Biden's faith becomes a campaign issue as anti-Catholic attacks rise
The statue of St. Damien of Molokai located at the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. Photo courtesy of The Library of Congress.
(OPINION) The summer that has been highlighted by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, protests and statue-toppling has helped to place a spotlight on everything that’s wrong with politics. As the coronavirus crisis worsens, Christians and people of all faiths must face one stark reality: the possibility that their faith will be further eroded by secular society.
The spread of the coronavirus has been a boon for some politicians. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has essentially run a stealth campaign from his home (and benefitted in the polls), while President Donald Trump does one television interview after another in an effort to get his message out.
Trump is acting like a candidate on the ropes, not an incumbent. He has no clear second-term agenda. The virus, meanwhile, has also given some lawmakers the chance to act more authoritarian in the name of science, meaning churches can close but anti-racism protests can continue. While populism has suffered during quarantine lockdowns (no rallies!), more extreme forces may actually benefit in this election cycle and over the coming decade. Totalitarianism, in any form, isn’t good for religious people. Neither is the balkanization we are witnessing across the country.
With three months to go before Americans cast their votes, the divisive nature of our politics will likely get worse. How worse? During this time of cultural reckonings, some have tried to lump Catholic saints into the same category as treasonous Confederate generals. That has forced Republicans to increasingly usurp traditional Christian values, while Democrats get dangerously closer to Marxism. That means religious centrists — and lawmakers prone to making compromises like former Sen. Joe Lieberman — will disappear from our national politics. These people will be forced to choose a side or remain largely absent from the U.S. political system.
Who will they vote for? Trump’s pugnacious qualities were seen four years ago as a virtue to his voters, a bulwark against political correctness and what some see as an increasing anti-religious sentiment by secular forces in society. In Biden, many see an end to Trump’s Twitter antics and a return to civility in public discourse. That Biden is a Catholic, however, doesn’t make him an automatic favorite among this voter group (say like John F. Kennedy, the first and only Catholic president, was in 1960) heading into November.
Just days after a column in the National Catholic Reporter called Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “the future of the Catholic Church,” the New York lawmaker — a self-proclaimed “Democratic socialist” — decided to take on St. Damien of Molokai. Her Instagram statement was immediately criticized by many Catholics, including Bishop Robert Barron who called it “crazy and outrageous.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s statement was triggered by the question as to why more statues honoring women aren’t located at the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. To make her point, she chose to pick on St. Damien, a missionary who administered to lepers and eventually died from the disease in 1889.
“Even when we select figures to tell the stories of colonized places, it is the colonizers and settlers whose stories are told — and virtually no one else. Check out Hawaii’s statue. It’s not Queen Lili’uokalani of Hawaii, the only Queen Regnant of Hawaii, who is immortalized and whose story is told. It is Father Damien. This isn’t to litigate each and every individual statue, but to point out the patterns that have emerged among the totality of them in who we are taught to deify in our nation’s Capitol: virtually all men, all white and mostly both. This is what patriarchy and white supremacist culture looks like! It’s not radical or crazy to understand the influence white supremacist culture has historically had in our overall culture and how it impacts the present day.”
The attack on St. Damien comes as churches and Catholic symbols across the United States have been vandalized and desecrated. The burning of Bibles by protesters in Portland didn’t help matters. For traditional Catholics, Trump is largely seen as an ally. Trump, during a recent stop in Ohio, made faith a campaign issue, saying the former vice president was “against God.” Like AOC, Trump isn’t shy about making bombastic statements.
“He’s following the radical left agenda, take away your guns, destroy your Second Amendment, no religion, no anything, hurt the Bible, hurt God. He’s against God. He’s against guns. He’s against energy, our kind of energy. I don’t think he’s going to do too well in Ohio.”
States like Ohio matter if Trump wants to win again. Those statements were made to excite his base — regardless of which Christian denomination one belongs to — while Biden has had to walk a tightrope to defend his Catholic beliefs while also managing not to anger the leftist forces that now make up a growing chunk of the Democratic Party. In turn, Biden’s campaign issued a statement saying his faith has been a bedrock throughout his life.
“Like the words of so many other insecure bullies, President Trump’s comments reveal more about him than they do about anyone else. They show us a man willing to stoop to any low for political gain, and someone whose actions are completely at odds with the values and teachings that he professes to believe in.”
But the statement was meant to vilify Trump, not address his faith. Strangely, CNN went on to call Biden a “devout Catholic” — despite being pro-abortion and defending LGBTQ rights, which run contrary to church teachings — in their coverage of Trump’s comments. The president doubled down this week, again attacking Biden’s policies as hurting religious people during a recent coronavirus briefing at the White House. Meanwhile, a faith-based political advocacy group (and Trump surrogates) also went on the attack, calling on Biden to publicly condemn the “disturbing rise” of vandalism against churches.
“Catholic churches across America are literally burning, and Joe Biden has said nothing,” said CatholicVote President Brian Burch. “Leading members of the Democratic Party have fueled a climate of hate against Catholics, and these attacks have now led to acts of vandalism and violence.”
In 2005, when Biden embarked on a previous presidential bid and was faced with the devout question, he told the Cincinnati Enquirer: “The next Republican that tells me I’m not religious, I’m going to shove my rosary beads down their throat.” OK, now.
The time is now for Biden to address his faith as well as the growing anti-Catholic sentiment. A failure to do so will allow Trump to appeal those voters like he did in 2016 as the president looks to make faith a political issue and turn that into a victory once again. Why not choose Louisiana State Sen. Katrina Jackson, an anti-abortion Democrat and African-American woman, to be your running mate? Biden needs to publicly defend his faith in a way that appeals to faith voters. Anything less could result in another Trump victory come this fall.
Clemente Lisi is a senior editor and regular contributor to Religion Unplugged. He is the former deputy head of news at the New York Daily News and teaches journalism at The King’s College in New York City. Follow him on Twitter @ClementeLisi.