The summer that has been highlighted by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, protests and statue-toppling has placed a spotlight on everything that’s wrong with politics.

But there are more dark clouds for people in pews and at altars. As the coronavirus crisis worsens, Christians and people of all faiths must face one stark reality — the possibility that their faith will be further eroded by secular society.   

The spread of the coronavirus has been a boon for some politicians. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has essentially run a stealth campaign from his home (and benefitted from this safe strategy in the polls), while President Donald Trump has risked one television interview after another in an effort to get his message out.

Trump is acting like a candidate on the ropes, not an incumbent. He appears to have no clear second-term agenda.

The virus, meanwhile, has also given some lawmakers the chance to act more authoritarian in the name of science, meaning churches can close but anti-racism protests can continue. While populism has suffered during quarantine lockdowns (no rallies!), more extreme forces may actually benefit in this election cycle and over the coming decade. 

Totalitarianism, in any form, isn’t good for religious people. Neither is the political and cultural balkanization we are witnessing across the country. With three months to go before Americans cast their votes, the divisive nature of our politics will likely get worse.

How worse? During this time of cultural reckonings, some activists have tried to lump Catholic saints into the same category as treasonous Confederate generals. That has forced some Republicans to increasingly trumpet traditional Christian values, while Democrats get dangerously closer to Marxism.

That means that old-school religious centrists — and lawmakers prone to making compromises like former Sen. Joe Lieberman — will disappear from our national politics. These people will be forced to choose a side or remain largely absent from the U.S. political system.  

Who will voters support? Trump’s pugnacious qualities were seen four years ago as a virtue by many voters, a bulwark against political correctness and what some see as an increasing anti-religious sentiment by secular forces in society. In Biden, many see an end to Trump’s Twitter antics and a return to civility in public discourse.

That Biden is a Catholic, however, doesn’t make him an automatic favorite among this voter group (say like John F. Kennedy, the first and only Catholic president, was in 1960) heading into November. Many Catholics are worried about Biden’s actions linked to crucial church-state issues.

Will mainstream journalists cover the religion angles in these tense standoffs?

The arguments about statues and sacred art may linger into the fall.

Just days after a column in the National Catholic Reporter called Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “the future of the Catholic Church,” the New York lawmaker — a self-proclaimed “Democratic socialist” — decided to take on St. Damien of Molokai. Her Instagram statement was immediately criticized by many Catholics, including Bishop Robert Barron who called it “crazy and outrageous.”  

Ocasio-Cortez’s statement was triggered by the views of those who are asking why there aren’t more statues honoring women in the National Statuary Hall inside the U.S. Capitol. To make her point, she chose to pick on St. Damien, a missionary who ministered to lepers and eventually died from that dreaded disease in 1889.  

“Even when we select figures to tell the stories of colonized places, it is the colonizers and settlers whose stories are told — and virtually no one else. Check out Hawaii’s statue. It’s not Queen Lili’uokalani of Hawaii, the only Queen Regnant of Hawaii, who is immortalized and whose story is told. It is Father Damien. This isn’t to litigate each and every individual statue, but to point out the patterns that have emerged among the totality of them in who we are taught to deify in our nation’s Capitol: virtually all men, all white and mostly both. This is what patriarchy and white supremacist culture looks like! It’s not radical or crazy to understand the influence white supremacist culture has historically had in our overall culture and how it impacts the present day.”

The political attack on St. Damien comes as churches and Catholic sacred symbols have been vandalized and desecrated across the United States. Television images of the burning of one or two Bibles by protesters in Portland didn’t help matters.

For traditional Catholics, Trump is largely seen as an ally. Trump, during a recent stop in Ohio, made faith a campaign issue, saying the former vice president was “against God.” Like AOC, Trump isn’t shy about making bombastic statements that shake the public square.

Trump opined: “He’s following the radical left agenda, take away your guns, destroy your Second Amendment, no religion, no anything, hurt the Bible, hurt God. He’s against God. He’s against guns. He’s against energy, our kind of energy. I don’t think he’s going to do too well in Ohio.”

States like Ohio matter if Trump wants to win again.

Continue reading “Biden's Faith Becomes A Campaign Issue As Anti-Catholic Attacks Rise,” by Clemente Lisi at Religion Unplugged.