No 2020 Democrat has been more vocal about his religion than Pete Buttigieg. The mayor of South Bend, Ind., is a member of the Episcopal Church and an expressive proponent of how this affiliation influences his politics.
“The Left is rightly committed to a separation of church and state,” he told USA Today columnist Kirsten Powers, “but we need to not be afraid to invoke arguments that are convincing on why Christian faith is going to point you in a progressive direction.”
The Christian faith, Buttigieg has said, points you in the direction of raising the minimum wage, and away from President Trump and his immigration policies.
Polling around 5%, Buttigieg has found some support for his use of religious language. But not everyone is buying it. As Peter Wehner writes at The Atlantic:
I agree with him when it comes to not separating migrant children from their parents and welcoming refugee families from around the world. On the other hand, Buttigieg would allow for late-term abortions, which many (including myself) would argue pose a lethal threat to the weakest members of the human community.”
Buttigieg has said himself that he doesn’t want to see faith used as a “cudgel” against the opposing political party. But instead of letting his faith inform policy in broad strokes, Buttigieg has used it to argue for specific progressive ideals. Many Christians, as Wehner noted, would push back on his use of the Bible to defend abortion.
“Right now,” Buttigieg said of the Republican Party, “they hold everybody in line with this one piece of doctrine about abortion, which is obviously a tough issue for a lot of people to think through morally. Then again, there’s a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath, and so even that is something that we can interpret differently.”
Most Episopalians (79%) agree that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, but the majority in other Christian traditions, including the the Southern Baptist Convention, believe abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. On this subject, religious perspectives differ wildly, according to Pew Research Center. If abortion is an issue that people of faith can interpret differently, then why not other political issues as well?
At first, Buttigieg appears to agree. He says he doesn’t think God has a political party, but if the Lord did, he said, “I can’t imagine it would be the one that sent the current president into the White House.” He frequently quotes the Bible, but he claims the Republican Party has “lost all claim to ever use religious language again.” In short, every time he mentions religion, it appears he is in fact using it as a “cudgel.”
Religious language can still play in an increasingly secular Democratic Party, even if religion may not be a strong card to play against Trump, many of whose evangelical supporters don’t seem to care about how or whether he lives out the faith. (Front-runners Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren have also been fairly vocal about their faith — Biden identifies as Catholic and Warren as protestant. Sen. Bernie Sanders doesn’t appear to align himself with any religion.)
Supporters may not be swayed one way or another by candidates’ invocations of religious language, but Buttigieg may not realize that rather than unity, his reactionary monopolization of religious rhetoric incites division.
Buttigieg is right: The Republican Party has no monopoly on religious language. Both parties use it poorly.
