- Welcome to this online dialogue
on Faith and the Faithful
in the 2020 Elections,
on Religion, Racism and
the Coronavirus Crisis.
My name is John Carr and I'm
the director of the initiative,
and I'm delighted you've joined us.
Since the Georgetown shutdowns
we have done nine dialogues,
several on the COVID-19, the
moral and human dimensions.
One with Latino leaders,
one with young leaders,
a major dialogue on racism,
a dialogue with the
Vatican on Pope Francis,
our environmental encyclical.
We've got a wonderful response.
In fact, a stunning response.
I just checked a few minutes ago.
3,030 people have signed up for this.
So there is a hunger for
a discussion of the moral,
the human, the religious
dimensions of public life,
and we think today's discussion
will help advance that.
We invite you to share your
thoughts on social media
and to asks questions to the panel
using the prompts at the
bottom of the screen.
We are roughly five months away
from the November election,
and it's worth recalling
that five months ago
President Trump was celebrating
the escape from impeachment
by a vote of the U.S. Senate
and planning the campaign on
the basis of a growing economy,
record-low unemployment numbers,
and the economic shape the country was in.
Five months ago tomorrow,
Joe Biden finished fifth in New Hampshire
and there was a lot of discussion...
He was actually being
written off as out of touch
and a bad fit for a Democratic party
ready for new and progressive leadership.
Now, five months later, our nation,
our faith, our politics have been tested
by a global and seeming unending pandemic
which has cost 130,000 lives
and untold suffering and loss.
Our economy has collapsed
with millions out of work,
with lost jobs, wages, wealth, businesses
and no clear path forward.
And appalling videos of unarmed
black men in our streets
have led to unprecedented protests
and a national reckoning on racism.
We often call racism
America's original sin,
but it's also an open and festering wound
that infects all our society.
There's no better evidence
of the persistence of racism
than the fact that COVID-19
and the economic crisis,
while it touches all of us,
disproportionately hurts
people in communities of color.
All this, the election,
the coronavirus and the economic crisis,
tests communities and people of faith.
How we respond will be
a test of our hearts,
our minds, our souls, and
especially our consciences.
That's why so many of
us have come together
on a Friday afternoon in July,
and we have a terrific group of leaders
to help us analyze and
understand these challenges.
We'll begin with Greg Smith from Pew,
who will brief us on the
trends from their recent report
on religion in the 2020 campaign.
Gabby Orr is the White
House reporter for Politico,
and her journalism at the
intersection of faith and politics
is getting a lot of attention.
Justin Giboney is the
founder of the AND Campaign,
which tries to bring
together biblical values
and political responsibility.
And Jeanne Lewis is a
leader in the initiative
Salt and Light Gatherings
for young leaders,
and an example of someone who
doesn't talk about action,
but actually acts.
She's running for D.C. City Council.
And Mike Gerson, known to many of us,
was a speechwriter and key
advisor in the Bush White House,
and writes about the moral
and religious dimensions
of public life in the Washington Post.
So let me first turn to you, Greg.
As I said, you're associate
director of research at Pew.
One thing people may not know
is you wrote a book called
"Politics in the Parish:
The Political Influence
of Catholic Priests".
Pew has become the essential
place for data and analysis
on lots of things, but
especially the connection
between faith and public life,
something that's ignored by other polls,
and frankly misunderstood or neglected.
Last week you and your
colleagues at Pew released
a major report on faith in
politics in this campaign.
What can you share with
us? What's going on?
What's happening with
Catholics, with evangelicals?
What's happening in
terms of Trump and Biden?
What is happening with religious voters
and religious communities?
Greg.
- Well, thank you, John,
for those very kind words.
You know, the data show pretty clearly
that the public's mood has soured
in a variety of ways in recent months.
In fact, the headline on
one of our recent reports
was that the "Public's Mood Turns Grim".
And I've got some slides here
that can help to illustrate that.
Let me just pull them up.
So reflecting that general
souring of the nation's mood,
our latest data show that
Donald Trump's approval rating
has declined since April
among a wide range of religious groups.
You can see here that white
evangelical Protestants
remain the president's
strongest supporters.
72% of them now say they approve
of the way he is handling his job.
But that number is down six
points just since April.
Among white Catholic voters,
54% now say they approve of
Trump's performance in office,
down eight points since April.
Fewer than a quarter of Hispanic Catholics
and just 12% of black Protestants
now approve of Trump's
handling of his job.
And importantly, among the
large and growing group
of Americans who are
religiously unaffiliated,
these are people who describe
themselves religiously,
as atheist or agnostics or as
simply nothing in particular,
among that group just one in four
now say they approve
of Trump's performance.
Now, I don't want to exaggerate
the magnitude of these declines.
April was a bit of a high watermark
in terms of the president's
approval ratings,
and these current readings
aren't too different
than what we saw earlier this year
or even in the earliest days
of the Trump administration.
Still, I do think that
these trends are noteworthy.
And here's what we see when we look at
the current state of
the presidential race.
Overall, Joe Biden has a 10-point lead.
Biden performs best among
black Protestant voters,
with nearly nine in 10 saying
that they would vote for him
or that they would lean
toward voting for him
if the election were held today.
Three-quarters of religiously
unaffiliated voters
also say they would back Biden
if the election were today,
as do 52% of Catholics,
who prefer Biden to Trump,
though you can also see here that Trump
is currently the preferred candidate
of 57% of white Catholics.
Most white Protestants,
including more than eight
in 10 white evangelicals,
say they support Trump.
Now, if we take a step back,
and this important, I think,
if we take a step back
and we take a look at
the long-term trends in American religion
we can see a variety of
developments underway that,
all else equal, could bode well
for the Democratic party
in the years ahead.
All three of the white Christian groups
in which majorities say
they plan to vote for Trump,
all three of those groups are declining
as a share of the population.
