There was a time in American politics when a candidates’ religion was central to their campaigns. JFK was the first Catholic president of this country. For Ronald Reagan, his Christianity was important to his message. George W. Bush spoke passionately about being born again. Barack Obama drew heavily from the Black church.
But, this election cycle, the religious beliefs of the major candidates are not front and center. Donald Trump went into the White House a Presbyterian, but changed his religion to non-denominational Christianity while in office. He has won over the vote of most Evangelicals, but most Americans don’t think he has strong religious beliefs.
Kamala Harris also doesn’t talk a whole lot about her faith. But, when she got the call from President Biden to tell her he was dropping out of the presidential race, one of the first calls she made was to her pastor, according to Mississippi Today. Her religious experience has always been interfaith. She grew up in the Bay area, going to both a Black Baptist Church and a Hindu Temple, she is married to a Jewish man. Though you might not know it, by all accounts, Harris is a woman of faith.
Jessica Grose, an opinion columnist at The New York Times, argues she should talk about it more and joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
JESSICA GROSE: So she was raised Baptist, but her mother was Hindu. So she was raised in sort of an interfaith tradition. She did go to church as a child in Oakland. And then she has a very strong connection with her pastor in San Francisco. And she went to a historically Black college where there's a lot of interaction with the Black church. So it's clearly been something that's an important force in her life.
And I started this piece interested in her because she is also in an interfaith marriage, as am I, she is married to a Jewish man. And so I wanted to sort of see the role that faith played both in her political life and her personal life.
LAUREN GILGER: So when she has talked about faith, how does she talk about it? Does she talk about it in terms of something personal, in terms of her policies, in terms of the government?
GROSE: So she doesn't talk about it a lot. But when she has talked about it, she ties it to her policy beliefs. She talks about health care, she talks about abortion and she talks about it through the lens of her personal faith, which I found really interesting.
And I think it's something that she should do more often, not in a mercenary way, in a way just to get votes. But because it seems quite genuine and I think it will appeal to people who might not feel that they know that much about her personally. By her talking about this really deep seated faith that she's had since she was a child. It could make a lot of people feel like they really knew her in a deeper way.
GILGER: That's interesting. Why is it that you think she doesn't talk about religion that much? I mean, this is kind of political but also at the same time, you don't hear Donald Trump talk about religion that much either.
GROSE: Right. Well, you know, Donald Trump talks about religion when he is talking to largely evangelical or conservative Christian audiences. He doesn't talk about his personal faith, but he talks about it like, I love Christians so much and I'm gonna do everything for you and get you everything you want. So, while he doesn't talk about it from a personal lens, because, you know, by all indications church going has never been a big part of his life.
I think she doesn't talk about it for two reasons. One, she is a very reserved person. You know, she doesn't seem to want to talk about really any aspects of her personal life. But I think it's also because it's a little tricky as a Democrat to talk about faith, a huge portion of their voters are fully secular. They're atheists, they're agnostic, they have no religion in particular. I think the statistic I saw was 45% of Joe Biden's voters fell into that category.
And so there's this way in which I think talking about religion has become coded as conservative when really it shouldn't be. There are so many people of faith who have all different kinds of political beliefs, and it really doesn't have anything to do on its face with one's personal relationship with God, with one's personal relationship with their church or temple or mosque. They don't have to be so tied together even though they have become sort of tied together in pop culture.
GILGER: Well, I mean, it comes at such an interesting moment in which, and you've written about this, about we're sort of losing our religion in this country, but especially for those on the left, you're arguing that she should talk about this more that it not only gives people a glimpse into her, her true self, her personal life, but you think that she has a chance to change that overarching narrative and politics. That religion is only for conservatives.
GROSE: I think that's right. I mean, I was actually blown away talking to an expert, Ryan Burge who is both a pastor and a political scientist. And he asked me who I thought was the president who had gone to church most frequently when he was in office. And my guess was George W Bush because you know, we think of him as the compassionate conservative. He talked about evangelicalism a lot.
But the answer is actually Joe Biden. And Joe Biden, if you, you know, read about it. He is a very serious Catholic. He goes to church a lot. It is really an important part of his life, but he doesn't really get a credit for it from voters or from the public. Not that someone should get credit. That's such a weird way to, but he doesn't, I mean, we don't think of him, I think as a really religious person. And again, I think it is because religion has been so coded as a conservative thing.
And I think that there's a way to talk about your own personal beliefs and things that mean a lot to you without alienating people who don't agree with you or don't have those beliefs. I think there's a way that you can talk about religion in a way that's really inclusive and shows your heart and isn't about, you know, rejecting an exclusion and saying you're not on our team. And I think she really has an opportunity to do that.
GILGER: How does something as important to this election cycle as abortion play into this? Like Harris often says that one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held religious beliefs to agree that a woman should have the ability to make decisions about her own body, right? Like that is an argument for abortion rights but from a maybe sort of religious perspective.
GROSE: Yeah. I mean, it's obviously tricky, different faith traditions have really different views on this. I mean, I'm Jewish, I'm a reformed Jew. I think our denomination is probably like the most supportive of abortion rights for women. And there's a real sort of religious argument for it from Reform Jews. So, you know, different religious traditions have different ideas about what abortion means.
But obviously, a lot of white Protestants and white Catholics especially think that abortion is murder, it's wrong, it is morally wrong, it is morally awful, and we should do everything in our power to stop it. And, you know, I respect that. I understand where that's coming from. But I think we all need to understand that that's not the only way to think about the issue from a religious point of view. And I think that they've been really successful in framing it as the only appropriate religious point of view on this issue when that doesn't really need to be the case.
And so she is a, you know, Black protestant, they are largely supportive of abortion rights, at least people who identify as Black Protestants. So it's not really going to alienate the people who share her beliefs for her to say, you know, my faith informs my feeling about this issue.
