To start things off, please get yourself a map that includes Washington, D.C., and nearby states. If you have lived in that region, just pull one up in your mind’s eye.
Now, draw an imaginary 300-mile circle — or perhaps one bigger than that — around the Beltway kingdom.
If you were the principal of a Christian middle-school or high-school, how many hours would you allow students and some faculty members or parents to ride on a school bus to attend the March for Life that marks the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision? What if they were on a rented touring bus, with better seats and (most importantly) a better safety rating?
Would you let them drive for five hours to the march? How about eight? Now, to understand the topic discussed in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), ask these questions:
(1) What are the key states touched by that big circle around D.C.? Obviously there’s Maryland and Pennsylvania and Virginia. But Ohio isn’t out of the question, is it?
(2) Thinking about religious schools and institutions, would there be more Catholic schools in this circle or evangelical Protestant? Think about the size of the Catholic populations in several of these states.
(3) Which of these states have significant clout in American politics, especially in White House races? Obviously, Ohio (think of all that history) and Pennsylvania would be at the top of that list.
So now, picture the massive crowds at the March for Life. You can understand why, year after year, it is dominated by waves of buses containing Catholic students of all ages — even though it is true that evangelical Protestants are now active in the Right to Life Movement. If you’ve attended or covered a March for Life, you know — to be blunt — that this is not an event dominated by white evangelicals.
Let’s add one more lens, as we look at media coverage of the 2020 march. It’s a political lens.
Name the key states that, in 2016, elected Trump to the presidency. Do white evangelicals dominate those states — the Rust Belt (especially Ohio and Pennsylvania) and Florida — or do Catholics of varying degrees of religious practice?
So here is my question: Was the main reason that advisors sent Trump to the March for Life to preach to his white evangelical Protestant base? That seemed to be the assumption of many news reports that I saw. Click here for my post, “Yo, Politico scribes: You might want to attend March for Life next year and count the Catholics.”
Why did some reporters think that the march was an “evangelical” event? For me, part of the drama of this year’s Trump appearance was that he was speaking to many, many Catholics — and some evangelicals — who are not his natural supporters.
Maybe he was there, in large part, in an attempt to reassure many Catholics (yes, and evangelicals) who find it hard to accept him as a pro-life leader? This is a man, after all, who was vocally pro-abortion rights for many years and, well, then there is his private life and bombastic style.
As I put it this week in my national “On Religion” column:
While commentators stressed that Trump attended the march to please his conservative evangelical base, this massive event in Washington, D.C., draws a complex crowd that is hard to label. It includes, for example, Catholics and evangelicals from groups that have been critical of Trump's personal life and ethics, as well as his stands on immigration, the death penalty and related issues.
Videos of this year's march showed many signs praising the president, but also signs critical of his bruising brand of politics.
A Facebook post by a Catholic priest -- Father Jeffrey Dauses of the Diocese of Baltimore -- captured this tension. Telling pro-lifers to "wake up," Dauses attacked what he called Trump's "callous disregard for the poor, for immigrants and refugees, for women. … This man is not pro-life. He is pro-himself."
I thought it was good that the Washington Post hinted at some of these dynamics by including a comment in one of its stories from a pro-life, African-American Democrat who was trying to make sense of Trump’s appearance.
Louisiana state Sen. Katrina Jackson, a Democrat and a speaker at the event, said in an interview before the march that while she disagrees with Trump on policies and is discouraged by the insults he spouts, she was “ecstatic” that a president would attend.
“We finally have a sitting president at the March for Life,” she said. “It doesn’t make him the face of it. It sets a precedent for future presidents to speak. It’s my prayer the president’s attendance doesn’t make it look partisan.”
So who was at the 2020 March for Life? If you think about the religion dynamics in that drama, was this just another case of Trump preaching to his choir? Or was there a more interesting story to be found, for those with the eyes to see it?