White evangelical Protestants
now make up 16% of the population,
down from 19% a decade ago.
White Protestants who are not evangelical
have seen their population share decline
by four points over that same period,
as have white Catholics,
their share of the population
is down four points over the last decade.
Those three groups, white evangelicals,
white non-evangelical
Protestants and white Catholics,
those three groups together made up
51% of the population a decade ago.
Today those three groups combined
make up just 39% of the U.S. population.
By comparison, you can see here the size
of the black Protestant and
Hispanic Catholic populations
is relatively stable, and
religiously unaffiliated people,
that strongly Democratic group,
that group is growing very rapidly.
But while the growing ranks of
the religiously unaffiliated
make them an increasingly
important political constituency,
it's worth remembering
that it's still the case
that most voters in the United States
are indeed religious people.
You can see here that even
in the Democratic party,
where the religiously unaffiliated
have grown more rapidly than
in the Republican party,
fully half of Democrats are Christians,
and an additional 9%
identify with other faiths
like Judaism, Islam, Buddhism,
Hinduism and many others.
Fully one-quarter of
Democrats are Christians
from racial and ethnic
minority backgrounds,
including 8% who are Catholics
from racial and ethnic
minority backgrounds.
And with that in mind,
when I look ahead to this year's election
I will be keeping an eye
on the extent to which
the Democratic party is able
to appeal to religious voters.
Can they appeal both to
some religious voters,
who have traditionally voted Republican,
and also to the deeply religious voters
who have long been part of
the Democratic coalition,
especially those from racial
and ethnic minority backgrounds?
And can the Democratic party do so
while also consolidating
and mobilizing support
among nonreligious voters that constitute
a growing share of the Democratic base?
Those are a few of the key questions
at the intersection of
religion and race and politics
that I'll be watching as
we approach election day.
I hope some of that is helpful,
and I'm looking forward to the discussion.
- Thank you very much, Greg.
As usual, factual, analytical and helpful.
My experience is lots of us have opinions
on the intersection of faith and politics.
Very few people have real
data, and you have data.
Given that context, I want
to ask the entire panel
a very general question.
What do you think the most important thing
that is happening in the 2000 campaign
at the intersection of faith and politics,
in light of these monumental
challenges we face,
the coronavirus pandemic,
the economic collapse,
and the national crisis
around racial justice,
what is the most important thing?
What are you watching?
And I'll begin with Mike Gerson.
- Sure.
Well, I wouldn't claim
this as the most important,
but it's certainly one
of the most important,
is that white evangelicals
are beginning to come to terms
with the choice they made in 2016,
the relationship that they
entered into with Donald Trump.
They were a group losing social status.
They adopted a narrative of fear,
a belief that modernity
had turned against them,
that their institutions
were gonna be hounded,
that they were gonna be persecuted,
and Donald Trump played into that.
And this was really a very traditional,
typical political deal
made by many white evangelicals,
which was, "You protect
us and we'll support you."
And so they essentially
bought into the notion
of having a strongman protect
the religious interests.
And Trump, to some extent,
has played that role.
But I guess what they're
finding, they're being sobered,
I would hope, by a few things.
The first one that needs to be said
is that that type of agreement or deal
has nothing actually to do
with the social priorities
of the Christian gospel, so they're acting
like every other interest
group in Washington may react.
But that isn't particularly good enough
for the Christian church,
which is supposed to be
motivated by something else,
a transcendent view of human rights
and dignity, at its core.
So I think that they're finding,
secondly, I think that they're finding
that association with
Trump has huge social cost,
and it's because the
president has made xenophobia,
racism, misogyny, central to his message.
And so they entered into this agreement
to get something practical
with Trump, but now are,
I think, seen as cultural
carriers of his message,
and I thing that's gonna
have long-term problems.
And then I would just say, third,
that one of the answers that we're given
by a lot of white evangelicals
on why they supported Trump
against their own values,
the answer that they often
gave was, "But Gorsuch,"
this idea that Supreme Court justices
were worth any compromise, any agreement,
they were worth this deal with the devil.
But they are finding, of
course, which others have found,
that Supreme Court outcomes
are not guaranteed.
That in fact,
this agreement to get judges
in exchange for their soul
has not always worked out
the way that they want it to
when it comes to the way
that Supreme Court justices
vote on key issues.
So I think that there's a
significant sobering going on,
and the question is do they double down
or do they exhibit some
different behavior?
- Jeanne, Mike worked in the White House
and is an evangelical.
You're a young Catholic,
part of the Mother Church of
Catholic African Americans.
You're also running for office.
What do you think the most
significant development is
in this election in light
of faith and public life?
- As Mike said, it's hard to identify
one thing as the most important,
because our lives are
multi-issued, our issues intersect.
And obviously 2020 has been
an extremely difficult year
because it exposed all of the weak points
in our institutions and
systems throughout the country,
at the local level, at the federal level,
and really globally.
Our healthcare system, our
emergency response systems,
the economic stability of
the majority of the people
in the country has been
threatened and really upended.
And even our cultural
narratives are shifting
because we're saying the people
that we venerated as heroes for centuries,
their stories are more complex
than we've chosen to acknowledge.
So these layers of crisis
have made it impossible
to ignore what's wrong with the systems
that are supposed to provide
structure to our society.
So what we see is a group of people,
our brothers and sisters in the nation,
crying out and saying that these systems
are not working for me.
And the challenge and the opportunity
is that people have been
saying this for decades,
and really since the
founding of our country,
of we've always wrestled with
do our systems work for us?
But now more and more of us are seeing it
so much more clearly because
it's affecting us more acutely.
So in a moment like this
it's very easy for us
to revert into fear.
In a moment like this,
when so much is being brought to light,
we could move farther
into a place of fear,
but we also have the opportunity to act
with courage and faith.
