Church & State

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'Catholic voters' will split their votes in this election, but how will that affect swing states?

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The U.S. election season has come down to its final days. Both national polling and those in battleground states see former Vice President Joe Biden with a lead. President Donald Trump has been traveling across the Rust Belt in hopes of winning key states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as voters are told — once again — that the upcoming election is “the most important of our lifetimes.”

The Nov. 3 election is important, and signs continue to point to a Biden victory. Democrats, fearing a repeat of 2016 when Trump surged to a shocking victory, are countering this narrative by paying attention to many states — especially in the Midwest — that Hillary Clinton downplayed in 2016. For journalists, this leads straight to fights to attract Catholic voters of various kinds (see this previous tmatt post on that topic).

News consumers can sense some panic on the left that this election could go horribly wrong for them once again. Republicans, on the other hand, appear confident, yet cautious at the same time regarding the potential outcome.

Trying to gauge voter enthusiasm is difficult. While Trump voters do seem generally more energized — especially among evangelicals and church-going Catholics — compared to Biden supporters, the events of the past few weeks in Washington may have shifted priorities.

A majority of Catholics say they support Biden (52%), while only 40% back Trump. Nevertheless, that gap, according to the latest EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research poll released this past Monday, shows that the race narrows significantly in swing states such as Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In those states, Biden leads by an average of just four percentage points (48% to 44%), which is within the survey’s margin of error. Also, note this passage in that EWTN report:

Catholic voters are divided on some issues but said they are more likely to support candidates who seek to protect religious freedom (78% to 14%) and are less likely to support candidates who support taxpayer funding of abortion (52% to 34%) or who support abortion at any time during a pregnancy (60% to 28%).

Back in July, I argued that this coming election was primarily about the Supreme Court.


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Churches and COVID-19, again: Do Capitol Hill Baptist folks have same rights as protesters?

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In the beginning, there were two essential mainstream-press narratives about the coronavirus and religious worship.

The first was that most sane, science-affirming religious groups had moved their worship online and were cooperating with government authorities. The second was that there were lots of conservative white evangelicals who claimed (a) that God would shield them from the virus, (b) that COVID-19 was a myth, (c) they had some kind of First Amendment “religious liberty” right to gather for worship or (d) all of the above.

That approach was simplistic, from Day 1, for several reasons. Here at GetReligion we argued that the number of dissenters was actually surprisingly small — even in conservative religious traditions — and that the bigger story was the overwhelming majority of congregations that were doing everything they could to safely hold some kind of worship services, while honoring local laws and restrictions. Entire religious bodies — Catholic, Orthodox, Southern Baptists — developed plans for how to do that.

Early on, congregations trying to gather for worship outdoors — drive-in service of various kinds, especially — emerged as a crucial story angle. See this podcast and post, for example: “Who-da thunk it? Drive-in churches are First Amendment battlegrounds.”

Now we have a must-read Washington Post update on the legal efforts by Capitol Hill Baptist Church to force officials in the District of Columbia to, well, allow worshippers the same local right of outdoor assembly as protesters and marchers. Here’s the headline: “Federal court allows D.C. church to hold services outdoors despite coronavirus restrictions.” And here is a crucial block of material right up top:

Capitol Hill Baptist Church, which has 850 members and no online worship services, has been meeting in a Virginia field. The U.S. District Court’s granting of a preliminary injunction allows the church to meet outdoors en masse in the city, where most of its members live, while its lawsuit moves forward.

The church was not seeking a class action, and the decision, which can be appealed, applies only to Capitol Hill Baptist.

Capitol Hill Baptist, which had twice sought a waiver before suing, centered its argument on comparing D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s ban on religious gatherings over 100 with her toleration and encouragement of massive anti-racism protests over the summer.


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Plug-in: No anti-Catholic sequel, as Democrats avoided loud dogma at Barrett hearings

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This time, the Democrats avoided the dogma. So far.

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s faith was a big focus going into this week’s Senate Judicial Committee hearings.

In advance of the confirmation proceedings, The Associated Press’ Mary Clare Jalonick and Elana Schor noted:

WASHINGTON (AP) — “The dogma lives loudly within you.”

