GetReligion
Wednesday, April 02, 2025

Ron DeSantis

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Yes, the perennial 'voters in pews' factor hovers as 2024 White House scenarios emerge

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Yes, the perennial 'voters in pews' factor hovers as 2024 White House scenarios emerge

Only a candidate like Joe Biden is so problematic he could lose to a candidate like Donald Trump.

Only a Trump is so problematic he could lose to a Biden. That’s one way to frame what the early polls are telling us about Americans’ attitude about their 2024 choice.

Since Biden is so far successfully freezing out major Democratic competitors, the big question for journalists is whether any Republican can dethrone Donald Trump. Hovering over that – as always with Republicans – is how active churchgoers will assess the large flock (once again) of dump-Trump hopefuls in the winner-take-all primaries.

Take the newbies. Can Ron DeSantis’s grumpy Trumpiness freed from Trump’s baggage prevail, or the exact opposite?

Tim Scott’s Reagan-esque sunniness plus religiosity Trump lacks?

Can former Nikki Haley straddle both Trumpers (playing for Veep?) and anti-Trumpers?

Can pious Vice President Mike Pence overcome hostility from both those sides? Would Chris Christie eviscerate ex-pal Trump but without winning, as with Mario Rubio 2016?

If the more cheerful Asa Hutchinson or Chris Sununu also assail Trump, won’t they alienate his base? Would a rumored Glenn Youngkin entry come too late? Do the others have any hope?

By such common calculations, Trump appears all but inevitable 58 weeks before the nominating convention. But with such a surreal candidate – with coming courtroom tangles – might those pious Republicans shock the pundits? Wouldn’t that be a story?

The news media shouldn’t forget the religion angle with the Democrats and Joe Biden’s currently lethargic campaign.


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Plug-In: What do we know about the faith of the two latest GOP White House candidates?

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Plug-In: What do we know about the faith of the two latest GOP White House candidates?

A week has passed since influential pastor and author Tim Keller’s death. Look for some of the best tributes to him below.

Making news today: Texas’ GOP-controlled House could impeach scandal-ridden Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton and kick the longtime Christian right culture warrior out of office, The Associated Press’ Jake Bleiberg and Jim Vertuno report.

Jumping into this week’s roundup of the top headlines and best reads in the world of faith, we start with two new entrants in the 2024 presidential race.

What To Know: The Big Story

Political opposites: “One has the most winning personality in politics,” the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan says of South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.

“The other doesn’t but has a story to tell about policy,” Noonan says of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Thusly, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and speechwriter for former President Ronald Reagan characterizes the two aspirants who declared for the GOP nomination this past week.

Scott focuses on faith: “A cornerstone of Republican Tim Scott's political career has been an unyielding faith,” USA Today’s Phillip M. Bailey notes.

Monday’s campaign kickoff by Scott, one of the nation’s most prominent Black Republicans, emphasized his Christian faith and personal story, according to the Washington Post’s Marianne LeVine.

At Politico, Natalie Allison asks, “Can Tim Scott actually win with piles of money, lots of faith and a big bet on Iowa?”


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Has Donald Trump won nomination already? Careful. And keep a hawkeye on Iowa ...

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Has Donald Trump won nomination already? Careful. And keep a hawkeye on Iowa ...

In nationwide polls, Donald Trump has defied multiple legal snarls to pad his already healthy margin over potential challenger Ron DeSantis for the Republican nomination. So far, those two swamp all other possible names, such as Nikki Haley.

As for state polling, South Carolina numbers last week from Winthrop University have Trump at 41% and DeSantis 20%, while the two locals got only 18% (Haley), and 7% (Tim Scott). Likewise in New Hampshire with its first primary, where a St. Anselm College poll in late March reported Trump 42%, DeSantis 29%, popular Governor Chris Sununu a mere 14% and Haley 4%.

Reporters on the politics, religion, and religion-and-politics beats should especially keep a hawkeye (so to speak) on Iowa, with its crucial first-in-the-nation caucus next January — turf already well-trod by GOP hopefuls. An April 4 poll of likely G.O.P. caucus-goers by J.L. Partners shows Trump 41%, DeSantis 26%, and Haley a 5% also-ran.


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Parents, schools and 'LGBTQ themes': Why is the Associated Press being so vague?

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Parents, schools and 'LGBTQ themes': Why is the Associated Press being so vague?

Let’s start here: I am a journalist who is married to a librarian. When it comes to First Amendment issues, we are old-school liberals. However, there are times when — in debates involving public schools, tax dollars and parental rights (without “scare quotes”) — there are First Amendment tensions that cannot be denied.

Week after week, I keep reading angry mainstream-press reports covering battles about removing LGBTQ-audience books from the libraries of schools in various red zip codes across America.

I confess that I am confused about what is happening in many of these debates. I assume that the content of proposed legislation is different in various states, but it’s hard to know the details in the news coverage. In particular, it’s hard to know if books are being removed from (a) mandatory classroom assignments, (b) recommended sex-education lists promoted to students or (c) library bookshelves — period.