And so especially for people of faith,
for people who identify
as religious people
or people of faith, this
requires a level of discernment
and a deep seeking of what is true.
This political and social
moment gives us the opportunity
to be vulnerable about
our own experiences,
but also to be deeply
present to the experiences
of our brothers and
sisters, including people
with whom we couldn't
identify or didn't identify
six months ago or a year ago.
So when I think about the most important
focal point in this time,
it's not only for laypeople
or for sort of the average citizen,
it's also for politicians and
other candidates like myself.
We're called to respond to
the crisis of this moment
and find ways to meet the urgent needs,
but also to move forward
with faith and not fear.
So how can we create alternatives
or improve our system
so that the next time there's a crisis
we won't be in the same boat?
So I think the important
opportunity for us right now
is not to preserve broken systems
that clearly don't serve us well.
We all see this with much greater clarity
than we could have last year.
If everything was working
we wouldn't be experiencing
the collective suffering
that we have right now.
And so now is the time
to shift those systems
and to improve those systems
so that they actually
work better for all of us.
- Thank you, Jeanne.
Faith, not fear, that's
a tremendous mandate.
I would remind folks that
if you have a question,
send it in on the email
that's on the screen,
and join us on social media as well.
Justin, you're organizing
with the AND Campaign
across the country.
What does faith, not
fear, look like in 2020?
- Yeah, well, I think it's about kind of
leaning on your faith and not resorting,
I think Jeanne made some excellent points,
not resorting to some of the fear tactics
that we see so often.
Those tactics can be easy,
but I think they become
destructive very quickly.
The COVID-19 crisis though, John, I think,
and the racialized
violence that we witnessed
during the crisis, have really laid bare
many of the injustices
and the racial disparities
that are plaguing American society.
We've seen the senseless police violence,
of the rates of black
people dying from the virus.
That's been heartbreaking, and it's been
a clear result of the disparities.
And so I think, John, one of
the things this moment has done
is it has really exposed the issues
in such a way that we couldn't avoid it.
We had to acknowledge it and we had to
deal more deeply with these issues.
And I think out of all the
bad things that are happening,
that's somewhat of a good thing.
The fact that we had
to address these issues
also exposed, really, the insufficiency
of the standard conservative
and the standard progressive positions.
The political right's anemic
position on racial issues
I think has become
obvious and embarrassing
to a lot of Republicans, and hopefully
to a lot of evangelicals.
And that should've been
the case a long time ago,
so it's good to see folks
like Senator Marco Rubio
speaking up on those conversations.
But the way Republicans
have allowed President Trump
to destructively manipulate race issues
has just been shameful, and
I think they'll be dealing
with the loss of integrity
and credibility for some time.
On the other side though,
I think the irreverence,
and really the leadership aversion
that's been cultivated on the left
has become a major thorn in the side
of many Democratic
mayors and local leaders
who actually have to govern.
It's made it very difficult
to govern as many of them
have tried to be strong but
sensible on racial injustice.
They've had to entertain all kinds
of performative
destruction, empty defiance,
these sovereign zones and
things of that nature,
before really even having an opportunity
to address the issues at hand.
And I'm hoping part of what I'm seeing
is that some people of
faith seem to be more aware
of the insufficiencies of
these ideological tribes.
And John, they're
beginning to see the need
for leadership outside of
the generic conservative
and generic progressive molds.
So for me, what's been significant
is that several of the important
dynamics have been exposed,
and now we have the
opportunity to address them
compassionately and thoughtfully,
and I'm hoping that we do that.
- Thank you much.
Gabby, you're a White House
reporter for Politico.
You've been following Trump
longer than most people.
I think you were there
when he took that ride
down the escalator.
You worked for the Washington Examiner,
the New York Post,
you've been on Fox News.
You come from California.
You're now, frankly,
becoming one of the thoughtful
and important journalists
at the intersection of
religion and politics.
You wrote a story just a few weeks ago.
The headline was "Trump
allies see a mounting threat:
Biden's rising evangelical support",
which caused a stir.
What do you think is going on?
What does your reporting, your analysis,
tell you about what's going
on with religion in politics?
- Well, in the interest
of fair journalism,
I'd like to just point
out two developments
that I've been watching,
one on the political right
and one on the political left.
And Michael sort of hit on this earlier,
but one thing that we saw
in Greg's presentation
is that there has been a gradual erosion
in President Trump's support
among white evangelicals
over the last six months,
beginning around the time
that the coronavirus pandemic
hit the United States,
and it's only growing worse,
as we dealt with the pandemic,
with the economic fallout,
and then moved into this period of time
where we have had now a very
serious national conversation
about racial injustice,
racial reconciliation.
And one thing that this
has really accelerated
is the breakdown of
what's colloquially known
as the religious right.
So for decades you had
conservative Catholics,
Protestants, Jews, who
opposed progressivism
and threats to religious freedom
and had staked out sort of
these clearly defined positions
on your hot-button issues like abortion,
family, marriage, they all sort of fit
under that umbrella of
the religious right.
And now, because of their
affiliation with Trump,
the fact that the religious right has now
almost become synonymous
with white evangelicals
who are supportive of President Trump,
you have a lot of conservative Catholics,
a lot of conservative Jews, Protestants,
who are reluctant to identify
as part of of the religious right.
They no longer wanna
be under that umbrella
because they have been so turned off
by the way that this president
has conducted by himself,
the nature of his character,
some of his policies,
some of his rhetoric, and so you had
sort of this gradual breakdown
in a political institution,
movement, if you will, that for years
dominated Republican politics.
And so on the right, it's tough to see
how that's going to actually
play out in the 2020 cycle,
but I do think that's
it's largely contributing
to a lot of the erosion we've seen
in the president's support
among white Catholics
and white evangelical Protestants.
And it's become even more dramatic,
just as I was saying, over the course
of the coronavirus pandemic
and the civil unrest
that we've seen in the aftermath
of the murder of George Floyd.
