This election, a struggle for the soul of American Christianity is key

“There are White evangelicals who will utilize the gospel and twist it in a way that works to their advantage and gives them a way to support Trump,” he told me last week. “But there are lots of us who don’t feel that way. When I’m told that if I support Kamala Harris that somehow, I’m anti-church, anti-Biblical, that really bothers me.”

Parker is not alone. In fact, he represents another equally powerful, politically active Christian tradition shaping this year’s elections. Its most mobilized form is found in Black churches nationwide that preach the liberating power of the gospel and the biblical imperative of social and racial justice. Many Latino and White Christians adhere to that version of the gospel, too.

Ask the Rev. Jay Augustine, senior pastor of St. Joseph AME Church in Durham, what this means for this election, and he pulls no punches: “North Carolina,” he says, “is going to be ground zero for a faith war.” Augustine is not talking about a battle among religions, or between the pious and the secular. He’s talking about a deep divide within Christianity itself.

This key battleground state hosts a complex religious history: It’s home to a large evangelical right, but was also the site of Bishop William J. Barber II’s “Moral Mondays” movement, a religiously inspired but deeply ecumenical focal point for social activism around civil rights, voting rights and economic equality.

The controversies encircling Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor and a hero of the religious right, complicate the picture further. They raise inescapable moral questions for even his most fervent supporters who cherish his incendiary rhetoric around abortion and church-state issues. Charges that he once posted pro-Nazi and proslavery comments on a porn site — which he denies — have left his campaign in tatters.

“He’s difficult for me to watch,” Parker said in an interview at his church. “It’s the sheer hypocrisy of what he says and what he does. His own demons came out.”

All this calls into question the popular but simplistic concept that a “God Gap” haunts American politics. The phrase entered the political lexicon in 2004 after President George W. Bush was seen as winning reelection courtesy of overwhelming support from churchgoers who told pollsters they had based their votes on “moral values.”

The shorthand did capture a polarization around religious practice and intensity among White voters. But it was always a flawed concept because it left out African Americans who are, by many measures, among the most devout believers in the country and vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Adding to the complexity, Bush did exceptionally well among Hispanic evangelicals, a group Trump is now courting, but Latinos as a whole remained broadly Democratic.

Gregory Smith, associate director of religion research at the Pew Research Center, said that even among White voters, the “God Gap” has its limits. “While most White Christian groups have trended in a Republican direction in recent years,” he said, “significant minorities identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, including 4 in 10 white nonevangelical Protestants and 37 percent of White Catholics.”

The battle for Catholics will be important in the northern swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, especially now that Joe Biden, only the second Catholic president in American history, is no longer on the ballot.

Religion has created a coalition management challenge for Democrats whose ranks include large majorities of Jewish and Muslim voters and an overwhelming share of voters — particularly among the young — who left organized religion altogether.

But political scientist David Campbell, co-author of “Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics,” argues that the party still has ample room for appeals to religious voters.

“We don’t see any evidence that [secular voters] are hostile to Democrats who use religious language,” he told me. “It’s a myth that because they have a secular world view, they are hostile to religion. What they don’t like is the establishment of religion by government, government stepping over the line between church and state.”

Harris seems to take this view to heart. She speaks often about her Baptist faith, routinely dropping religious references into speeches and at times offering detailed accounts of its influence on her worldview. Faith, she said in a 2022 address to the National Baptist Convention, taught her “to believe in what is possible and what can be, unburdened by what has been.”

But there is a more basic reason that religion is unavoidable in this election. It has nothing to do with any “God Gap” or political calculation. Augustine is right: There is an ongoing struggle for the soul of American Christianity between brands of faith that embrace democratic inclusion and extreme forms — particularly white Christian nationalism — that promote exclusion. on. It’s an argument that North Carolina might be called upon to settle for the nation.