Four years after Hillary Clinton’s campaign failed to rally religious voters, liberal pastors say they’re encouraged by Democrats’ faith outreach efforts, but say more can be done to reach people of faith.
“What I’ve seen them do is claim their own faith more than reach out to people of faith,” Sandie Richards, pastor at First United Methodist Church of San Fernando, California told the Washington Examiner. “I think that’s a good beginning. I think it’s not enough.”
Doug Pagitt, executive director of Vote Common Good, an organization focused on mobilizing liberal evangelical and other Christian voters, noted a shift in Democratic politicians’ discourse compared to recent election cycles.
“The biggest shift I’ve noticed from 2016, and even from 2014 and 2012: The Democratic Party as a whole and candidates are actually talking about faith voters, talking about their own faith, trying to include someone who organizes their life around their faith considerations, that that’s something you can bring to the Democratic Party,” Pagitt told the Washington Examiner.
Democrats’ performance among religious voters declined steadily from 2008 to 2016. In 2008, 26% of evangelical Christians, 45% of Protestants overall, and 54% of Catholics supported Obama. Four years later, 20% of evangelical Christians, 42% of Protestants overall, and 50% of Catholics voted for his reelection.
Hillary Clinton fared even worse: only 16% of evangelicals voted for her, while she received support from only 39% of all Protestants and 46% of Catholics.
“Hillary Clinton was a very religious person herself,” said Pagitt. “Her faith mattered a lot to her, I know that. But the campaign did nothing to share that story line, to encourage people to understand that or to even take religious voters seriously as religious voters.”
Democratic candidates Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, and Elizabeth Warren have prominently discussed their faith on the campaign trail.
Buttigieg recently became the first candidate to hire a national faith outreach director and has frequently invoked his Christian faith, on several occasions criticizing conservative evangelicals such as Vice President Pence. Meanwhile, Booker was the first to hire a faith outreach coordinator for South Carolina, where African-American religious voters play a crucial role in the primary. Warren has said her faith “animates all that I do.”
“It is hard not to get excited when candidates like Cory Booker and Pete Buttigieg speak the language of progressive Christians,” Rev. Paige Eaves, president of Progressive Christians Uniting, a group focused on organizing progressive Christians, told the Washington Examiner.
“I appreciate that the candidates seem to be working hard to find a faith expression that is authentic to who they are,” said Eaves. “It feels easier coming from Booker and Buttigieg and even ex-Sunday School teacher Elizabeth Warren.”
Christopher Carter, a professor at the University of San Diego and a pastor, said that Buttigieg is “the only candidate that I have consistently heard talk about religion in a way that shows me they actually understand the testing nature and substance of the Gospel.”
Richards was also impressed with Buttigieg, but added that actions matter as much as words to progressive Christians.
“We would look at Mayor Pete not only to be well spoken, but to also back the kinds of things that progressive people of faith want to see in the world,” said Richards.
Richards said she wants “to see Mayor Pete as mayor of South Bend, Indiana be equally concerned with his poor constituents and constituents of color as he is with developers and gentrifiers,” adding that “he has his critics” regarding his approach to poverty.
Buttigieg has faced criticism in South Bend for failing to adequately address poverty, which particularly affects the city’s black population.
Vermont senator Bernie Sanders also attracted praise for his outreach to people of faith.
“I know that Bernie Sanders is really resonating with a lot of progressive Christians who are concerned about issues of poverty, lack of affordable housing, labor abuses, things like that,” Sarah Trone Garriott, an Iowa-based Lutheran pastor and state senate candidate, told the Washington Examiner.
Rev. John Cager, pastor of Ward AME Church in Los Angeles, was impressed by Sanders’ “message of inclusion and participation” after he spoke at the Islamic Center of Los Angeles in March.
“I have to say it was impressive for me because to this point Sanders has seemed the least likely of the Democratic candidates to appeal to a faith community,” Cager said.
While these liberal pastors are encouraged by Democratic candidates’ faith outreach efforts, they also say more work is necessary to rally religious voters.
Pagitt said he hopes candidates take issues such as abortion and religious freedom, which matter especially to evangelical voters, seriously, even if they hold different opinions.
“I think the best thing a candidate can do, I hope what they do in 2020, is to recognize that those are significant issues for people, to take the issues seriously, to elevate the issue as something that really does matter and it’s a reasonable thing for someone to be voting on,” said Pagitt.
Notably, the Democratic National Committee passed a resolution earlier this month which criticized religious Americans who make “misplaced claims of ‘religious liberty’” to “justify public policy that has threatened the civil rights and liberties of many Americans, including but not limited to the LGBT community, women, and ethnic and religious/nonreligious minorities.”
Carter added that Democratic candidates need to learn how to translate their liberal message into language which can reach more moderate, or even conservative, religious voters.
“How might you use your faith language to show a traditional, white, maybe moderate Baptist person in the South, that this way of thinking, not only does it impact and influence people in the inner cities, but it also impacts them,” said Carter.
