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      ‘Unique problem’: Catholic bishops split over Biden’s support for abortion rights

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      At some point this weekend, Joe Biden will take his place in a line of people approaching the altar of a Catholic church to receive communion.The US president, a devout Catholic whose speeches regularly include biblical references and who carries a rosary that belonged to his late son, attends Mass every weekend – in Washington, his home town of Wilmington in Delaware, or wherever he happens to be traveling. If the traditional Sunday morning Eucharist service is not possible because of his schedule, he will receive the sacrament on Saturday evening as permitted by the Roman Catholic church.“It’s really an encounter with God,” Father Kevin Gillespie of Holy Trinity in Washington, the church Biden usually attends in the capital, told the Atlantic earlier this year. For Biden, this “sacred and intimate moment” is a “gift that enhances his faith”, and “we most certainly encourage him to improve his intimacy with God through the Eucharist”.But not everybody in the Catholic church in America is quite so keen on Biden receiving communion. Next week, a national online meeting of US bishops will discuss whether the president and other high-profile political figures should be denied the sacraments because of his stance on abortion rights.“How can he say he’s a devout Catholic and he’s doing these things that are contrary to the church’s teaching?” archbishop Joseph Naumann, chair of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) committee on pro-life activities, asked last month. Biden’s position was a “grave moral evil” which presents a “unique problem” for the church, Naumann said.Cardinal Raymond Burke, a leading conservative and critic of Pope Francis, has gone further, saying that politicians who “publicly and obstinately” support abortion are “apostates” who should not only be barred from receiving communion but deserve excommunication.At their meeting, the bishops will consider a document aimed at clarifying the church’s position on the Eucharist, and decide whether to commission further work on the circumstances in which the sacraments may be denied. The proposal needs the support of at least two-thirds of the 280 bishops in the USCCB – and more than 60 have already requested a suspension of all discussion, citing divisions within the conference.Among opponents of the move is Robert McElroy, the bishop of San Diego, who wrote in America Magazine, the Jesuit journal, that “the Eucharist is being weaponised and deployed as a tool in political warfare. This must not happen.”A letter from a senior Vatican official last month urged US bishops not to rush any debate and decision, and there has been speculation that the first meeting between President Biden and Pope Francis could take place at the Vatican the day before the USCCB’s virtual session opens. That would be seen as a strong signal from Rome.Whatever the outcome of the USCCB’s deliberations, the decision on whether an individual parishioner should be denied communion lies with the local bishop. Wilton Gregory of Washington and Francis Malooly of Wilmington, Delaware, have both made it clear that Biden is welcome to receive communion at churches in their dioceses.Father Gillespie’s public defence of Biden attending Mass has drawn angry phone calls, letters and emails. He told the Guardian it seemed best to refrain from speaking further on the matter, but said the president “has and will be welcomed to receive the Holy Eucharist” at his church.Biden, the second Catholic to occupy the White House after John F Kennedy, has said his faith shapes “all that I do” and will “serve as my anchor” through his term in office. In his book, Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics, he wrote: “My idea of self, of family, of community, of the wider world comes straight from my religion.”On abortion, Biden has said he personally believes life begins at conception but recognises others do not share his view. “What I’m not prepared to do is impose a precise view that is borne out of my faith on other people,” he said in 2015.In recent months, the Biden administration has lifted restrictions on federal funding for research involving human foetal tissue, rescinded a Trump policy barring organisations that refer women for abortions from receiving federal grants, and allowed women to remotely obtain a prescription for an abortion pill during the pandemic.The Catholic church says that Catholics in public life should uphold principles consistent with its doctrine. But in a survey carried out by the Pew Research Center in March, more than two-thirds of US Catholics said Biden’s views on abortion should not disqualify him from receiving communion.According to exit polls taken during last November’s presidential election, just over half of US Catholics (51%) voted for Biden, compared with 45% who voted Democrat in 2016; and 47% voted for Trump, compared with 52% in the previous election.Andrew Chesnut, professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the USCCB’s proposal “serves to further polarise an already sharply divided episcopy, some of whom have been outspoken opponents of Pope Francis’s relatively progressive papacy.“The proposal to exclude Biden and all election officials who support legal abortion from communion is an effort on the part of conservative bishops to shore up their base of regular Mass-goers who are the life blood of the church. But exclusionary ecclesial policies will only lead to greater defection from the pews, especially among Millennials and Generation Z.”Michael Budde, professor of Catholic studies and political science at DePaul University in Chicago, said barring Biden from communion “will be rightly seen as a move of desperation, an attempt to coerce what has not been won by persuasion or dialogue”.He added: “There is no consensus among the Catholic faithful on this measure; significantly, there is no real support for it at the level of the worldwide Catholic communion as voiced by Pope Francis. That there are finally some important US cardinals and bishops who are tired of this can’t-win strategy may be an indication that someday a better vision might finally emerge.”A scathing editorial in the National Catholic Reporter earlier this month said the “tragic reality” of proceeding with the proposal was that “it will seal the deal on the branding of Catholicism in the United States as a culture war project.“This culture war … is not the church of mercy and encounter that Pope Francis is trying to offer the world. Nor does it resemble what the carpenter’s son from Galilee preached and died for.” More

