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      Faith leaders back Biden in sign that evangelical support for Trump is waning

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      More than 1,600 faith leaders in the US have publicly backed Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate in next month’s presidential election, amid signs that some evangelical voters are turning away from Donald Trump.The Biden endorsements mainly come from Catholics, evangelicals and mainline Protestants. They include Jerushah Duford, the granddaughter of Billy Graham; Susan Johnson Cook, a former US ambassador for religious freedom; Michael Kinnamon, former general secretary of the National Council of Churches; and Gene Robinson, a former bishop in the Episcopal church.“This record-breaking group of endorsers shows that President Trump’s lack of kindness and decency is energizing faith communities and will cost him this election,” said Doug Pagitt, executive director of the Christian campaign organisation Vote Common Good, which compiled the endorsements.The organisation said the announcement represents the largest group of clergy to endorse a Democratic candidate for president in modern history.“Four years ago, many religious voters decided to look the other way and give Trump a chance, but after witnessing his cruelty and corruption, a growing number of them are turning away from the president.”In the 2016 election, more than 80% of white evangelicals voted for Trump, with many taking the view that his pledge to make conservative and pro-life appointments to the supreme court outweighed unease about his personal behaviour. White evangelicals make up about a quarter of the US electorate.But some surveys have suggested an erosion of support for Trump among white evangelicals. A poll conducted last month on behalf of Vote Common Good in five key battleground states found an 11-point swing among evangelical and Catholic voters towards Biden.In July the Public Religion Research Institute found a seven-point drop in white Christian support for Trump, and a Fox News survey in August showed 28% of white evangelicals backed Biden, compared with 16% who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016.A group called Pro-life Evangelicals for Biden said that, despite disagreeing with the Democratic candidate’s stance on abortion, “we believe that on balance, Joe Biden’s policies are more consistent with the biblically shaped ethic of life than those of Donald Trump. Therefore … we urge evangelicals to elect Joe Biden as president.”Biden, a Catholic who has frequently spoken of how his faith has sustained him through challenging times, is hoping to win over undecided Catholic voters with a series of ads broadcast in battleground states.Some Catholic bishops have issued statements criticising Trump’s policies. Last month, more than 150 Catholic theologians, activists and nuns signed an open letter to Catholic voters urging them to oppose Trump, saying he “flouts core values at the heart of Catholic social teaching”.Responding to the Christian leaders’ endorsement of Biden, Josh Dickson, faith engagement director of the Democratic candidate’s campaign, said: “The common good values of the Biden-Harris agenda are resonating with voters motivated by faith. We know that Joe Biden and [running mate] Kamala Harris are the clear moral choice in this election. We hope this show of support will encourage other voters of faith to make their values, not party affiliation, their primary voting criteria this year.”One of those publicly backing Biden, Ronald Sider, president emeritus of Evangelicals for Social Action, said: “I urge everyone, especially evangelicals, to support Joe Biden as president. Poverty, racism, lack of healthcare and climate change are all ‘pro-life’ issues. On those and many other issues, Biden is much closer than Trump to what biblical values demand.”Belinda Bauman, the author of Brave Souls: Experiencing the Audacious Power of Empathy, said: “In all my years I’ve never publicly endorsed a candidate. But this year is different – very different. This year we don’t just face a political choice, we face a moral one.” More

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      How Pope Francis's encyclical could shake up the US election | Catherine Pepinster