These twin crises are far
more tangible than anything
that we've seen during the
Trump administration previously.
The pandemic has disrupted
everybody's lives,
a lot of people in this country
are reevaluating the way
that they think about racism
and racial injustice, and I think
that you're starting to
see that have an impact
on the relationships
between white evangelicals
and white Catholics and
the Trump administration
and President Trump.
So that'll be something that
I'm paying attention to,
certainly, heading into the 2020 election.
And then, just quickly on the left,
I also think, and Justin
kind of got at this as well,
back in 2008 when President Obama
was campaigning for office,
there was sort of this
faith left voting bloc.
He went out to churches, he
pursued evangelical voters
in a way that has been largely absent
from Democratic candidates and
campaigns in the last decade.
Pete Buttigieg's candidacy
was a really good case study
in the way that
progressives have now talked
about rooting progressive social causes
in the faith and in Christian ideals
such as loving they neighbor
and caring for the least among us
as opposed to rooting these
progressive social causes
in disdain for Trump or for Republicans.
And so I do thing there's a question
of who sort of wins out
on that view, that approach,
and what impact long-term
does that have on
Democratic party politics
and progressive social causes?
- Thank you very much, Gabby.
I'm gonna pick up on your last point.
I have a lot of my own questions,
but we have a ton of questions coming in.
We had a whole dialogue about
the Democrat's god problem
and their inability to
reach out in some ways
to religious voters.
Some of it has to do with
extremism on abortion, perhaps.
You have major Democratic figures saying
that pro-life convictions
are not welcome in the party
if people wanna act on them.
Justin, tell your story of
how you got involved in this
and why you're trying
to lift up the voices
of believers who believe in all life,
all dignity, within both parties.
- Sure.
Well, you now part of the story.
I was a delegate at the
Democratic National Convention
in 2012 and 2016 in Congressman
John Lewis' district.
In 2012 I just kinda ran
as a generic Democrat.
I didn't really rock the boat.
But in 2016 I was a lot more vocal, John,
about being a Democrat
who is more centered
or traditional when it
came to social issues,
just like many other African
Americans in my community.
And so I ran as what we
called a Hamer Democrat,
named after civil rights
legend Fannie Lou Hamer.
And during my delegate election speech
I talked about things like poverty,
I talked about education, but
also about pro-life issues
and religious freedom,
and I won overwhelmingly
in that very progressive district.
But because of my views
on the last two subjects,
the last two topics, some
of the far-left leaders
tried to have me removed
from the Georgia delegation.
And similarly, I have a good friend
named Dr. Jaha Howard who is a dentist
and ran for Georgia State
Senate as a Democrat,
and he was smeared by secular progressives
because of his Christian beliefs.
And I think it's a microcosm, really,
of the illiberalism that
we're seeing growing
in the Democratic party.
They want the votes of
black and brown Christians
but want to silence our values, it seems.
And someone has to answer
the question for me
that how is it that not
one nationally known
black or brown Democrat is pro-life
when many of their constituents are.
That seems like a
miscarriage of Democracy.
So I think at a time,
when Trump is kind of
the thing holding the party together,
they're really playing with fire.
And so my intent with the AND Campaign
is to bring up some of
those voices that say no,
we are here, we care about social justice
and we care about moral order,
and just to make sure that
those voices get heard.
- In the Catholic community
we're not as creative.
We haven't come up with the AND Campaign.
We call it the consistent ethic of life,
and we're still trying to explain it.
Jeanne, I'd like to come to you.
You're a friend of the initiative,
a leader in our Salt and Light dialogues.
You work in philanthropy.
You've been active in your parish.
But the most impressive
thing is you've stepped up.
You're running for D.C. City Council.
Obviously Georgetown doesn't
endorse candidates for office,
but I'd like to know why,
when so many are cynical
about public life,
you've decided to not
only throw your hat in
but throw your heart and your life
into trying to make things better.
Why did you decide to run?
- It was quite a long journey,
but ultimately the
personal is the political.
And most of my career, as I said,
has been in social justice nonprofit work,
including faith-based
community organizing.
So I have spent my adult
life surrounded by people
who are exercising their
faith in the political sphere,
so this concept is not new to me.
Going to Catholic
school, being a Catholic,
it's always been taught to
me that we have to engage.
And especially in this moment of crisis,
I see many laypeople, and others
who don't identify religiously,
stepping up to engage in community service
and to take care of one another.
Myself, I've also volunteered
by giving people rides
or bringing people food,
really meeting people's basic needs.
But I've also seen people
paying closer attention
to our political process, and
both of those are necessary.
And so I go back to what
I said at the beginning,
which is about discernment.
I really got to this
place of deciding to run
because I discerned it, I prayed about it,
I talked to people who had done it before
and I felt compelled to make a difference.
Because ultimately, doing
all of the community service,
and even voting, showing up to vote
every single election, only goes so far.
And I was observing that we had a lot
of elected officials in Washington, D.C.
who talked about equity, who
talked about social justice,
but having grown up in this area,
having lived in different
parts of the city
and worked in different parts of the city,
the disparities were very clearly to me,
especially along race
lines and class lines,
and those two things intersect.
And because of my experience
living all over the country,
working in nonprofit organizations,
meeting leaders who were
engaging politically,
locally and federally, I knew
that there were other ways
to strengthen our economy,
there were other way
to develop our neighborhoods,
there were other ways
to educate our children
that didn't require that
large swaths of people
were pushed out of the city.
And so I was motivated
not only by my faith,
but also by the examples
of people that I know
to exercise this right and run for office,
and think about policies where
everyone in the city can thrive.
I do wanna talk about
engaging locally though.
I think running for office locally
in the midst of this large
federal conversation,
and especially in our nation's capital,
is a very complex thing.
Washington, D.C. is not a state.