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      The Guardian view on US bishops versus the president: Biden is on the angels’ side | Editorial

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      Joe Biden wears his Catholicism on his sleeve. The American president carries the rosary beads of his late son, Beau, around his wrist, and each Sunday he attends mass in Washington, or in his home state of Delaware. After Mr Biden’s election to the White House last year, Pope Francis sent him a copy of his book on the Covid pandemic, Let Us Dream. In it, Francis calls for a new spirit of solidarity in societies which have learned the hard way that “no one is saved alone”.Through his $2tn American Rescue Plan, Mr Biden hopes to turn that theological claim into public policy, deploying the resources of the state in the name of a more equal, sustainable society. “I grew up with Catholic social doctrine, which taught me that faith without works is dead,” he has said.For millions of ordinary American Catholics, disillusioned and alienated by their church’s shameful handling of sex abuse scandals, the Biden presidency is therefore an uplifting source of celebration and hope. But within the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), it is instead treated as an insidious threat to ecclesial authority. As Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas put it recently: “Because President Biden is Catholic, it presents a unique problem for us.”The reason is Mr Biden’s backing of abortion rights, which goes against Catholic teaching. On issues such as the rights of refugees, concern for the poor, the dignity of work and the climate emergency, the president and Pope Francis march in virtual lockstep. But figures such as Archbishop Naumann and the president of the USCCB, José Gomez, believe that the president’s position on abortion confuses the faithful and brings his own Catholicism into disrepute. In such circumstances, they speculate, it may be appropriate to take the extreme step of denying him holy communion at mass.The last similar discussion took place in 2004, when the pro-choice Catholic John Kerry was running for the White House. The issue was eventually parked and Mr Kerry didn’t win. Now the bishops have announced a vote next month on the subject, with a view to issuing a clarificatory document. The arch-conservative cardinal Raymond Burke is already on the record stating that “apostate” politicians backing abortion rights should be denied communion. As the conciliatory Mr Biden makes a credible fist of uniting a nation divided by decades of culture wars, it is tempting to despair. The USCCB has no power to order the withholding of communion, and the Vatican has already made clear its disapproval of the proposed June vote. But this may cut little ice with prelates who have fiercely resisted the liberal priorities of Francis’s papacy from its inception eight years ago.The weaponising of the eucharist illustrates the extent to which much of the hierarchy of US Catholicism has become the theological wing of extreme Republicanism. The end result, as one prominent theologian has warned, may be some kind of “soft schism” as conservative bishops try to pull the church further to the right. Surveys indicate that a majority of US Catholics believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.The extraordinary violent denouement of Donald Trump’s polarising presidency meant that dialling down division became an urgent national priority. Mr Biden, in both tone and substance, has done a pretty good job on that front so far. If only the national leaders of his church could follow suit. More

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      The hypocrisy of the Christian right: Politics Weekly Extra

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      Amidst allegations central to the Matt Gaetz scandal, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Peter Wehner of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. They discuss the decades-old pattern of prominent Christian political leaders and commentators, who forgive allies for the same transgressions for which they harshly judge their opponents

