If you have been paying any attention at all to the 2020 White House race, you were ready for the latest mini-sermon from Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
The setting, of course, was the last debate between Democratic Party hopefuls staged before the Iowa caucuses. Here is the key soundbite from Buttigieg, care of CNN, as the frequent churchgoing Episcopalian took yet another shot at Citizen Donald Trump, who — until recently — has been linked to mainline forms of Presbyterianism in great New York City.
Let us attend.
“If he keeps trying to use religion, if a guy like Donald trump keeps trying to use religion to somehow recruit Christianity into the GOP, I will be standing there not afraid to talk about a different way to answer the call of faith,” he said. “And insist that God does not belong to a political party.”
If that kind of language sounds familiar, there’s a good reason for that. Consider the top of the recent New York Times feature that ran with this double-decker headline:
Why Pete Buttigieg Has Made Religion Central to His Campaign
The former mayor is not only trying to bridge ground within the Democratic Party, he’s also making a direct appeal to disaffected conservatives who cannot stomach President Trump.
The overture, logically enough, is from a Sunday morning sermonette in which Mayor Pete proclaims:
“Look at what they do,” he said at a campaign stop about 45 minutes outside of Des Moines, calling out Republicans for “using faith as a way to tell some people they don’t belong.”
It was “O.K.,” he added, “for us to talk about how each of us are formed, and where our faith takes us,” and he challenged the notion that religious values are the province of the G.O.P. “God does not belong to a political party in the United States of America,” he told his listeners.
More than most of his rivals for the Democratic nomination, Mr. Buttigieg has put religion at the center of his presidential campaign, seeing it as an opportunity to speak to a broad swath of the electorate, both inside and outside the Democratic Party.
Now, if you have been following Democratic Party life for a year or so, there is a perfectly logical reason — two or three, actually — for Buttigieg to being using this strategy.
First of all, like President Barack Obama, there is plenty of evidence that he is a sincere Christian progressive who steers left on doctrinal issues linked to moral theology and other topics. That makes his faith relevant.
One of the weaknesses of the Times piece is that readers learn little or nothing about the contents of Buttigieg’s faith, other than how it relates to the political challenge of being a white man in a gay marriage at this point in time.
Once again: Politics is what is real. Faith is, well, not so real. There’s no need for factual content about what this candidate believes about lots of other theological issues. There is no need to explore how one appeals, in the same campaign, to the nones/atheist/agnostic niche — the largest religious demographic in the modern Democratic Party — and African-American churchgoers.
The Times team does, of course, hit another crucial religious hot button, one frequently discussed here at GetReligion. This is essential content on several levels:
… There are strategic reasons for Mr. Buttigieg to emphasize faith. African-Americans, especially women, are among the most religious voters in the Democratic Party. And there are entire suburbs full of educated, affluent, churchgoing conservatives — the kind Mr. Buttigieg likes to call “future former Republicans” — who say they would find it difficult to vote for President Trump again. …
Convincing Americans to vote for a 37-year-old who is openly gay is a proposition that no major presidential contender has ever tested. And there are indications some are not convinced. His poll numbers with African-Americans, for example, are minuscule, not even registering 1 percent in some surveys, though many say they don’t know enough about him to form an opinion. And his campaign’s focus groups have found his sexual orientation to be a hurdle with some black voters.
Without black support — a pillar of the Democratic Party base — it is virtually inconceivable that he could make it to the general election and get the opportunity to convert those wayward Republicans he talks about in such aspirational terms.
Ah, “wayward Republicans” and other religious, moral and cultural conservatives (I have been openly #NeverTrump #NeverHillary for several years now) who roll their eyes and click to another channel (MLB.com is my standard) whenever Trump appears on their television screen.
Surely talking about God is enough to win some of these folks? Is there any chance that some of these people have objections to the Democratic Party/New York Times editorial pages that are larger than LGBTQ issues?
Apparently not. While there are plenty of reasons for cultural conservatives to doubt Trump, this article is not where readers will hear about any of them. In fact, there is zero content here from religious activists linked to social and moral issues other than interviews with Democrats who already are in the left-of-center religious believers who are already in Buttigieg’s choir.
Still, there is interesting material to read here. I thought this passage was especially effective:
… When [Buttigieg] was in England during his Rhodes scholarship, he began attending Anglican services and grew intrigued. He said in an interview with CNN that this was the period in his life when he first started feeling truly religious because he came to realize “that there were forms of truth that I was not going to be accessing through reason” alone.
Every Sunday when he is not traveling the country campaigning, he attends the Episcopal Cathedral of St. James in South Bend, where he married his husband, Chasten, in 2018.
His discussions of faith can enrage social conservatives, especially when he needles Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. He has called Mr. Pence, an evangelical Christian and opponent of same-sex marriage, “the cheerleader of the porn star presidency” and challenged the vice president’s belief that homosexuality is wrong. “Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator,” he said in a speech in April.
So what do doctrinally conservative Democrats — they do exist — say about that point? Did the Times piece contain any information on that?
By the way, reporters and readers interested in some numbers about the religious left should click here for a Religion In Public piece on that topic. The headline: “The Religious Left is Small But Loud.”