Also, I am having trouble understanding the specifics of why parents are upset (and these concerns may vary from case to case). Most news reports stress that conservative (read “traditional” religious believers, either Christian, Jewish or Muslim) parents are upset about all LGBTQ content.

However, if and when journalists deem to quote parents, the parents seem upset about visual images and graphic stories that they consider to be pornographic or not age-appropriate for their children. Are their concerns valid? It’s hard to make judgements about that — since news reports never describe the details of their concerns, perhaps because the content is too strong for publication in newspapers.

With these questions in mind, let’s look at a recent Associated Press report that ran with this headline: “School library book bans are seen as targeting LGBTQ content.” Note that the headline seems to assume that books are banned from library shelves and that’s that. Here is the overture:

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Teri Patrick bristles at the idea she wants to ban books about LGBTQ issues in Iowa schools, arguing her only goal is ridding schools of sexually explicit material.

Sara Hayden Parris says that whatever you want to call it, it’s wrong for some parents to think a book shouldn’t be readily available to any child if it isn’t right for their own child.


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Florida evangelicals mull Trump vs. DeSantis and, #behold, AP finds some diversity!

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Florida evangelicals mull Trump vs. DeSantis and, #behold, AP finds some diversity!

Brace yourselves, readers, because I am about to praise an Associated Press story about evangelical voters, Florida and the looming clash between Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump.

But before we go there, let’s review two GetReligion themes about these topics.

(1) During the primaries before the 2016 presidential election, a strong army of evangelical voters provided strategic support for Trump. But just as many evangelicals voted for other GOP candidates in a very, very large Republican field. In the general election, white evangelicals — faced with a choice between Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton — voted overwhelmingly for Trump.

This created the “81% of evangelicals just love Trump” myth, which hid some crucial divisions inside the complex and diverse world of American evangelicalism.

(2) Trump reached the White House — quite literally — because of the crucial votes of Latino evangelicals and Pentecostal believers in Florida. The growing diversity in Latino voting remained a secret hidden in clear sight until press coverage linked to the 2020 and 2022 elections, including the rise of DeSantis, who is Catholic.

This brings us to the new AP report: “Trump vs. DeSantis: Florida pastors mull conservative issues.”

While it contains some familiar mainstream press language on moral and cultural issues — battles about parental rights and sex education are about “politics,” as opposed to beliefs or doctrines — it offers information and input from a strong set of insiders and experts. Also, there is a truly shocking summary statement about evangelicals in Florida. Hold that thought. Here is the overture:

DORAL, Florida (AP) — Several of Florida’s conservative faith leaders have the ear of two early frontrunners for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — former President Donald Trump, who lives in Palm Beach, and Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The clergy’s top political priorities are thus likely to resonate in the national campaign for the religious vote, even as both men’s agendas are still being weighed from the pulpit.

The faith leaders’ key issues include education, especially about gender and sexuality, and immigration, a particularly relevant matter in Florida, which is a destination for hundreds of thousands of newcomers and home to politically powerful Latino diasporas.

Guess what? Latino clergy have a rather complex stance on immigration, one rather similar to the views I have heard from mainstream evangelicals for a long time.


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Podcast: Let's play 'spot the sound bite' with Joe Biden's sermon at Ebenezer Baptist

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Podcast: Let's play 'spot the sound bite' with Joe Biden's sermon at Ebenezer Baptist

Communications specialists inside the D.C. Beltway — journalists, PR pros, everybody — used to have a game they would play when watching major speeches. Check out the Michael Keaton and Geena Davis flick “Speechless,” about two dueling speechwriters whose romance causes complications.

The goal: Watch the speech and predict the sound bite that would make it into news reports. The key was “buzz,” that mysterious factor linked to quotes — positive or negative — that grab editors and producers and, hurrah, affect whatever political war or horse race was in the headlines.

I offered a variation on this process during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast broadcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), only I applied it, at first, to the pope.

My editors always thought the most important part of a papal speech was whatever he said that was linked to “real news,” as in American politics. I argued that it helped to figure out what the pope was trying to say to millions of Catholics around the world and this (#TriggerWarning) usually had something to do with faith, worship and, well, Catholicism. You know, Jesus stuff.

The goal in this podcast was to apply this process to the elite press coverage of President Joe Biden’s Sunday morning appearance in the pulpit of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was once pastor. This was, according to most of the mainstream press, a “sermon,” as opposed to a political speech of some kind (click here to read the White House transcript).

As you would imagine, conservative media focused on Biden remarks that may or may not have had some connection to real events or even his own life. Was it accurate, for example, for Biden to say he was active, as a young man, in the Civil Rights Movement and highly influenced by the Black church?

The mainstream press mainly went with political sound-bites, but stressed the ones that contained references to Biden’s liberal Catholic faith, biblical social-justice language or muted jabs at Republicans. In other words, the MSM focused on the messages that Biden wanted to deliver. Hold that thought.


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What's up in 2023? The Guy offers a first draft of a religion-beat agenda

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What's up in 2023? The Guy offers a first draft of a religion-beat agenda

The new year could be climactic for two aspects of LGBTQ issues, first, the rights of religious and conservative dissenters within liberalized western culture, and second, the ongoing conflicts within church groups.

