Elizabeth Dias’s New York Times article on President Biden’s faith calls him “perhaps the most religiously observant commander in chief in half a century.” I’d like to know the criteria that have him beat, for starters, Jimmy Carter, who taught Sunday school for forty years. I’ll let others address the main topic Dias takes up, the relationship between liberalism and Christianity, and instead note another feature of her article: a common but it seems to me obviously incorrect characterization of liberalism to which she repeatedly returns.
She writes that “with Mr. Biden, a different, more liberal Christianity is ascendant: less focused on sexual politics and more on combating poverty, climate change and racial inequality.” This characterization makes sense only if it is “sexual politics” to try to provide legal protections for unborn life but not “sexual politics” to try to provide taxpayer money for abortion. Biden didn’t pick Xavier Becerra to be his HHS secretary because he has a strong record on combating poverty. He has a strong record as a progressive culture warrior.
As for Dias’s suggestion that Biden is on the same page with Pope Francis on abortion, I’ll refer you to something the latter wrote on the subject just two months ago: “Is it fair to eliminate a human life to resolve a problem? Is it fair to hire a hitman to resolve a problem?” If Biden has said anything similar, I must have missed it.