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      Last week, the news broke that the Florida congressman Matt Gaetz was being investigated by the justice department “regarding sexual conduct with women”. He denies any criminal wrongdoing. Jonathan started looking back to times when other prominent Republicans were caught up in scandals that might otherwise be seen as immoral by white evangelicals, but were time after time forgiven. So why do some in the Christian right seem to abandon their principles depending on the colour of the rosette a person might wear? And what are the long-term consequences of such hypocrisy? Peter Wehner, author of The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump and a conservative commentator for the DC thinktank the Ethics and Public Policy Center, answers those questions and more. Send us your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More

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      The Guardian view on China, Xinjiang and sanctions: the gloves are off | Editorial

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      China’s response to criticisms of horrifying human rights violations in Xinjiang is clear and calculated. Its aims are threefold. First, the sanctions imposed upon individuals and institutions in the EU and UK are direct retaliation for those imposed upon China over its treatment of Uighurs. That does not mean they are like-for-like: the EU and UK measures targeted officials responsible for human rights abuses, while these target non-state actors – elected politicians, thinktanks, lawyers and academics – simply for criticising those abuses.Second, they seek more broadly to deter any criticism over Xinjiang, where Beijing denies any rights violations. Third, they appear to be intended to send a message to the EU, UK and others not to fall in line with the harsher US approach towards China generally. Beijing sees human rights concerns as a pretext for defending western hegemony, pointing to historic and current abuses committed by its critics. But mostly it believes it no longer needs to tolerate challenges.Alongside the sanctions, not coincidentally, has come a social media storm and consumer boycott targeting the Swedish clothing chain H&M and other fashion firms over concerns they voiced about reports of forced labour in cotton production in Xinjiang. Nationalism is a real and potent force in China (though not universal), but this outburst does not appear spontaneous: it began when the Communist Youth League picked up on an eight-month-old statement, and is being egged on by state media.China has used its economic might to punish critics before – Norway’s salmon exports slumped after dissident Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel peace prize – and often with the desired results. But this time, it is acting far more overtly, and it is fighting on multiple fronts. Some clothing companies are already falling into line. Overall, the results are more complex. The sanctions have drastically lowered the odds of the European parliament approving the investment deal which China and the EU agreed in December, to US annoyance. Beijing may think the agreement less useful to China than it is to the EU (though many in Europe disagree). But the measures have done more to push Europe towards alignment with the US than anything Joe Biden could have offered, at a time when China is also alienating other players, notably Australia. Foreigners – who in many cases have offered more nuanced voices to counter outright China hawks – are already becoming wary of travelling there, following the detention and trial of two Canadians, essentially taken hostage following their country’s arrest (on a US extradition request) of a top Huawei executive. The sanctioning of scholars and thinktanks is likely to make them more so. Businesses, though still counting on the vast Chinese market, are very belatedly realising the risks attached to it. Those include not only the difficulty of reconciling their positions for consumers inside and outside China, but the challenges they face as the US seeks to pass legislation cracking down on goods made with forced labour, and the potential to be caught up in political skirmishes by virtue of nationality. For those beginning to have second thoughts, rethinking investments or disentangling supply chains will be the work of years or decades. But while we will continue to live in a globalised economy, there is likely to be more decoupling than people foresaw.The pandemic has solidified a growing Chinese confidence that the west is in decline, but has also shown how closely our fates are tied. There can be no solutions on the climate emergency without Beijing, and cooperation on other issues will be both possible and necessary – but extraordinarily difficult.Beijing’s delayed response to the UK sanctions suggests it did not anticipate them, perhaps unsurprising when the integrated review suggested we should somehow court trade and investment while also taking a tougher line. But the prime minister and foreign secretary have, rightly, made their support for sanctioned individuals and their concerns about gross human rights violations in Xinjiang clear. Academics and politicians, universities and other institutions, should follow their lead in backing targeted colleagues and bodies. China has made its position plain. So should democratic societies. More

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      Evangelical leaders condemn role of Christian nationalism in Capitol attack

