LAUREN GILGER: Next up this morning, let’s turn to the next edition in our series on religion at the Arizona state Legislature. We’re calling it Ditat Deus, Arizona’s state motto — and in it, we’re hearing directly from our lawmakers about religion and how religion affects the way they vote, the issues they care about, and maybe even why they ran for office in the first place.
Today, let’s meet a deeply religious Democrat: House Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos. He told me his identity as a Christian is fundamentally tied up in his work as a public servant.
OSCAR DE LOS SANTOS: For me, being in office is not just a job or a hobby or something I enjoy. For me, it feels like a call.
LAUREN GILGER: A Rhodes Scholar with a masters in public policy from Oxford, De Los Santos then went to New York to spend two years studying Christian ethics at Union Theological Seminary, a nondenominational school affiliated with Columbia University with a distinctly social justice bent, as he put it.
OSCAR DE LOS SANTOS: And I spent two years there immersed in the Bible, immersed in over 2,000 years of church history and church tradition studying Christian ethics.
LAUREN GILGER: It was a somewhat unlikely Christian education for a Latino kid with parents from a tiny rural town in Mexico who was raised a particular brand of Roman Catholic.
OSCAR DE LOS SANTOS: My mom is sort of your classic Mexican folk Catholic. I was, you know, baptized into the faith and did my first communion. And that relationship with the church was complicated when I came out.
LAUREN GILGER: That’s right. Oscar De Los Santos is also gay. He is the first openly gay representative from his district, and he told me, though he never lost his faith in God, his coming out did complicate his relationship with the Catholic Church.
OSCAR DE LOS SANTOS: You know, it was a it was, in some ways, a difficult thing to hold in tension.
LAUREN GILGER: Like many disillusioned Catholics, he became Episcopalian as an adult. But, he told me, today he’s much less interested in any of those labels.
OSCAR DE LOS SANTOS: Much more interested in I think the more fundamental message of the Gospel.
LAUREN GILGER: And it’s that message of the Gospel De Los Santos says drives his work today. I sat down with him recently in his office at the state Capitol to talk more about it and how he went from that Mexican “folk” Catholicism to an intellectual understanding of his religion today.
OSCAR DE LOS SANTOS: I think one of the interesting things about Mexican folk Catholicism is that it is not very heady. It’s not like this academic exercise. It is a sort of lived tradition where the entire town comes together in one place, and the church is a place for community.
And I think that’s the thing that has stuck with me the most is how beautiful that community was. Not not just in a sort of, "this is fun" way, but in a "church is a verb" way, not just a noun. It, it means something theologically to come together to be in communion with others, to forgive one another.
But sort of from a political side, as I came to think about it when I was older, it was also a place for mutual aid. And so, my mom used to run this thing called “tandas,” which are lending circles, and it was a way for families to know that on a certain week, they would have a big amount of money, and so maybe that’s when they would do their shopping or pay their rent, etc. And it was sort of a, a method for economic security.
LAUREN GILGER: So, you grow up with that very kind of almost superstitious Catholicism. But it sounds like as you grew up, you didn’t leave the Christian faith in general, but you wanted to study it in an academic way. You wanted to understand your faith in an academic way?
OSCAR DE LOS SANTOS: I wanted to understand my faith in an academic way, in a deeper way, but also understand what the faith means in the context of politics. And what the faith means in the context of ethics. Because I firmly believe and have always believed that Christianity is not some sort of supernatural relationship that you have privately with God. That that is not my understanding of Christianity.
My understanding of Christianity is that this is a relationship you have with God and the world. You have with God and others. You have with God and the state. It is how do you act in the world, how do you behave in the world? And that was a fundamental question that I wanted answered.
LAUREN GILGER: Did you get an answer to that?
OSCAR DE LOS SANTOS: You know, in some ways I did. I mean, one of the paradigm-shifting moments for me was really learning and leaning into the Imago Dei: the idea that we are all made in and as the image of God, and it is for that reason that we are all endowed with equality. It is for that reason that we must all enjoy the same fundamental freedoms. It is for that reason that democracy is important, because democracy is the only form of government that equalizes everybody.
If you are rich or poor, or Black or white, or gay or straight, you have the same voice in your government because you are equal, and in my view, you are equal because we are all made in and as the image of God.
LAUREN GILGER: So, that religious throughline from your faith to your public service, to running for office, sounds like it was very strong for you. Like, you are motivated by that religion, it sounds like.