We received half of the
federal stimulus money
that states did because we're not a state,
but our population is
larger than several states.
And so we started this fiscal year
with a $300 million surplus,
and now we have a deficit.
And so laypeople as well as candidates,
as well as elected officials,
again need to hold that tension
of how do we respond to
those immediate needs,
including the grief that
we're all experiencing
because of this crisis, as
well as making decisions
that are gonna set us up for
success in the long term.
And all of that requires a
deep level of discernment,
which includes prayer,
but it really includes
a deep seeking of truth.
- We have lots of questions,
and there are a couple patterns in them
that I'm gonna try and summarize.
Greg, I would give you a heads-up
that several people are
asking for more information
about Latino voters,
African American voters
and other voters.
We've focused a lot on white evangelicals,
Latino Catholics and white Catholics.
What else is happening in there,
if you could come in after this.
But there is a lot of questions about
you have a majority of white Catholics
supporting President Trump.
Why is that, given that his policies,
some would say his character,
are inconsistent with Catholic values?
What is driving the
support for President Trump
among religious voters?
And I'd invite anybody,
maybe Justin and Mike.
Mike talked a little bit about
what's going on with evangelicals.
Mike knows Catholic social teaching
better than most Catholics,
so maybe start with Justin and Mike
on why are white religious voters
still supporting President Trump
in significant but reduced numbers?
- Yeah, John, I would
say one of the things
that I've been seeing is just, number one,
kind of an addiction to power,
just not being able to let
go of being in control,
which as you have mentioned,
is far from being biblical.
But then, something
else that comes to mind
is also putting winning
before the witness,
and it's really short-term thinking.
I think to get the short-term wins,
and we know the Supreme Court
and those things matter,
that it's not a small
deal, but the AND Campaign
always says that our witness has to be
more important than winning.
What message are we sending,
because those two things
often come in conflict.
Look, I'm a political strategist,
I never strategize to lose,
but when in conflict as Christians,
we have to send the right
message way before we think
about having political power or winning.
And then, from an African
American perspective,
I think there was always the thought
that the conversation
about character mattering
and all those things was just pretext,
and what has been proven through this time
is that is was indeed pretext,
and that sometimes principles change
when you're in a situation where
you wanna win political capital.
- Michael, in one of your
recent columns you said,
"For some of us the ideal
is more on the model
of Christian social teaching,
solidarity with the vulnerable,
respect for institutions,
care for creation, the embrace
of refugees and immigrants
and support for government
that seeks the common good.
Neither political party currently
measures up to this ideal nor cares to."
What do you think is going on in terms
of the enduring support for
Trump among white Christians,
Catholics, evangelicals and others?
- I think the most disturbing
aspect that I've seen
is that a lot of white evangelicals
don't support Trump in spite
of his cruelty and bullying.
They support Trump because
of his cruelty and bullying.
They've essentially hired
someone to defend them,
and they don't want
someone who's gonna play,
necessarily, even by Christian rules.
And when you look at Falwell,
when you look at Jeffress
and some of these other
figures, when Donald Trump
belittles or attacks or
engages in cruel discourse,
they're positively supportive.
So this to me is the most
disturbing aspect of all this,
is it's not an in spite
of, but a because of.
- [John] Mm-hmm.
- And I find it deeply discrediting,
because many evangelicals,
white evangelicals,
have adopted tactics that are
fundamentally inconsistent
with their view of human dignity,
which is the way that others are treated,
the causes you adopt.
This is the central Christian contribution
to our political dialogue,
over the hundreds of
years of American history,
is this view that human beings,
that no insignificant
person was ever born.
And if you look at what white evangelicals
are identified with now,
they're identified with a man
that they believe is effective
in defending their interests
using the standards of the world,
and that's ultimately discrediting.
- Jeanne, you and I are the
two Catholics on this call.
Do you have a comment?
- Yes.
So I can't comment on why
white evangelicals are doing,
what they're doing, 'cause
I'm not a white evangelical,
but I do think that, again,
going back to my comment around fear,
I think that many, many
people are in a place of fear,
and when they perceive
that they are winning
it helps alleviate some
of that feeling of fear.
But I think that we all have an obligation
to look more critically
at our elected officials,
and those of us like me who are seeking
to be an elected official,
and getting back to what's fundamental,
especially as people of faith.
So for example, here in Washington, D.C.,
Mayor Bowser, who's an
African American woman,
paints a Black Lives Matter on 16th Street
leading up to the White House,
and nationally people were
very excited about that,
locally people were excited about that.
But when you look at her budget proposal,
it didn't reflect that same sentiment.
It didn't reflect aggressive and bold
and courageous actions to help
decrease disparities in Washington, D.C.
So I think for every elected official,
if there is a demonstration or a stunt
or an action that's taking place,
even if it makes us
feel good in the moment,
we all have a responsibility
and an obligation
to dig more deeply and figure
out what's underneath that
and what's fundamentally important.
- Thank you.
I would say, as somebody who works on this
and watches this, that for
a lot of the people I know,
the pro-life issue, the
question of the protection
of unborn children is central to this,
and two things have gone on.
Whether you believe
Trump is sincere or not,
he has promised policies
and promised judges
that will uphold the
lives of unborn children,
and Democrats have gone the other way.
Joe Biden began as a pro-life Democrat,
supported the Hyde Amendment for 40 years.
And they've communicated
to us in lots of ways
that those views are not
respected in the party,
and so I think we have to acknowledge
that many people spend too
much time focusing on abortion.
I would not want our dialogue
to neglect that issue.
The protection of life, all life,
the way that Justin and
others have talked about it,
is really important.
One question we got, and let
me halt that and go to Greg,
people are really interested
in what's going on
with the Latino community,
the African American community
and other religious voters.
What can you tell us?
- I would point to a couple of things.