It’s that utterance from California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, that’s on the minds of Democrats and Republicans preparing for this coming week’s hearings with Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

Feinstein’s 2017 remarks as she questioned Barrett — then a nominee for an appeals court — about the influence of Barrett’s Catholic faith on her judicial views sparked bipartisan backlash, contributing to the former law professor’s quick rise as a conservative judicial star.

Similarly, the Wall Street Journal’s Francis X. Rocca and Lindsay Wise pointed out:

In her 2017 confirmation hearings, senators from both parties brought up the connection between Judge Barrett’s faith and her rulings. But Democrats, especially California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, got backlash for their questions.

Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley asked, “When is it proper for a judge to put their religious views above applying the law?”

Sen. Feinstein said, “Whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma…I think in your case, Professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you.”

In response to the line of questioning, Judge Barrett said, “My personal church affiliation or my religious belief would not bear in the discharge of my duties as a judge.”

With the 2017 backlash in mind, Democrats steered clear of Barrett’s religion at this week’s hearings, even as Republicans focused on it.


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Where does the Catholic Church stand on the death penalty and war?

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THE QUESTION:

Where does the Catholic Church stand on the death penalty and war?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Pope Francis’s encyclical letter Fratelli Tutti (“Brothers All”), issued October 3, reinforces his profile as a socio-political liberal and idealist. Employing this the highest vehicle for authoritative papal teaching, he addresses racism and rampant nationalism (which some say especially targets the current U.S. situation), and yokes concern for the poor with a semi-socialistic view of private property. His views perhaps reflect the culture of economically troubled Argentina as much as teaching by previous popes.

In terms of church history, Francis’s most important innovations here are total opposition to the death penalty and, regarding warfare, nudging of the church toward full-blown pacifism. We can predict many lay parishioners will dissent, as with papal decrees on such matters as birth control. Francis wants the church to upend centuries of teaching by pontiffs and theologians. It seems probable that pressure for abortion and mercy-killing in secular culture has strengthened “pro-life” zeal on these other matters of life and death.

With the death penalty, biblical tradition reaches back to primeval times. God protects the life of the first murderer, Cain, but later gives this commandment: “Anyone who sheds the blood of a human being, by a human being shall that one’s blood be shed, for in the image of God have human beings been made”(Genesis 9:6).

This is interpreted to say that, paradoxically, death by execution upholds respect for life by making murder so abhorrent. At face value, the statement seems not only to allow but to require the death penalty. However, the Jewish Publication Society’s Genesis commentary says ancient rabbis shied away from execution and sought “every mitigating factor in the laws of evidence” to avoid imposing it for killing or other misdeeds.

Most Christians endorsed the practice across the centuries. As recently as 2018, the Catholic Catechism was still saying that though government should avoid the death penalty if “bloodless means are sufficient,” a society can claim legitimacy when execution is necessary to “defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons.”

However, Pope John Paul II had stated in a 1995 encyclical that though the death penalty seems a “legitimate defense” of society, we can effectively suppress crime without killing criminals.


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Podcast: Would third SCOTUS win allow some reluctant evangelical Trump voters to abandon ship?

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During this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), host Todd Wilken and I focused on this question: Will the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court help President Donald Trump on Election Day 2020?

The answer, you would think, is pretty obvious: Yes, since it would be another example of Trump keeping a campaign promise from 2016. Remember that famous list of potential justices he released during that tense campaign?

It’s also true that Barrett would be filling a third open chair on the high court during a single four-year term, a stunning development that few would have anticipated. Thus, Barrett’s confirmation would enthuse the Trump base and help get out the evangelical vote. Correct?

Maybe not. Consider the overture of this think piece — “The Supreme Court deal is done: Would this SCOTUS win mean that all those reluctant Trump voters could abandon ship?“ — that ran the other day at The Week. Bonnie Kristian’s logic may upset some Trump supporters, but she has a point:

The necessary and compelling reason to vote for President Trump in 2016, for many white evangelicals and other conservative Republicans, was the Supreme Court. That reason is now gone.

Or it will be soon, if Republican senators can manage to avoid COVID-19 infections long enough to confirm Amy Coney Barrett's nomination. … Her confirmation can and probably will be done before Election Day, at which point Trump's SCOTUS voters can — and, on this very basis, should — dump him as swiftly and mercilessly as he'd dump them were they no longer politically useful.

