Of the many changes in our politics — the movement of political power from the Northeast and Midwest to the South and West, the coarsening of our national conversation, the transformations wrought by technological change, including the internet and social media — the one that might be the most astonishing is the dramatic increase in the prominence of religion in political life.
The Founders all made bows to religious values, arguing in one way or another that liberty and religion were inextricably united and, moreover — this is a subtle but vital difference — that religious liberty was indispensable to a free people.
Abraham Lincoln, whose principal textbook for life was the Bible, sprinkled scriptural quotations and allusions throughout his speeches, especially in the Gettysburg Address and his two inaugural addresses, one of which included the sobering reminder that “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether” (Psalm 19:9). Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued a “D-Day Prayer” as the 1944 invasion of France began to unfold that opened with the words “Almighty God” and argued that America’s forces “have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization …”
So while religion has never been far from American civic life, the memorial service for the conservative activist Charlie Kirk underlined how intimately politics and religion have become entwined in the Donald Trump years. But before we proceed further, let’s stipulate that the presence of religious themes in a memorial service is entirely appropriate and indeed unremarkable. Kirk was a religious man, and no accounting of his life can reasonably, or fairly, be made without sufficient acknowledgement of the role that faith played in his work, which speaker after speaker portrayed as — what follows is my word, not theirs, and is employed here as a metaphor, not as a descriptor — a ministry.
Most presidents have spoken of religion in general terms meant to be inclusive of all faiths, more recently adding, as George W. Bush pointedly did after the terrorist attacks of September 2001, Muslims to the triptych of Catholics, Protestants and Jews. They also have sought blessings for American military personnel and concluded addresses with the anodyne phrase “God bless the United States of America.”
But it is arguable that Trump, the beneficiary of the support of religious conservatives, has taken this impulse further since beginning his third campaign for the White House.
He has employed messianic language — “I’m being indicted for you” (June 2023) — that has no precedent in American political life, even from the fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan, a three-time Democratic presidential nominee. In recent weeks, the president, who has said he was saved from assassination by God, has spoken of hoping to go to heaven, and worrying he might not (“I want to try and get to heaven, if possible,” adding, “I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole”).
Three times, he’s sent followers a fundraising email (“This is very personal to me — I’m only sharing it with close friends”) that opens, “Since the day I returned to the White House, I have felt the mighty hand of God guiding this movement. His Word reminds us: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” adding, “Our strength does not come from man. It comes from the LORD.”
Trump is, if you’ll permit the phrase, preaching to the converted. The nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute found that “white evangelical Protestants remain the most vital religious constituency of the Republican Party,” with more than 8 in 10 voting for Trump last year. A 2024 Pew study found that, by a margin of nearly 2-to-1, more Republicans than Democrats consider themselves highly religious.
At the same time, a Gallup poll found that 34% of Americans believe religion is more and more influential in American life — a dramatic increase from the 20% who said so only a year ago.
How to put this in perspective? Perhaps by listening to two presidential candidates who acknowledged the legacy of religious values in American history but sought to play down the importance of their own faiths.
Joe Biden’s Catholicism was no issue in his 2020 election victory; in the 60 years between his election and that of John F. Kennedy, the issue of a Catholic in the White House had largely disappeared. And when Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, was the Democrats’ 2000 vice-presidential nominee, his religious practices were considered more a curiosity (no campaigning on the Jewish Sabbath, for example) than an obstacle.
But in 1960, Senator Kennedy felt the need to travel to the convention of the Greater Houston Ministerial Association to argue, “I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.”
Five decades later, Mitt Romney, in an address at the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas, alluded to the Kennedy speech in his own explication of the role his Mormon faith would play if he were elected in 2008.
“Almost 50 years ago, another candidate from Massachusetts explained that he was an American running for president, not a Catholic running for president,” he said. “Like him, I am an American running for president. I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person should not be elected because of his faith, nor should he be rejected because of his faith.”
Kennedy argued his faith attracted too much attention. “While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight,” he said, “I want to emphasize from the outset that we have far more critical issues to face in the 1960 election.”
For his part, Romney argued that religion is best used in politics to unite rather than divide. “It is important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions. And where the affairs of our nation are concerned, it’s usually a sound rule to focus on the latter — on the great moral principles that urge us all on a common course.”
Romney lost the election. But given the divisions in our own time over religion in politics, he might be regarded to have the winning argument.
North Shore native David M. Shribman is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.