I think, number one, when you think about
politics in the United States,
when you thing about religion in politics,
we have to remember that
you simply cannot avoid,
you cannot overlook the importance of race
as a factor in understanding the way
Americans approach politics.
And when we look at people from racial
and ethnic minority backgrounds,
especially Hispanics,
especially black people, we see that,
on average, those groups tend
to be very deeply religious
and strongly Democratic in the
way they approach politics.
Those two things go
together in many racial
and ethnic minority communities
in the United States.
When we think about the god
gap in American politics,
the religious divide in American politics,
that's something that really
only exists among white people.
It's true that deeply
religious white people
tend to be much more Republican,
much more politically conservative
than white people who are
not particularly religious.
That's a huge divide
within the white community.
When we look at racial
and ethnic communities
in the United States, that
god gap simply doesn't exist.
Most of them are both deeply religious
and strongly Democratic.
I would also point to one other factor
in understanding the way white
Catholics, in particular,
but other white Christian
groups approach politics.
We think of these as religious
groups, and that's important,
but I also think part
of what we see happening
is the power of partisanship
to shape people's politics.
It doesn't simply reflect
their policy preferences,
it can shape their policy preferences.
So when we look at Catholics, for example,
who think of themselves as Republicans,
they don't like Donald Trump
in spite of his policies,
they like Donald Trump
because of his policies.
They tell us they want to see
the wall on the southern border expanded.
They tell us they don't
think climate change
is a real problem.
So we see that they've adopted
the positions of their
preferred party more so
than they reflect the positions
of the Catholic Church.
The same thing is true on
the flip side, I would say.
When we look at Catholic democrats,
there are many of them who are pro-life,
but most of them are not.
Most of them go against
the church's position
when it comes to their own personal views
about whether or not
abortion should be illegal.
So just a couple things to keep in mind.
- Gabby, you cover these issues every day.
What is your sense of
how the two parties...
Why do white Catholics,
evangelicals stick?
Why do African American
and some white Catholics
and evangelicals, they're slipping?
How do you analyze the god
gap, as it's been phrased,
and the way the abortion
issue works in our politics?
- Michael made a great point
when he was talking earlier
about how white evangelicals
and some white Catholics,
in particular, want somebody
who will stand up for them,
that they appreciate the fact
that the president's rhetoric
is sometimes unrefined
and really antagonistic.
And I've been to upwards of
75 Trump rallies at this point
over the course of covering
him for five years,
and just in conversations with
your religious Trump voter,
the conservative Christian,
the one thing that they say consistently
is that they feel as though
for the past half-decade
there has been a growing hostility
to men and women of faith in this country,
regardless of which side
of the aisle they fall on.
That they will point to it
in the Democratic party,
as Justin was sort of
talking about earlier,
where there has now been
litmus tests imposed
for candidates' positions
on issues like abortion.
And then they will point to it
in terms of religious freedom issues,
and feeling as though not only
have conservative Christians
lost on a lot of social
issues in the last decade,
but that there has been a growing
hostility toward religion.
And so that is a primary attraction
to somebody like Donald Trump.
If you look at the number
of white evangelicals
who supported President Trump,
who voted for him in 2016, it was 81%.
But if you break that
down and you ask them,
"Do you actually think
that President Donald Trump
is religious himself?" fewer than 40%
will say that they agree
with that statement.
And so it's not as though
they're looking for somebody
who embodies the same
characteristics that they do,
the same values, the same
ideals, the same behavior.
They're looking for somebody who will
simply be an attack dog, a defender,
somebody who will stand
up for that community.
Even if it's because it's
politically expedient for him,
at the very least, the
fact that he is doing it
is what keeps them coming back.
And so, just on the right,
I think that's the really important way
of looking at the
relationship that exists,
the alliance that has been built
between President Donald Trump
and his white evangelical supporters
and white Catholic supporters.
- A two-part question.
Start with Gabby, and they
anyone else to weigh in.
What is the role of
religious leaders in this?
We've had lots of comments and questions
about the Catholic bishops seeming
to get close to President Trump.
We've had Trump retweeting
a letter of endorsement
from Archbishop Vigano, who called
for the removal of Pope Francis.
In your reporting you talk about
how both campaigns have
opportunities and dangers
in how they reach out to religious voters,
and then after you share what
you've been reporting on,
I would ask the others what is the role?
What are the right things
and the wrong things
for bishops and other
religious leaders to be doing
in an incredibly momentous,
consequential, polarized election?
So start with Gabby.
You talked about the fear
in the Trump campaign
and the opportunity
for the Biden campaign.
- Yeah, for Biden, I think the opportunity
is that he does have a way
to peel off support right now
from President Trump among
evangelicals and Catholics.
Just because of the sort of
erosion that's happened so far
we know that they are trending
away from President Trump.
It doesn't mean that they
are trending toward Biden,
but there is at least an opportunity there
to appeal to disaffected religious voters
who previously supported the president.
The challenge for Biden is, of course,
the same challenge that Obama faced
back in 2008 and back in 2012.
The religious leaders that you choose
to associate with as a candidate,
the people who you put
in charge of coalition
for your campaign, who
you campaign alongside,
whose churches you appear
at, can become a controversy.
I would say that Farrakhan
is one of the greatest
examples of that for Obama.
It was a thorn in his side for many years.
It was in progressive circles.
On the right, with Trump,
it's the same thing.
The role of the religious leaders for him,
including not just clergy but people
who are identified among
the religious right
as devoutly Christian, icons
within the religious right,
people like Mike Pence,
is to help reinvigorate
and solidify that
relationship with his base.
But the risk that he
runs, similar to Biden,
is the people that he associates with.
In this administration you
have people like Paula White,
Jerry Falwell, Jr., Robert Jeffress,
whose church the vice president
just visited in Texas,
a lot of controversial evangelical figures
who do repel some evangelicals
who don't think that these are
gospel preaching Christians,
and the president has
chosen to align himself
with them in a way that
threatens to drive away
some of his religious supporters.