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      They make up one of the most important constituencies of American voters, so it’s no wonder that Catholics have been specifically courted by both Joe Biden and Donald Trump during the US presidential campaign. Four years ago, according to the Pew Research Center, 52% of them voted for Trump, compared with 44% for Hillary Clinton. And with Biden himself being Catholic, you might expect substantial numbers of the tens of millions of American Catholics who possess a vote to consider switching sides to one of their own. But now this Catholic vote has got a whole lot more interesting. This weekend, Pope Francis travelled to Assisi to honour Saint Francis, the saint he most admires, for his dedication to the poor, and to sign his new encyclical. Encyclicals are the key teaching documents of popes in which they often focus on global issues, not just the internal concerns of the church. In 2015, Francis produced Laudato Si’, on the environment, where he put all his moral weight behind those advocating the need to take action against climate breakdown. This time round his new document, Fratelli Tutti, published on Sunday, describes a post-pandemic world, and the need for greater fraternity and solidarity. Its message means the pope has waded right into some of the key issues dominating the US presidential election.Like British monarchs, popes are supposed to be above party political matters, and Pope Francis has certainly not done anything as crass as name names in his encyclical, although he’s not above overt criticism. Ahead of the 2016 election, he described Trump’s plan to thwart migrants by building a wall between the US and Mexico as “not Christian”.In this weekend’s document he makes it clear that populism and nationalism – of the kind Trump typifies – are damaging, warning that “a concept of popular and national unity influenced by various ideologies is creating new forms of selfishness and a loss of the social sense under the guise of defending national interests”.With Catholics making up such a large proportion of voters, about 20%, both Democratic and Republican campaigners are keen to appeal to them. Trump’s camp stresses abortion and matters of religious liberty, while Biden has often spoken of the way in which his own Catholic faith has helped him in dark times, and he’s not averse to making the personal political. “The next Republican that tells me I’m not religious, I’m going to shove my rosary beads down their throat,” the Cincinnati Enquirer once reported him as saying. His team stresses Catholic teaching that focuses on the poor and the vulnerable.So the Democrats may well be cheered by the pope’s warning in Fratelli Tutti that lack of concern for the poor and vulnerable “can hide behind a populism that exploits them demagogically for its own purposes, or a liberalism that serves the economic interests of the powerful”, noting that in both cases, “it becomes difficult to envisage an open world that makes room for everyone, including the most vulnerable, and shows respect for different cultures”.It’s also clear that Francis has seen through the neoliberal experiment and its alleged trickle-down benefits that have only served to create a class of the super-rich and left behind the people who are most in need – such as people with disabilities and, indeed, those who rely on state-provided education and healthcare. “If a society is governed primarily by the criteria of market freedom and efficiency, there is no place for such persons, and fraternity will remain just another vague ideal,” he warns.For Francis, fraternity is much more than an ideal, but a necessity if the world is to become a better place. But while his idealism sets Trump followers’ teeth on edge, he can also make Democrats on the left uncomfortable, too. There is no advocacy here of big government and welfare state narratives either. Instead, he is focused on the local and the small. And at the heart of his teaching in this document and all his papal pronouncements over the past seven years has been a strong stance on the right to life that takes him all the way from completely rejecting capital punishment to vetoing abortion, too.Fratelli Tutti will make for awkward reading for Trump, and his gun-toting, pro-electric chair supporters, including prominent Catholic attorney general William Barr who reintroduced federal executions for the first time since 2003. Yet it will also be tricky for Biden and the large constituency of Catholic Democrats who have compromised on abortion. In that sense Fratelli Tutti cannot be classed as giving a wholesale papal imprimatur to Biden. But for those Catholics still thinking of casting their ballot for Trump, it should inspire them to question what Pope Francis would surely say is the most precious thing they possess: their conscience. This clarion call from across the Atlantic could well be an election clincher. Catherine Pepinster is a former editor of the Catholic weekly, the Tablet
      Who’ll win the race for the White House? Join Guardian journalists Jonathan Freedland, Daniel Strauss, Lauren Gambino and Richard Wolffe for an online Guardian Live event, on Tuesday 20 October, 7pm BST (2pm EST). Book tickets here More

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      Will Jerry Falwell Jr’s fall from grace end his influence over Trump voters?