The Supreme Court vote for Trump was never a good rationale for backing him in the 2016 GOP primary, because every other candidate would have produced a very similar SCOTUS nomination shortlist. But once Trump was the party's chosen champion against Democrat Hillary Clinton, the certainty that the next president would fill at least one seat (replacing the late Justice Antonin Scalia) made the Supreme Court, in the words of pundit Hugh Hewitt, "Trump's trump card on the #NeverTrumpers."

Ah! Someone paid attention to the fault line in the white evangelical vote that Christianity Today spotted early on, and that your GetReligionistas have been discussing ever since.

So, once again, let’s consider that 2016 headline at CT: “Pew: Most Evangelicals Will Vote Trump, But Not For Trump.”


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Justice Amy Coney Barrett could soon prove crucial on legal fights over religious vs. LGBTQ rights 

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Senators, other pols and the news media are agog this week over the impact a Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, age 48, might have on abortion law long-term and -- immediately -- disputes over the election results and a challenge to Obamacare that comes up for oral arguments November 10.

But reporters on the politics, law or religion beats shouldn't ignore Barrett's potential impact on the continual struggles between religious freedom claims under the Bill of Rights versus LGBTQ rights the Court established in its 2015 Obergefell ruling that legalized same-sex marriage. Oral arguments in a crucial test case, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia [19-123], will occur the day after Election Day — when journalists will be preoccupied with furious tabulation of absentee ballots.

At issue is whether Philadelphia violated Constitutional religious freedom in 2018 by halting the longstanding work of Catholic Social Services in the city's foster care system because church teaching doesn't allow placement of children with same-sex couples.

Such disputes first won media attention when Massachusetts legalized gay marriage and in 2006 shut down the adoption service of Boston Catholic Charities. which did not place children with same-sex couples. A prescient 2006 Weekly Standard piece by marriage traditionalist Maggie Gallagher explored the broader implications for religious agencies and colleges in free speech, freedom of association, employment law and tax exemption.

The Becket Fund, which represents the Fulton plaintiffs, produced this useful 2008 anthology covering all sides on these issues.

On October 5, the legal jousting heated up when Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, issued a protest found within this memo (.pdf here).They dissented on Obergefell, but their chief concern now is that the court's ambiguity "continues to have ruinous consequences for religious liberty" that only SCOTUS itself can and must now remedy. A two-line Slate.com. headline typified reactions of the cultural Left:

Two Supreme Court Justices Just Put Marriage Equality on the Chopping Block

LGBT rights were already in jeopardy. If Amy Coney Barrett gets confirmed, they're likely doomed


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Catholic church vandalism still being ignored, while Amy Coney Barrett's faith remains a big story

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It was just 10 days ago that the U.S. Catholic bishops’ religious freedom chair joined forces with interfaith leaders and called for better protection of churches following this past summer’s vandalism at many houses of worship.

In a letter to congressional leaders on Oct. 5, Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami asked for the quadrupling of funding of a federal security grant program for non-profits.

A news release informing journalists of the request, sent along with a copy of the letter to newsrooms across the country, stated the following:

This program provides grants to nonprofits and houses of worship in order to enhance security through improvements to infrastructure, funding for emergency planning and training, upgrading security systems, and some renovation projects. While the program has been popular, lack of funding prompted many applicants for grants to be turned away in 2019. The coalition is calling on Congress to quadruple the total funding for the program to $360 million. From the letter:

“Each of our communities believes that respect for human dignity requires respect for religious liberty. We believe that protecting the ability of all Americans to live out their faith without fear or harm is one of the most important duties of the federal government. … These security grants benefit people of all faiths. At a time of increasing extremism and antagonism towards different religious groups and religion in general, we believe significant increased funding for this important government program in fiscal year 2021 is imperative.”

Other groups joining the letter include the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, National Association of Evangelicals, U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty, The Jewish Federations of North America, National Council of Churches in Christ in the USA, North American Division of the Seventh-day Adventists, Sikh Council for Interfaith Relations, Agudath Israel of America, and The Episcopal Church.

FBI statistics cited in the letter said that 1,244 hate crimes had been committed in 2018 against members of the various denominations in the United States. The letter also comes following a spate of attacks against Catholic churches and statues across the U.S. The acts of vandalism have largely been ignored by the mainstream secular press.

