But have the Democrats regained the Christian moral high ground?

Rome. When Ross Douthat put forward his famous tweet ten years ago, arguing that a post-religious right would be far worse than a religious right, he explained that the new right, without any moral restraints provided by religion, would throw itself wholeheartedly into a dangerous form of identitarian nationalism. Douthat had already spotted the first signs of this during Trump’s first campaign, and eight years later he confirmed that prophecy in the New York Times, by which time it had become a reality. Matthew Schmitz, founder of Compact magazine and former senior editor of First Things, replied that the analysis was a little too far-fetched: even within the ‘new’ right, there was plenty of religion, particularly as it drew on the vast pool of evangelical Christians. What was missing from the analyses – because it was not a topic on the agenda – was the return of religiously committed candidates on the left. These are people who do not regard faith as a private matter to be locked away in one’s own room – far from it. It is a faith to be displayed, above all during election campaigns. They may not be the giant crucifixes seen at Charlie Kirk’s funeral, but they are not far off. It is no coincidence that, in the aftermath of the mid-term elections, The Telegraph wrote that ‘faith can sway the electorate’. 

Election campaigns inspired by religious values, whether the Presbyterian values of former seminarian James Talarico in Texas or the Islamic values of Abdul El Sayed in Michigan. Not to mention the most incredible of the Democrats’ recaptures: Kansas, which had not had a Democratic senator for almost a century. This was a mission successfully accomplished by Adam Hamilton, leader of America’s largest Methodist congregation, who travelled from one end of the state to the other saying that even Jesus, if he could, would have voted for him.

The New York Times Magazine, observing what was unfolding, wondered whether the Democrats might be able to “regain the Christian moral high ground”. The magazine noted that a dozen pastors and seminarians had sought nomination within the Democratic Party, and in seven cases the gamble had paid off. On the Republican side, there were only three. Commonweal, a liberal Catholic magazine, wrote that we are talking about ten candidates out of nine hundred in total: “Such a small sample cannot justify the idea that we are facing an epoch-making turning point”. Yet the most prominent of the ten won. What happened? Certainly, the candidates put forward by the Grand Old Party played their part, especially those endorsed and backed by Donald Trump: in Texas, Ken Paxton had been placed under investigation by his own party and – as Commonweal wrote – was “one of the worst candidates in these mid-term elections and anything but a model of personal virtue, political ethics or Christian morality”. The same magazine is also sceptical about Hamilton’s victory: whilst it is true that Kansas, a Republican stronghold, has recently been shifting slowly to the left, one must take into account the weakness of his opponent and the fact that this was probably a “pragmatic distancing from Trump and Trumpism”. So, the magazine asks, on whose side does “Christian moral authority” lie? Certainly not on the side of Vance and the “border czar”, Tom Homan. In any case, ‘the point is not simply to reclaim Christian moral leadership – which risks remaining an abstraction – but to dismantle the Trump administration’s deportation programme, tackle massive economic inequalities, expand access to healthcare, restore funding for humanitarian initiatives, end illegal wars, and investigate the illicit enrichment of Trump and his family: and the list could go on’. The Week, too, links the victories of the “religious left” to antipathy towards the incumbent president: “Politicians on the Christian left have been trying to break through for a long time, but have mostly been stifled in the primaries before they came close to reaching the national stage. The picture has now changed: in just a few years, thanks to ‘corruption and incompetence’, Trump – who previously ‘enjoyed the support of many Christians’ – ‘has achieved what would otherwise have taken generations: he has opened the door for the religious left to make incredible inroads’.” Jim Rigby, the minister of the Presbyterian church where Talarico grew up, said that “a revival is underway. It is not so much a matter of one religion pitted against another, but rather the affirmation of an idea: everyone matters”.

A resurgence that has thrown the hardline MAGA Republicans into disarray, whose most frequently used refrain during the election campaign to undermine their opponents was ‘he’s not a true Christian’ (a slogan directed at the Texan who ultimately won) and “she’s not a real pastor” (against MP Lindsay James, a candidate in Iowa, who managed to snatch the seat from the rival party). This seems rather meagre, even in terms of “narrative”, to aim for a flip of Congress in 2028, let alone the battle to win the White House.