And so I think the affiliation,
the religious people that both candidates
choose to surround
themselves with is crucial,
and it's why it's important
for both campaigns
to have truly, truly religious advisors,
people who know the church well,
who know their church communities well,
and know which type of faith
actors are going to actually
have the best interests of the candidate
but also be gospel preaching Christians.
- Some of those people you mentioned
aren't big fans to the
Catholic Church either.
There's some history there.
To other members of the panel,
what should religious leaders
be doing and not doing?
What are our bishops, what
are other religious leaders,
what is their temptations and
what are their obligations?
Anybody wanna jump in on that?
- I'll jump in on that.
- [John] Great, Jeanne.
- So thinking specifically
about Catholic faith leaders,
bishops and clergy, I
think that the last part
of what Gabby said is critically important
and I don't want it to get lost,
which is reflecting the experiences
of their faith communities.
So the bishops in particular
have a unique challenge
of speaking both to
congregations and to laypeople
and helping with that discernment process
that I've been talking about,
as well as speaking to elected officials
and candidates in an advisory capacity.
And I think that needs
to be deeply informed
by the experiences of the people,
especially in moments of deep
crisis where we are right now.
I think, very practically,
that means being explicit
about things like race and racism.
And just alluding back to
the earlier conversation,
I think it's really
important that when we talk
about the intersection
of race and religion
that we don't relegate
it to people of color.
So black folks, Latino folks, Latinx folks
and how they intersect with religion,
but whiteness also
plays a very strong role
in how people integrate and interpret
their religious beliefs.
And so when folks are saying
that they feel attacked
because of their religious beliefs
but are not able to
articulate how they feel
about their whiteness, that's something
that I think our religious
leaders can help us do,
by naming what is very real and present,
both historically and in the
modern day in our society.
So I think clergy have that opportunity
to guide the discernment of laypeople.
They have that opportunity to reflect
the experiences of laypeople
and incorporate that
into religious guidance that
they give to elected officials.
- Thank you.
Mike or Justin, any comment on what
religious leaders should
be doing and not doing?
- Well, I'd briefly add,
just from the other side,
from the candidate's side, that Joe Biden
is a bit of a throwback
because he actually cares
what religious leaders
think to some extent.
He would want the
bishops to be supportive.
He was concerned, in
the context of Obamacare
within the administration,
in making sure that he got the support
of religious leaders, religious people.
If you look at that
field, in Beto O'Rourke,
or even Pete Buttigieg to some extent,
I think that they're even as concerned
about what religious leaders have to say
on a variety of issues.
Biden also has the advantage
of speaking about faith
from a personal perspective in a way
that hasn't been true of
recent Democratic candidates,
and particularly in the context of grief
and loss and the comfort of faith
when it comes to the terrible losses
that he's engaged in in his life.
So in a certain way I do think
that there's an opportunity out there.
It's not gonna impress Robert Jeffress,
but there's an opportunity,
if he wanted to,
for Joe Biden to make an appeal
to a broadly religious audience,
and to do so in a way that just shows
the authenticity of his faith.
- Sort of pulling this together,
I recall a line in a Faithful
Citizenship document:
"They're called to be
political but not partisan,
to be engaged but not used."
And I think we have to go
back to Jeanne's point.
Bishops, other religious leaders,
have to be clear, explicit
and focused on racism.
That's a test for them.
It's a test for us.
It's a particular test for white leaders
and white Christians.
We're getting a number of questions
about where do people find a home?
Where can young people,
where can religious leaders,
where can believers find a
home in a political environment
that makes that really difficult?
How do you hold fast to your beliefs
when you don't fit perfectly in any party?
Obviously, the AND Campaign
is an example of that.
What are the other ways in which people
who share a consistent commitment
to human life and dignity,
to oppose racism, to care for creation,
how do we make our voices heard,
where do we find strength?
- Yeah, that's a great question.
I think part of it starts with,
because finding institutions is important,
so I do think we have to
act through institutions,
but I think even before that step
is making sure we just
disentangle ourselves,
our identity, rather, from partisanship
and from ideological tribes.
Look, it's fine to be a Democrat,
it's fine to be a Republican,
but that should be not
be part of your identity.
And I think the reason
why that's important
is because our political landscape
seems to kind of separate
social justice and moral order,
and that's why I think a lot
of Christians, especially,
are kind of upset, because
you see this separation,
especially in this moment,
you see that separation
between social justice and moral order
as if they're mutually exclusive.
So if you're on the left then
you care about social justice,
if you're on the right that
you care about moral order.
But unless you disentangle your identity
from partisanship and ideological tribes,
you miss the fact that
Christians, at least,
are supposed to be about both.
So we need to dismantle
that false dichotomy,
because people of faith have to be willing
to attack racial justice while promoting
a strong family ethic
and the sanctity of life.
But when you get too caught
up in the partisanship
then there's not really
an opportunity to do that.
And so I think finding institutions
that allow you to kind of cultivate that
and encourage you and embolden you
to do those things is very important,
because at this moment people of faith
need to be able to step back and critique,
in a very serious way,
their party or their ideological tribe,
and if you're too caught up in it
you're not gonna be able to do that.
And I would just end by
saying one of the things
that my good friend Michael
Ware always says is that parties
were never supposed to be
our home in the first place,
so the fact that you
don't feel comfortable
in a political party doesn't
mean you shouldn't participate,
but that's actually a good thing
because you shouldn't
be feeling comfortable.
You should be challenging them
because there's plenty to
challenge on both sides.
- Let me turn to Gabby
and go back to the beginning in a way.
In your reporting you've
been to all those rallies,
you've been looking at these issues
since you started in journalism,
only a few years ago but
you've already blazed a trail.
What are you looking for
as this campaign plays out?