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      More than 100 prominent evangelical Christian pastors and church leaders have spoken out against what they call the “perversion” of Christian nationalism and the role it played in enabling the violent insurrection at the US Capitol in Washington on 6 January.In an open letter released on Wednesday, the evangelical leaders say they are speaking out now because they do not want to be “quiet accomplices in this ongoing sin”.They call on all church people to clarify that Christianity is incompatible with “calls to violence, support of white Christian nationalism, conspiracy theories, and all religious and racial prejudice”.The letter, first reported by NPR, notes that the evangelical community in the US has long been susceptible to the “heresy” of Christian nationalism – the belief that the country is fundamentally Christian and run by and for white conservative Americans. The signatories blame that tendency on church leaders accommodating white supremacy over many years.As a result the ideology of Christian nationalism was allowed to flourish and helped to legitimize the 6 January attack by giving participants the false impression that their actions were “blessed by God”, the religious leaders said.The presence of Christian nationalists was evident during the insurrection. Rioters carried signs proclaiming “Jesus Saves” and “In God We Trust”, and crosses were erected among the crowd.A video of the unfolding catastrophe filmed by the New Yorker magazine showed one of the seditionists saying a prayer from the rostrum of the US Senate. He said: “Thank you Heavenly Father for gracing us with this opportunity to stand up for our God-given unalienable rights … and to send a message to all the tyrants, the communists and the globalists that this is our nation, not theirs.”Among the influential figures who signed the letter were Jerushah Duford, granddaughter of the TV evangelical preacher, the late Billy Graham. She told NPR that the events of 6 January had long been brewing. “It felt like this was a symptom of what has been happening for a long time,” she said.White evangelical Christians remained remarkably loyal to former president Donald Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. They voted for him on both occasions by about 80%, exit polls showed.A survey by the American Enterprise Institute earlier this month found that 60% of white evangelicals continue to believe Trump’s “big lie” that last November’s election was stolen from him and that he should have been returned to the White House. More

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      US set for flurry of ‘Christian nationalist’ bills advanced by religious right

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      Donald Trump is set to leave the White House and Republicans are about to relinquish control of the Senate, but experts are warning the US is facing a wave of rightwing ‘Christian nationalist’ legislation in 2021, as the religious right aims to thrust Christianity into everyday American life.With the supreme court now dominated by Trump-appointed conservative justices, elected officials in states across the country are set to introduce bills which would hack away at LGTBQ rights, reproductive rights, challenge the ability of couples to adopt children, and see religion forced into classrooms, according to a report by the American Atheists organization.In recent years Republicans have sought to infuse religion into state politics across the country, many of the bills lifted from model legislation drafted by well-funded Christian lobbying organizations under an effort known as “Project Blitz”.As the coronavirus pandemic hit the US 2020 proved a relatively quiet year for religious bills, but in 2021, the US could see Republicans make up for lost time.