OSCAR DE LOS SANTOS: Right. It, it sort of is astounding because it is the fundamental premise of everything I do. And but I sort of don’t really talk about it, right? Like, mostly, mostly of my days here are sort of looking through spreadsheets or policy memos or strategizing with the caucus, but the fundamental reason I’m here is because I’m a Christian.
LAUREN GILGER: Do you get from people a lot if you’re talking to them outside of maybe these halls, that, you know, you are a Christian and that is why you serve in office, and people assume something about your politics?
OSCAR DE LOS SANTOS: Yeah, I think most Christians in the United States, and certainly those who are in office, probably don’t have the politics that I have, and I think people make a lot of assumptions. I also think that people get very confused about what I mean when I say that. But I think when I mean, when I’m able to have a conversation with them, it’s, I don’t know. There’s a connection that’s formed.
LAUREN GILGER: Do you think it’s a missed opportunity for folks on the left to to speak to the religious population in this country and say, "You know, we are also religious sometimes"?
OSCAR DE LOS SANTOS: Absolutely. I mean, yes, it is a massively missed opportunity. You know, you’ve seen Catholics sort of drift a little bit to the right in recent elections, and that is horrifying because Donald Trump is attacking immigrants and terrorizing many immigrant communities across this country in direct violation of the Catholic faith, in direct violation of what the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has said.
And so, I think Democrats need to do a much better job of reaching Christians and religious people across the country, because I think our message, our policies, align a thousand times better with the Gospel than the right does. No doubt about it.
LAUREN GILGER: Where have those religious convictions entered politics for you or the policies that you support, the things that you think need to happen that government needs to do?
OSCAR DE LOS SANTOS: I think the foundational theological principle that roots my policy positions is the preferential option for the poor. This is an idea in Catholic social teaching, Catholic ethics, that Jesus Christ came to save everybody, but that if you look at the Gospel and you read the Gospel and you understand the Gospel, the poor were at the forefront of Jesus’s salvation.
LAUREN GILGER: The Beatitudes, yeah.
OSCAR DE LOS SANTOS: Right, the Beatitudes, the fact that Christ incarnated as a poor refugee child is an astounding fact.
LAUREN GILGER: So, you are, if I’m not mistaken, the first out LGBTQ representative from your district, right? And I wonder how you think about this because I think a lot of Christian politics, quote-unquote, today, and a lot of that is very concerned with issues like anti-LGBTQ stuff and not the poor, which is so dominant in the Gospels. What do you think about that?
OSCAR DE LOS SANTOS: I think it’s sort of boring. I mean, I think it’s a tired question that’s been, for me, settled a long time ago theologically. I mean, there there are a lot of LGBTQ Christians in this world, and I see no contradictions with being gay and being a Christian at all. Again, the Imago Dei, we are all made in and as the image of God.
But I mean, I think when it comes to the political question, I think it’s very sad, 'cause I think a lot of people don’t actually believe what they’re saying. And then, I think what they’re doing is they’re being told by some poll that this is their best chance at winning is to demonize some small group of people and blame all of society’s problems on them because it’s easier to do that than it is to take on the special interests and the donors who power your campaigns.
LAUREN GILGER: Have there been times, votes you’ve had to take, deals you’ve had to make as a lawmaker, when it’s butted up against your religious convictions, and you’ve sort of said, "Well, I need to do this," greater good kind of question?
OSCAR DE LOS SANTOS: Sure. Absolutely, all the time. I mean, the Christian faith is pretty black and white in right and wrong. Politics is anything but. It’s a lot of gray, it’s a lot of compromise, it’s a lot of negotiation, and certainly, that’s the case when you have a divided government, a split government.
LAUREN GILGER: When you’re making those decisions, when they butt up against your religious beliefs, who are you serving? Are you serving God? Are you serving your church, your religion, or are there times when you say, "I have to serve my constituency, the people of Arizona"?
OSCAR DE LOS SANTOS: I mean, I think this is a sort of clear-cut constitutional question for me here. I think, you know, my view is so long as the state is not preferring one religion over another or advancing religious interests using state dollars, that that’s sort of the line for me. I think everybody should bring their religious principles to bear.
I mean, part of the point of a Legislature is that we’re supposed to be representative of the people, and there are a lot of people who are people of faith. And I think we should bring our whole selves into this job: how we grew up, who we choose to love, the faith we carry, the jobs we’ve worked, the experiences we’ve had. All of that, I think, makes the Legislature a more fruitful place.
LAUREN GILGER: All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate you taking the time.
OSCAR DE LOS SANTOS: Thank you so much.
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