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      “Every human being is a sinner. We’re all imperfect, we’re all flawed, and we’re redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ.”When Jerry Falwell Jr, the US evangelical leader, president of the country’s premier conservative Christian university and close associate of Donald Trump, told me this in his spacious office in Lynchburg, Virginia, almost two years ago, it was in response to a question about the morality of the US president.But after a turbulent week in which his status as a figurehead for the Christian right crashed and burned, Falwell may be reflecting on his own flaws and imperfections, and hoping redemption will not be too long coming.The tawdry end to his career as president of Liberty University, with its $1m-plus annual salary and use of a private jet, could also mean his influence on the political choices of white evangelicals in the US is over just weeks before a knife-edge presidential election.The essential elements of his downfall are disputed but they centre on his wife’s adultery, his alleged voyeurism, her lover’s alleged attempts at extortion, and an Instagram photograph of Falwell’s unzipped trousers. At its heart, he says, was “a fatal attraction-type situation” – a reference to the 1987 Oscar-nominated psychosexual thriller starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close.On Sunday evening, Falwell issued a 1,200-word statement to the Washington Examiner, revealing that he had experienced depression and extreme weight loss as a result of alleged threats by his wife’s lover to expose their affair unless money was handed over.It was a pre-emptive strike. Falwell knew that Giancarlo Granda, a former pool attendant with whom the Falwells set up a business, was poised to go public over his relationship with Falwell’s wife, Becki.In an explosive interview with Reuters news agency, published on Monday, Granda said: “Becki and I developed an intimate relationship and Jerry enjoyed watching from the corner of the room.” The encounters, over a six-year period, allegedly took place “multiple times a year” in hotels in New York and Miami, and the Falwells’ home in Virginia.Granda was a 20-year-old pool attendant at a Miami hotel when he met the Falwells in 2012. Without naming him, Falwell said in his statement: “During a vacation over eight years ago, Becki and I met an ambitious young man who was working at our hotel and was saving up his money to go to school … We were impressed by his initiative in suggesting a local real estate opportunity.“My family members eventually made an investment in a local property, included him in the deal because he could play an active role in managing it, and became close with him and his family.”That closeness extended to an “inappropriate personal relationship” between Becki and “this person”, said Falwell; “something in which I was not involved”. He was distressed at learning of the affair but “Becki and I forgave each other”. More

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      Donald Trump claims Joe Biden is 'against God'

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      US elections 2020

      US president attacks rival’s faith and says Biden is ‘following radical left agenda’

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      Trump claims Joe Biden will ‘hurt God’ if elected president – video

      Donald Trump has claimed Joe Biden is “against God” in an attack on the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate’s faith.
      In provocative remarks during a trip to Ohio, a key election battleground, the US president said Biden was “following the radical left agenda”.
      Trump added: “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.”
      Biden, who is leading in the polls, has frequently spoken about how his Catholic faith helped him cope with the deaths of his first wife and daughter in a 1972 car accident.
      In a later statement, he said Trump’s comments were “shameful”.
      He added: “Like so many people, my faith has been the bedrock foundation of my life: it’s provided me comfort in moments of loss and tragedy, it’s kept me grounded and humbled in times of triumph and joy.
      “And in this moment of darkness for our country – of pain, of division, and of sickness for so many Americans – my faith has been a guiding light for me and a constant reminder of the fundamental dignity and humanity that God has bestowed upon all of us.
      “For President Trump to attack my faith is shameful. It’s beneath the office he holds and it’s beneath the dignity the American people so rightly expect and deserve from their leaders.”
      However, Biden’s stance on abortion has antagonised many of his fellow Catholics. In 1973, he said the Roe v Wade supreme court decision went “too far”, but now believes Roe v Wade is “the law of the land, a woman has a right to choose”.
      Biden is dealing with a controversy of his own, after suggesting the African American community was homogenous – a comment Trump described as “very insulting”.
      Biden said: “What you all know but most people don’t know, unlike the African American community with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community with incredibly different attitudes about different things.”
      He later tweeted: “Earlier today, I made some comments about diversity in the African American and Latino communities that I want to clarify. In no way did I mean to suggest the African American community is a monolith – not by identity, not on issues, not at all.
      “My commitment to you is this: I will always listen, I will never stop fighting for the African American community and I will never stop fighting for a more equitable future.”

      Topics

      US elections 2020

      Donald Trump

      Joe Biden

      US politics

      Religion

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