“Very few bills managed to be pushed forward last year due to the pandemic,” said Alison Gill, vice-president for legal and policy at American Atheists, which seeks to protect the separation of church and state. “Those issues that are contentious in the culture war will continue to move forward this year, and will affect LGBTQ people, religious minorities, and non-religious people and women and reproductive access.”Over the past five years a wave of discriminatory laws have been introduced in state legislatures, frequently in the name of Christianity. LGBTQ people, in particular, have been targeted, including efforts to prevent trans people using certain bathrooms, and to prevent LGBTQ couples from adopting children.The danger isn’t just to people in individual states. With the supreme court now dominated 6-3 by conservatives, challenges to federal law could work their way to the highest court in the US, where decisions could enshrine discriminatory laws.Gill said that after Brett Kavanaugh was appointed to the court in 2018, some states pushed a flurry of reproductive rights laws which would limit women’s access to abortion. The Christian right could be further emboldened after Amy Coney Barrett’s controversial appointment to the supreme court in October.“In a lot of ways, and I think the reproductive bills are a good example of this, they’re not just passing laws that do negative things, they’re trying to set up future cases that will then go before the court, that can be used to advance an agenda,” Gill said.“It’s not just about the negative law itself.”There have been multiple efforts to blend the separation of church and state in recent years, driven by Christian nationalists who believe America was established as, and should remain, a Christian country.In 2019, Christian hardliners introduced bills in several American states which would see the phrase “In God we trust” displayed on public buildings, in schools and on public vehicles, including police cars. Six states – Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama and Arizona – approved versions of this legislation, and it became law for every public school in those states to display the phrase.A year earlier, Oklahoma passed an adoption law which allows private adoption agencies to turn away LGBTQ couples on religious grounds. It became the 10th state since 2015 to pass some form of the law, which allows child placement agencies to deny anyone who does not match their religious or moral beliefs, an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found.In most of these states, parts of the legislation had almost identical wording. That’s a result of Project Blitz, an effort by rightwing Christian organizations to push through bills furthering their aims.Project Blitz provides draft legislation to lawmakers across the country. Frequently, that legislation is copied, pasted and presented in state capitols. In 2018, state lawmakers introduced 74 bills similar to Project Blitz draft legislation, according to America Atheists. The bills ranged “from measures designed to restrict same-sex marriage to allowing adoption agencies to deny placements because of religion”, American Atheists said.The aim is also to stuff up state houses with legislation, drawing mostly Democratic legislators’ time and attention away from other issues.“It’s kind of like whack-a-mole for the other side,” David Barton, founder of the Christian-right organization WallBuilders and one of four members of Project Blitz’s steering team, told state legislators in a call which was made public.“It’ll drive ‘em crazy that they’ll have to divide their resources out in opposing this.”Project Blitz, and much of the Christian nationalist legislation, has broader aims than just drawing time and serving as an irritant, however. Christian nationalists hope to pave the way for further attacks.Katherine Stewart, a journalist and author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, said leaders behind Christian nationalists efforts “are playing a long and ambitious game”.The people behind Christianity-based legislative efforts grouped their various efforts into three categories, according to how difficult they would be to pass, Stewart said, and each is part of a larger picture.“The first category consisted of largely symbolic gestures, like resolutions to emblazon the motto ‘In God We Trust’ in public school classrooms,” Stewart said.“But the point of phase one was to prepare the ground for phases two and three, which aimed to entangle government with their version of religion in deeper ways.“Considered individually, these bills making their ways through state legislatures appear to have a scattershot quality. In reality, they are very often components of a coordinated, overarching strategy.” More

