Why is Jesus on the Ballot?
Unlike other Western democracies, America's politics are infused with religion. God is everywhere, all the time, especially during election season. As we get closer to the November polls, it would seem Jesus is personally invested in the outcome of the vote if you listen to candidates up and down the ballot.
I’ve covered elections across the world for the past thirty years, and I can’t think of another country (that isn’t a theocracy) that has such a deep sense of its own religiosity when votes are being courted and counted.
Doug Heye is a Republican strategist and even though I wasn't planning on talking about Trump, Republicans and God with him, the conversation went there and I am so glad it did. It’s so fascinating!
Doug Heye says Republicans and Democrats have used religion to attract voters in the past but evangelical fervor for Donald Trump has turbo-charged the Republican ticket in different ways.
President Trump, who struggles to quote Bible verses and is no poster child for the Ten Commandments, has a loyal and powerful base among evangelical Christians. Trump and his supporters say they are doing God’s work because, in spite of the fact that he slept with a porn star weeks after his wife gave birth to his son, they see him as a savior on single issues around abortion, IVF and even gun control. It’s a Faustian bargain for the true believer, but it’s one that millions of Christians are willing to make this November.
Doug Heye is wary of making a moral equivalency but he suggests that campaigning in churches has been a constant in American politics, even for Democrats. The civil rights movement, he says, was a faith-based movement that was extremely powerful. Democrats, especially in places like Atlanta where I live, continue to base a large part of their outreach to voters via African-American churches.
But there is something more, isn’t there, about the temperature levels of religion in this election? It feels almost too hot to write about or talk about in a podcast; as if questioning why there’s the personification of Jesus in this race is an act of diabolical heresy.
For years now, Doug points out, there's been an erosion in institutions - from the press, to the church, to government, to even Hollywood. The breakdown in institutions was super-charged by Covid. So, he says, politics has become a religion for a lot more voters than it used to be. It’s intense and it’s personal.
That made a lot of sense to me. ‘Politics is the new Religion’ helps me understand why some voters can sit with the hypocrisy of language that is thrown around so carelessly. In an age of division, extremism and identity politics, even though the pious can preach they love their neighbor, they don't.
Self-righteousness across the political spectrum is easy to find nowadays. From the left to right, it sometimes sounds like voters think their political viewpoint is divinely set in stone. “There is a tendency to want to find somebody as an apostate, or as a heretic,” says Doug. Leaders, of course, are quick to manipulate.
Take a listen, and if you’d like a more outsider perspective of America please get friends and family to sign up to this newsletter and follow us on Searching for America wherever you get your podcast. Join me,
Robyn
