The Rise of the Religious Left

A merican Christianity is and has always been a broad church. The same week that a band of Christian nationalists knelt and prayed before storming the Capitol building — shouting, too, at journalists (with unintended irony) “get the hell out of my way!” — a black Baptist preacher was elected on a left-wing platform to the U.S. Senate. And the same year that Democrats treated a Supreme Court nominee as a danger to democracy on account of her Catholic faith, they elected the second Catholic president in U.S. history.

In Europe, unlike in the U.S., the separation of church and state has emerged post-Enlightenment as a cultural preference but not as a constitutional guarantee. That’s why, in modern day secular Europe, an openly Christian politician is almost always seen as threatening, but in the U.S., where religious values are still expected to influence public life (albeit indirectly), it depends on what type of Christian he or she is. Since polarization has given rise to two competing visions of American values, it is hardly surprising that the same should happen with Christianity.

In his victory speech, Biden invoked the dreary 1970s Catholic hymn “On Eagle’s Wings,” and has said that, for him, faith is “all about hope and purpose and strength.” This is sufficiently vague to go along nicely with a progressive policy agenda. As a recent Washington Post op-ed noted, “Biden presents a less common image: a devout, churchgoing liberal,” who frames his faith in “general, inclusive terms — as sustenance for the weary, encouragement for the suffering and an obligation to welcome and care for one another.” Who could object to that?

Seventy-odd years ago, before the Democratic Party was riven by abortion and transgender extremists, this was the kind of rhetoric that helped capture the community-orientated Catholic vote. Today, this rhetoric appeals to Hispanic and black Christians, who retain their social conservatism on issues such as abortion and marriage, but who also favor center-left immigration and health-care policies.

Biden has said that “faith sees best in the dark.” Though it’s not clear what he means by this (and like so much of what he says, it probably means nothing at all), it is true that on presentability alone, his old-timey platitudes outperform the crass paganism of Trumpism. Mathis Bitton, a former National Review editorial intern, speaking of the pro-Trump Turning Point USA winter conference, summed this up nicely on Twitter: “Nothing screams traditional values and the working class as much as having a money cannon at an otherwise debauched conference.” And this is to say nothing of the scenes from Capitol Hill.

Biden also has faced immense personal tragedy, a compelling part of his narrative. It’s not difficult to believe that a man who has suffered as he has is genuinely reliant on his faith in his private life. But while Biden compartmentalizes his Catholicism and does not say, for instance, that the Gospel requires politicians to provide universal health care, the likes of Reverend Raphael Warnock will. And he’ll say it loudly enough for the both of them. Where Biden is happy enough to drift along “in the dark,” Warnock proposes walking in the light of left-wing convictions and activism. The president-elect, having no firm convictions himself, risks being dragged along by his party’s stronger current. We need only look at his political evolution over the past 40 years to see that such a path is basically inevitable.

Religious or not, social justice is a hot commodity in the current climate. And Warnock could not have better credentials. He is the senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Ga., the former congregation of Martin Luther King Jr. As for his personal story, he grew up in a housing project in Savannah and his mother worked as cotton picker. Of course, he believes “unequivocally in a woman’s right to choose,” and is “a proud ally of LGBTQ+ rights.” But while these positions might ordinarily be off-putting to Christian voters, he has a useful decoy, handed to him on a silver platter by the Republican Party — self-identified Christian nationalists.

In his first sermon upon being elected senator, Warnock spoke of “the ugly side” of the “great and grand American story,” and recalled how the “crude and the angry and the disrespectful and the violent break their way into the People’s House, some carrying Confederate flags, signs and symbols of an old world order passing away.” Continuing the Biblical imagery, he said: “You cut the head off a snake, it shakes and moves violently, not because it is living but because it is dying.”

It would be easy to dismiss this hyperbolic oratory as mere political theater, but consider the numbers. Warnock won Georgia; so did Biden. What does that say? On the 2020 presidential election, Politico’s Gabby Orr reported that

between 47 percent and 50 percent of Catholic voters support Trump — a small decline from 2016, but enough to cost him the Rust Belt states that mattered most to his path to victory. Nationally, the president carried white Catholics by a 15-point margin, according to AP/VoteCast data, marking a significant decline from his 33-point margin over Hillary Clinton four years ago.

Trump’s slippage with white evangelicals was less pronounced — surveys showed him carrying 76 percent to 78 percent of the white, born-again Christian vote — a slight decrease from 2016, when he won support from about 8 in 10 white evangelicals. But it had far-reaching implications for the president in states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia, where current vote totals show him losing by less than 1 percent.

Speaking broadly and in terms of general political perception, the “Christian Right” has compromised itself by making a fundamentally Faustian bargain with the 45th president. Biden effectively seized on this, and successfully framed his campaign as the battle for the “soul” of the nation. To attack Biden’s wishy-washy, feel-good Christianity — or the gospel of social justice — requires a credible and functioning alternative. To attack his sincerity is a strategic mistake. Let he who is without hypocrisy cast the first stone. The religious Left is here to stay. If Republicans want to understand why, they might start by looking in the mirror.