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      The Guardian view on liberal Christians: is this their moment? | Editorial

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      “No one is saved alone,” writes Pope Francis in Let Us Dream, a short book of Covid-related reflections published last month. Those words carry an obvious Christian resonance. But the meaning that the pope intends to convey is primarily secular. The pandemic, he believes, has underlined our shared vulnerability and mutual dependency. By shocking us out of everyday indifference and egotism, our present troubles can open up the space for a new spirit of fraternity. A fresh emphasis on looking out for each other, claims the pope, can become the theme of a more generous and caring post-pandemic politics.Let Us Dream is a pastoral, spiritual book that aspires to address a lay audience as well as a religious one. In its emphasis on civic solidarity, tolerance, concern for the poor and the environment, it is also the latest attempt by Pope Francis to shift the dial of 21st-century Christianity away from the culture wars that have consumed it.There is an obvious temptation to respond wryly: “Good luck with that.” In a number of high-profile ways, 2020 was another depressing year for liberal-minded Christians. The Polish Catholic church worked hand in glove with the state in an attempt to effectively ban abortion and trample over LGBTQ+ rights. The strong disapproval of a majority of Poles, who have no wish to live in a theocracy, cut no ice. In neighbouring Hungary, the Reformed, Lutheran and Catholic churches kept stumm as Viktor Orbán’s government continued to bully minorities in the name of “illiberal Christianity”. During the lead-up to November’s US presidential election, Donald Trump’s cynical weaponisation of the abortion debate helped ensure strong Christian backing for the most profane, religiously illiterate president in the country’s history. And this week, Pope Francis himself indicated his disapproval of the legalisation of abortion in his native Argentina.But this stark summary of the church at odds with the liberal world does not tell the whole story. In Britain, as elsewhere, Christian churches, alongside mosques and synagogues, played a frontline role in the community activism that kept people and families afloat during months of acute uncertainty and hardship. It is from that wellspring of fellow feeling and altruism, the importance of which is suddenly front and centre in our lives, that Let Us Dream believes a “new humanism” can emerge. For those who share that aspiration, whether secular or religious, there are genuine grounds for hope in 2021.A liberal CatholicThe election to the White House of Joe Biden, a Democrat who is also a practising Catholic, is the best news liberal Christians have had for a long time. In a book published last month, the conservative Australian cardinal George Pell said Mr Trump was “a bit of a barbarian, but in some important ways he’s ‘our’ (Christian) barbarian”. The end of that cynically transactional relationship between Mr Trump’s White House and the religious right signals new possibilities. In his victory speech, Mr Biden quoted from Ecclesiastes, saying that for a divided America, “it was a time to heal”. When he has discussed his faith, the president-elect has tended to talk about altruism, decency and personal integrity, steering clear of provocative dividing lines.Mr Biden has backed access to abortion and same-sex marriage. He will, as a result, be relentlessly targeted by conservative Catholic critics and evangelicals. The president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, José Gomez, has convened a working group to address the “difficult and complex” situation of dealing with a liberal Catholic in the White House. But the Catholic vote was split evenly between Mr Biden and Mr Trump. And, crucially, Pope Francis is likely to have the new president’s back.This relationship could constitute an important new axis of liberal influence in the west. After a recent phone call between the two, a statement from Mr Biden’s transition team said the president-elect “expressed his desire to work together on the basis of a shared belief in the dignity and equality of all humankind, on issues such as caring for the marginalised and the poor, addressing the crisis of climate change and welcoming and integrating immigrants and refugees into our communities”. This was to more or less tick off the list of priorities the pope has attempted to set, while under constant assault from religious conservatives. The disruption of the recent alliance between Christianity and rightwing populism carries significant implications not only for America, but for the battle against global poverty, the climate emergency and the migration crisis.Fraternity as the new frontierMr Biden’s election is not the only hopeful sign for Christians who long for their leaders to look beyond the narrow preoccupation with reproductive rights and sexuality. Last year was marked by two significant theological documents, one from the eastern church and one from the west. Towards a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church, published during Lent, is a radical clarion call for Orthodox Christians to engage with deepening inequalities in developed societies, and to confront wealthy nations with their moral obligations to refugees. The tone is set by the opening words of the text: “Our spiritual lives … cannot fail to be social lives.” Endorsed by Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the Orthodox church, the document recalls that “[the] early and Byzantine church had a bold voice on social justice”. This, it states, must be revived and renewed. Pope Francis’s recent encyclical, Fratelli Tutti (Brothers All), was written in the same spirit. Ideas of fraternity and friendship are developed as a necessary complement to the familiar political categories of liberty and equality. The argument is summed up in Let Us Dream, where the pope writes: “Without the ‘we’ of a people, of a family, of institutions, of a society that transcends the ‘I’ of individual interests, life … becomes a battle for supremacy between factions and interests.”Intriguingly, variations on this theme have been explored in a string of recent publications, both secular and religious. In his valedictory work Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times, the late chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, criticises the modern priority of “I” over “we”. Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett’s The Upswing and Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit both attempt to map out a civic territory that avoids the twin dangers of selfish individualism and illiberal populism.In recent years, Christian leaders have too often been silent, complicit or cravenly proactive, as the Bible has been deployed as a weapon in conservative culture wars. The image of Trump marching through teargassed streets to brandish a bible outside a Washington church encapsulated a kind of capitulation. But in the new year, liberal Christians have grounds for cautious optimism. In the necessary project of carving out a new space for a less polarised, more fraternal public square, they have a vital role to play. More

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      Why did white evangelicals vote for Trump? Politics Weekly Extra podcast

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      Jonathan Freedland is joined by Lerone Martin of Washington University, to discuss how America’s strictest Christians came to back Donald Trump. Now that Trump is on his way out, where does that leave his Christian backers?

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      In 2016, white evangelical Christians were all in for Donald Trump. No voting bloc was more committed to him. In that year he got 81% of the white evangelical vote. And they stood by him again in 2020. Last month his support among that group was 75%. Down a bit, but still huge. So, how come? Jonathan Freedland puts this to Lerone Martin, associate professor of religion and politics at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. Let us know what you think of the podcast: send your feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More