president. Jimmy Carter was not the first evangelical president but the first whose faith got such scrutiny. (See note below on how Americans view evangelical candidates.)

In other landmarks on major party tickets, losing nominees for president include the first woman, Hillary Clinton, the first Latter-day Saint, Mitt Romney, the first Eastern Orthodox candidate, Michael Dukakis, and the first Catholic, Al Smith, in 1928. Vice presidential hopefuls on losing tickets include the first Catholic, William Miller, the first woman, Geraldine Ferraro, and the first Jew, Joseph Lieberman.

Ted Cruz was the first Latino to win a primary election, and Pete Buttigieg the first openly gay candidate to do so. The halls of Congress have welcomed numerous Blacks, women, Latinos and those of other immigrant ethnicities, as well as Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims.

One exception. “Why is it so hard for atheists to get voted into Congress?” That’s the title of an October article by Pitzer College sociologist Phil Zuckerman for theconversation.com that was picked up by The Associated Press, patheos.com, Religion News Service and other outlets.

In a Gallup Poll last year, Americans said they’re willing to elect a president who is:


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With 400th anniversary, those Plymouth Pilgrims will make the ideal Thanksgiving feature

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A brave band of sectarian Protestants facing a harsh winter ahead stepped ashore 400 years ago to establish Plymouth Colony, England's second foothold in America following Jamestown.

The date was December 18, but most readers probably think about these "Pilgrims" on Thanksgiving Day, which is patterned after their legendary 1621 harvest feast with Native American guests.

Print and broadcast media professionals who are already planning Thanksgiving features could not do better with sourcing than to debrief award-winning historian John G. Turner of George Mason University (jturne17@gmu.edu, 703-993-5604) about his timely book "They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty" (Yale University Press).

The Pilgrims were supposed to arrive at New York harbor, but were lucky to land safely anywhere due to leaks and damage on the Mayflower.

Their "first Thanksgiving" was apparently no formal observance of gratitude to God, and the menu was probably fish and venison, not wild turkey. Whatever Plymouth Rock signified, the colonists subjected it to later neglect. The acclaimed "Mayflower Compact" was not the New World's first constitution but a hasty bare-bones agreement.

Since Plymouth was absorbed in 1691 into the wealthier Massachusetts Bay Colony, run by rival "Puritan" Christians, many historians have dismissed it as an unimportant backwater. But Turner uplifts the Pilgrims' significance, then balances their contributions against their sins, well summarized in this National Review piece. The most important story theme for journalists is the role of these pioneers at the beginnings of American democracy, human rights and religious liberty.

The Pilgrims received hosannas as democratic pioneers from 19th Century boosters like John Quincy Adams and Daniel Webster, but Turner says they "were neither democrats nor theocrats."

The colony was run by the believers, but did not require everyone to join the church or attend worship. They did, however, make everyone pay taxes to support their churches. They fled England to escape religious persecution, yet sent Baptists and Quakers into exile. (To be fair, in most countries religious dissenters faced prison or worse.)

State and church leaders were both elected, and lay elders shared power with the clergy -- all rather foresighted and with far-reaching implications.


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Today's Associated Press: Why cover both sides of an important Amy Coney Barrett story?

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Dear editors at the Associated Press:

Let’s discuss a few issues behind your recent feature that was sent to newspapers everywhere with this headline: “Barrett was trustee at private school with anti-gay policies.”

The key, of course, is “policies” — a vague term that way too many mainstream journalists consistently use in place of the simple word “doctrines.”

Yes, of course, traditional Catholic schools have “policies” that affect students, faculty and staff. However, these policies are almost always attempts to teach and defend the doctrines of the church. It’s significant that the word “doctrine” does not appear anywhere in this long AP piece and the same goes for the word “catechism.” Also, “scripture” is used once — by a progressive Catholic stressing that conservative Catholics are “literalists” when reading the Bible.

Anyone who has covered Catholic education for a decade or two knows what is going on here. Yes, Democrats are furious about Amy Coney Barrett’s arrival on the high court. But this Associated Press story is built on divisions inside the American Catholic church, both on moral theology linked to LGBTQ issues and fights over the goals of Catholic education in colleges, universities, seminaries and private schools such as the ones linked to Barrett and People of Praise.

With that in mind, let’s add two other factors to this case that are ignored (or all but ignored) by AP.

First of all, once upon a time there was a man named St. Pope John Paul II. In 1990, this pope issued a document entitled “Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church)” focusing on issues in Catholic education. You could tell that it was a controversial document (a) because it said Catholic doctrines should be taught and defended in Catholic schools, (b) progressive Catholics, speaking through the press, went ballistic and (c) it took almost a decade of fighting for American Catholic church leaders to act (sort of) on the pope’s guidelines.

This fight was primarily about colleges and universities, but the principals in Ex Corde are relevant to fights, these days, about classroom and student-life issues in Catholic schools at all levels. So what was John Paul II saying?


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More Protestant preachers have their minds made up about 2020 presidential race

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More Protestant preachers have their minds made up about 2020 presidential race

For pastors in America's Protestant pulpits, Election Day 2020 is starting to look a lot like 2016.

Most evangelicals whose priorities mesh -- for the most part -- with the Republican Party are ready to vote for Donald Trump, according to a LifeWay Research survey. Protestant clergy who do not self-identify as evangelicals plan to vote for Democrat Joe Biden.

The difference in 2020 is that fewer pastors are struggling to make a decision. A survey at the same point in the 2016 race found that 40% of Protestant pastors remained undecided, while 32% packed Trump and 19% supported Hillary Clinton.

This time, only 22% remain undecided, with 53% saying that they plan to vote for Trump, while 21% support Biden.

"There's still a lot of 'undecided' pastors," said Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay. "Quite a few pastors -- for a variety of reasons -- want to put themselves in the 'undecided' bucket. …

"Last time around, Donald Trump was such an unknown factor and many pastors really didn't know what to do with him. This time, it appears that more people know what Trump is about and they have made their peace with that, one way or another. The president is who he is, and people have made up their minds."

Looming in the background is a basic fact about modern American politics. In the end, the overwhelming majority of pastors who say they are Democrats plan to vote for Biden (85%) and the Republicans plan to back Trump (81%).

Some pastors have a logical reason to linger in the "undecided" category -- their doctrinal convictions don't mesh well with the doctrines of the major political parties.

The Rev. Tim Keller, an influential evangelical writer who founded Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, recently stirred up online debates with a New York Times essay called, "How Do Christians Fit Into the Two-Party System? They Don't."

In recent decades, he noted, Democrats and Republicans have embraced an approach to politics in which party leaders assume that working with them on one crucial issue requires agreement with the rest of their party platforms.

"This emphasis on package deals puts pressure on Christians in politics," he noted.


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