What are the surprises
that you've seen so far
and what do you think are the developments
that we oughta be watching for?
- Well, I think for most
of the Trump presidency,
up until earlier this year
it was hard to envision
anything that would turn
off white evangelicals,
turn them away from his base,
turn them away from the administration.
And the moment that we're in,
with conversations happening about race
that have never before taken place
in the public sphere like they are now,
where churches are talking about them,
where even the staunchest
Trump-supporting white evangelical
is confronted with questions
within their church community
that they now have to
reflect on and answer to,
and then, of course, simultaneously
a global pandemic happening
that is restricting people
from holding funerals for family members
and administering to
their church communities
and gathering together
in person for worship,
it has really created an environment
where you are slowly starting to see
conservative Christians,
primarily white evangelicals
and white Catholics, trend
away from the president.
And that's what I'm going
to be paying attention to,
at least until November,
to see if that continues,
if it reverses itself,
and if it does reverse,
what caused it.
The second thing I would
say is the Supreme Court.
I mean, this Supreme Court season,
the decisions that we've
seen in the last three weeks
have created a whole bunch of theories
about the impact that
this is going to have
on conservative Christians and
sort of the religious right
that I was talking about and
how they respond in 2020.
Are they so disaffected that
they just don't turn out,
and does that harm the president's
reelection campaign beyond repair?
Or do they double down,
are they so fired up
by the fact that Justice Gorsuch,
somebody who they put their stock in,
somebody who they ushered through
the entire confirmation process,
let them down essentially?
Do they think that they need to get
more Supreme Court justices
and more conservative judges
throughout our judicial
system in order to finally get
what they would consider
wins on social issues?
So those are the two questions,
that I unfortunately
don't have answers to,
but they're the trends that I'm definitely
paying attention to before the election.
- Well, if you're not
reading Gabby in Politico,
you should, 'cause she will
follow those questions.
Jeanne, let me ask you,
what are you looking for in particular?
What would you say to young
people about political life,
their obligations and their opportunities?
- Yeah, I think when I was in
school as a very young person
I was always told we should
vote, we should vote,
we should vote.
And even in my high school civics class,
which many high schools
don't have any more,
the details of the process
weren't really exposed to me.
And so we have so much power as citizens
in this country to engage.
If you volunteer for a candidate,
even if you're not
entirely sure about them,
to make calls for them,
you're getting the opportunity
to talk to other voters,
hear what people think,
hear what is important to
them, expand your own horizons.
If you donate, if you sign to
get a candidate on a ballot,
you are engaging in every
step of the way to think about
how a person who represents
your point of view
can have a shot in an election,
and of course voting is important.
But even if you feel that you
can't do of that right now,
I think it's important for us
to educate ourselves differently.
Go beyond the headlines,
go beyond the tweet,
go beyond the one-liners
or even the journalists
or folks that we've come to rely on
and stretch ourselves to
get a deeper understanding
of what's happening, and
also a deeper understanding
of how the decisions we
make impact other folks.
I appreciated what Justin said
about this false dichotomy
between moral issues and social justice,
and I think it requires a
deeper level of analysis.
We all should be challenging ourselves
to have a more sophisticated analysis
of what it means that life is sacred
from conception to death.
What does it mean to say that people
have a fair opportunity to work hard
and gain economic stability for themselves
and for their families,
and how all of these issues intersect.
They're not individualized,
they're not isolated,
and we have the ability now,
we have more information
than we've ever had before,
to educate ourselves and go farther
to have a deeper level of analysis.
- Thank you, that's very helpful.
Michael, what are you look
for between now and November?
You've been through
presidential elections,
you've served in the White House,
you've made a difference
for people in this country,
low-income people in this
country and around the world.
What are you looking for
over the next five months?
- Well, I'm really looking,
particularly in the Christian community
when I talk to Christian groups,
white evangelical groups,
what I often end up asking is
what are you known for right
now in American politics?
And I think that Christians, in many ways,
are known for their defense
of their own institutions
and their own views,
rather than being known
as the defenders of
human rights and dignity.
So I think that it's gonna have to be
a lot of hard thinking,
and it's become possible
in this environment because
of issues like race,
also issues like the
protection of senior citizens
when it comes to health issues,
that we need Christians to have
that contribution in our common life.
It's a gap, it's a need,
that I think that Christians need to fill
in a principled way.
And so I hope that that's what happened.
I mean, I saw in my own life
that conservatives and
liberals, secular and religious
came together on issues like PEPFAR
or the President's Malaria Initiative
to save millions of lives of noncitizens
and to provide real hope and change
in places around the world.
And so I think it's still
possible in our common life
to have safe havens or protected places
that are no longer under
the demands of polarization,
that we can really set off some issues
and say these are matters of conscience
that can be broadly shared,
and I think issues can play that role.
- Thank you very much.
I'm gonna bring our
conversation to an end.
I wanna thank the audience.
There will be resources on our webpage.
You can find out more
about the AND Campaign,
you can see some of what Gabby's written
and what Jeanne and Mike
have been working on.
I wanna thank our partners
at the Berkley Center,
Optimum Audio and Ai-Media.
I especially wanna thank my colleagues,
Kim Daniels and Anna Misleh,
who make this happen.
I wanna thank especially our panel,
who have offered insight but
also passion and conviction.
I said at the beginning
that this was a test for us,
and in some ways this
comes back to fundamentals.
I think what we're going
through now, this pandemic,
this economic collapse,
this racial crisis,
this election is a test of faith,
it's a test of hope and
it's a test of love.
What do we believe, what
are we going to become,
and are we going to demonstrate our love
for all God's children?
We're in the middle of an enormous test
of who we are and what we believe,
and I wanna thank our five panelists,
Greg, who has given us
such a wonderful briefing
on what's going on, wanna thank them
for their insight, but
also for their example.
Thank you for joining us.