What should journalists be prepared to cover?

By June, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide the 303 Creative case, in which a website designer — based on First Amendment claims — seeks exemption from Colorado’s anti-discrimination law to avoid work on postings that celebrate same-sex weddings (background here). The Court might broadly define what rights various forms of religious traditionalists have in a host of legal conflicts facing e.g. U.S. religious colleges, social-service agencies and individual businesses now that same-sex marriage is legalized.

Inside a specific religion brand, this could be a pivotal year for the global Anglican Communion with its 46 national branches and some 85 million baptized members. A mid-January meeting of bishops in the “mother” Church of England may well decide dioceses can permit same-sex weddings. That historic change would then need approval from clergy and lay delegates at the February 6–9 General Synod.

Such a move would add explosive potential to the April 17-21 meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (“GAFCON”), long vexed by liberal moves in England, the United States and elsewhere in declining First World churches. GAFCON unites the heads of 10 Anglican branches, three of which alone (Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda) encompass half the world’s Anglicans. GAFCON’s chairman, Archbishop Foley Beach (admin@anglicanchurch.net and 724-266-9400), heads a church of conservatives who’ve left the U.S. Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada.

Already, key archbishops have boycotted global Anglican confabs, continuing a slow-motion breakup that began decades ago. Will the maneuvers in England and elsewhere provoke a huge, definitive break from the London-based Anglican Communion by churches in GAFCON and the related Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches?

The United Methodist Church could be on the brink of the biggest U.S. Protestant split since the Civil War. That’s a huge story at the local, regional, national and global levels.


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Return of the evangelical arguments about morality, character and two-party politics

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Return of the evangelical arguments about morality, character and two-party politics

It was totally logical for the Southern Baptist Convention to pass its "Resolution on Moral Character of Public Officials" in 1998.

Consider this "whereas" clause: "Some journalists report that many Americans are willing to excuse or overlook immoral or illegal conduct by unrepentant public officials so long as economic prosperity prevails." This was followed by: "Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society, and surely results in God's judgment."

Thus, the SBC urged American leaders to "live by the highest standards of morality both in their private actions and in their public duties."

Yes, this resolution passed soon after the infamous claim by President Bill Clinton, a Southern Baptist, that "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."

It was easy to predict who thought Clinton should exit the White House, noted conservative writer Marvin Olasky, who was writing "The American Leadership Tradition: Moral Vision from Washington to Clinton" at that time.

"In poker, you really don't know what cards someone has," said Olasky, reached by telephone. "You can't tell, with certainty, the character of a politician. … In that book, I argued that the state of a man's marriage was a strong tell. If he's faithful in his marriage, he's likely to be faithful to the nation."

Olasky's fellow religious conservatives praised the book. But things changed when he wrote a World magazine essay in 2016 entitled, "Unfit for power," arguing that Donald Trump should step aside as the Republican nominee.

"Clinton had denied having a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, but her stained blue dress bearing Clinton's DNA was proof that he had used his power for adulterous purposes, and then lied about it," wrote Olasky. Then there was the videotape showing "Trump making lewd remarks about groping women's genitals. While many opponents … have criticized Trump's character, the video gave us new information about how Trump views power as a means to gratify himself."

Olasky recirculated this 2016 editorial after Trump's recent announcement that he would seek the presidency once again, igniting renewed social-media warfare among evangelicals about morality, character and the winner-take-all nature of American politics – especially when Supreme Court seats are vacant.


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Who is covering this big story? The exodus of the Donald Trump faith advisors

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Who is covering this big story? The exodus of the Donald Trump faith advisors

An interesting wrinkle in religion news came up the other day when a bunch of news organizations did some digging and found out that former President Trump’s once loyal religious base had evaporated.

Perhaps one of the most shattering admissions of this loss came from one of his advisors who called the former president a “little elementary school child.”

Clearly a lot has changed on the Trump train faith-team front. Let’s start with this Religion News Service story:

WASHINGTON (RNS) — When Donald Trump launched his 2020 reelection bid in Orlando, Florida, three years ago, the event was riddled with faith-speak. Both Trump and then-Vice President Mike Pence repeatedly referenced God, arguing the Almighty had blessed America. Trump’s closest evangelical adviser, Florida pastor Paula White-Cain, opened up the event with a passionate invocation in which she insisted the “hand of God” would work for Trump.

But when Trump announced yet another White House bid from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Tuesday (Nov. 15), he did so with a speech devoid of overt religious references. It was unclear if the event included an invocation, and while some of Trump’s stalwart evangelical supporters were seen milling about the resort’s carpeted floors Tuesday evening — namely, conservative commentator Eric Metaxas, pastor Mark Burns and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell — many of the former president’s longtime religious defenders were nowhere to be seen.

Which brings up a question I’ve been wondering for some months: Where is the Rev. Paula White and was she at this Mar-a-Lago gathering? If not, why not?

Why ask? She has turned over the reins of her Orlando-area church to her son, so she’s not tied down with ecclesiastical responsibilities.

Instead, most have remained silent about his new campaign, while others have hinted at allegiances to other potential 2024 presidential contenders such as Pence and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.


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