Breda O'Brien
President Donald Trump The View
It is remarkable how large a role faith still plays in American politics. There is not a single out-and-proud atheist among the very crowded field of Democratic hopefuls seeking nomination as the presidential candidate.
As a non-observant Jew, Bernie Sanders would have been considered perhaps the least religious but even he said somewhat testily during the 2016 campaign that he “would not be running for president of the United States if [he] did not have very strong religious and spiritual feelings”.
All the others seem to have some religious affiliation, including Tulsi Gabbard, who is a practising Hindu. (Hindus are a true minority, making up less than 1% of the US population.)
Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has been in the news because, unusually for a Democrat, he has been very overt about his religious beliefs. His father spent some time studying to be a Jesuit but left before taking any vows. Both Mr Buttigieg’s mother and father taught at the Catholic university, Notre Dame, in South Bend.
Interest
Although baptised a Catholic, Mr Buttigieg did not grow up in a strongly religious household and when his own interest in faith grew, he chose an Episcopalian (what Irish people would call Anglican) church because as a gay man, he felt their views were more compatible with his.
Mr Buttigieg believes that “the left is rightly committed to a separation of Church and State…but we need to not be afraid to invoke arguments that are convincing on why Christian faith is going to point you in a progressive direction”.
Some Christians are delighted that ‘Mayor Pete’, as he is known, is taking the fight to conservative Christians, particularly evangelicals, and challenging their identification with the Republican party. Others are shocked because even though he is invoking Christianity, like every other Democratic candidate, he is absolutely pro-choice. He has even suggested that the Bible indicates that life begins at the first breath.
It remains to be seen if Mr Buttigieg’s particular set of beliefs helps him with black voters, an important demographic for any Democratic candidate.
Although many older black voters do not like the fact that he is an openly gay man who is married, more of them are troubled by the fact that he is perceived to be somewhat tone-deaf to African American issues. Many of them dislike how he handled the dismissal of the first black police chief the city ever had when Mr Buttigieg first became mayor of South Bend.
(The police chief had illegally obtained recordings of fellow officers on the grounds that they were biased against racial minorities. Some people believed that Mr Buttigieg had in effect, fired the whistle-blower, while others say that by acting outside the law, the police chief, no matter what his motivation, left Mr Buttigieg with no choice.)
While Mr Buttigieg is the youngest candidate, he is most popular among older white voters who like the fact that he is an army veteran, an economic moderate by Democratic standards and openly religious.
Is Mr Buttigieg right that Christianity points in a progressive direction?”
Ultimately, American voters should perhaps focus less on Mr Buttigieg’s Christianity and more on how highly regarded he is by the powerful and influential in Silicon Valley.
He had friends in Harvard who were friends of Mark Zuckerberg, and Mr Buttigieg was among the first 300 students to sign up for the fledgling Facebook.
Mr Zuckerberg personally suggested two data specialists whom Mr Buttigieg ended up employing for his campaign, which is entirely too close a relationship with the enormously powerful founder of Facebook.
Mr Buttigieg’s form of religion is non-threatening to Silicon Valley. But is Mr Buttigieg right that Christianity points in a progressive direction? It depends on what you mean by progressive. There is nothing progressive about ending the lives of the youngest humans.
Mr Buttigieg may be making the same mistake that many supporters or Donald Trump have made. Too close an identification of the Gospel with any particular politician, political party or ideology does not serve Christianity well.
Conservative Christian voters were willing to hold their noses so as to keep out Hillary Clinton but that should not mean endorsing everything President Trump does while in office.
‘Put not your faith in princes’ is good advice. It would have been very good advice for Christian supporters of President Trump. He is the least religious president ever. He has made politics uglier and more vindictive. He has carried out his promise to appoint pro-life Supreme Court judges but it remains to be seen what that will accomplish.
Keeping Hillary Clinton out does not mean endorsing everything President Trump does while in office”
‘Put not your faith in princes’ is also be good advice for those who like Mr Buttigieg’s version of Christianity. A faith which holds values indistinguishable from the current liberal worldview is not the faith of Jesus of Nazareth.
The eternal truths of Christ offer a standard by which to critique any form of political ideology and cannot be co-opted or exclusively claimed by any political standpoint.