The letter was the latest beat in this ongoing story that was also ignored.

By comparison, the Catholic faith of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett has bordered on fixation by the press over the past few weeks.


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Yin-yang of Washington Post on Amy Coney Barrett: Wait. Pope Francis embraces charismatics?

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It would appear that the goal on the cultural and religious left is to find a way to link Judge Amy Coney Barrett to all of that strange charismatic Christian stuff like healing and speaking on tongues while avoiding anti-dogma language that would raise warning flags for Sunday-morning-Mass Catholics. She may as well be a fundamentalist Protestant!

Here is the Big Idea that is right up top, in a story that uses the term “handmaid” 11 times — early and often.

Oh, this will also require tip-toeing around the awkward fact that millions of charismatic Christians are found in Latino and Black pews — Catholic and Protestant.

Will this play a role in the hearings that are getting underway as I type this? We will see.

In the branch of the Democratic Party known as Acela Zone journalism, the key to the news coverage has continued to be a steady drumbeat of references to the word “handmaid,” which in cable-television land calls to mind all kinds of horrible fundamentalist terrors, starting with sexual slaves in red capes and white bonnets.

It’s hard to know what to write about the People of Praise-phobia angle of this story right now, since your GetReligionistas have been on it for some time now. See my podcast and post here: “Why is the 'handmaid' image so important in Amy Coney Barrett coverage?” Also, Julia Duin’s deep dive here into 40 years of history linked to the People of Praise and charismatic Christian communities of this kind. There there is Clemente Lisi on three big questions that reporters need to face linked to Barrett’s faith.

There are too many elite news stories on the handmaid angle to parse them all, so let’s focus on that recent Washington Post feature from a team led by the scribe who brought you the hagiography of Christine Blasey Ford during the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

For starters, this would be a good time to remind readers that reporters rarely play any role in the writing of the headlines atop their work. The headline on a piece such as this one primarily tells you the angle that editors thought would launch it into social-media circles among the newsroom’s true believers. Thus we have: “Amy Coney Barrett served as a ‘handmaid’ in Christian group People of Praise.”


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That (overlooked) 2020 Al Smith dinner served up blunt appeals to Catholic swing voters

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That (overlooked) 2020 Al Smith dinner served up blunt appeals to Catholic swing voters

During a normal White House race, the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner allows the candidates to don formal attire, fire snappy one-liners and make subtle appeals to Catholic voters.

But nothing is normal in 2020. Thus, Joe Biden and President Donald Trump used this year's virtual dinner to preach to Catholic voters in swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida. The event produced few headlines, coming a mere six hours before Trump announced his positive test for COVID-19.

Saluting Catholic progressive, Biden offered a litany about the pandemic, race, the recession and climate change. He warned that many Americans have lost faith "in one another, in truth, in science and reason."

The current pope, Biden stressed, embraced him during a 2013 White House visit, offering comfort shortly after brain cancer took his son Beau's life.

"Pope Francis took the time to meet with my entire family to help us see the light through the darkness," said Biden. "I live in an amazing country … where an Irish Catholic kid like me from Scranton, Pennsylvania, would one day befriend a Jesuit pope. But that's who we are as a country -- where anything is possible when we care for one another, when we look out for one another, when we keep the faith."

While stressing that he is guided "by the tenets of Catholic social doctrine" -- helping the "least of these" -- Biden didn't mention his vow to codify Roe v. Wade if the Supreme Court overturns that decision or his promise to reinstate policies requiring the Little Sisters of the Poor to cooperate in providing birth control and abortifacients to staff. He didn't mention his decision to officiate at the same-sex wedding of two White House colleagues, an action clashing with church doctrine.

It was logical for Biden to avoid providing fresh ammunition for critics. But the speech, once again, trumpeted his Catholic credentials.

"Joe Biden's choice to run explicitly on the claim that he is a faithful Catholic squarely places on the table his claim to be a faithful Catholic," stressed legal scholar Robert P. George of Princeton University, writing on Facebook. He is a Catholic conservative who has also been a consistent critic of Trump.

“No way out of this, folks," he added. "It's not, or not just, Biden's critics who have raised the issue. It's the Biden campaign. …


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