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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

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      Just the Job: Bill Murray biblical reading seeks to bridge US partisan divide

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      Against the backdrop of a pandemic and an acrimonious election, a group of acclaimed actors were on Sunday set to stage an online reading of an appropriate religious text: the Book of Job.Groundhog Day star Bill Murray was cast as Job, the righteous man tested by the loss of his health, home and children.Staged on Zoom, the reading was aimed at Knox county, a Republican-leaning area of Ohio, and designed to spark conversation across spiritual and political divides. The structure of a reading followed by dialogue is a fixture of Theater of War Productions, whose artistic director, Bryan Doerries, went to Kenyon College in Knox county.Theater of War held its first Job reading in Joplin, Missouri, a year after a tornado killed more than 160 there in 2011. The company has performed more than 1,700 readings worldwide, harnessing Greek drama and other resonant texts.By using Job’s story “as a vocabulary for a conversation, the hope is that we can actually engender connection, healing,” Doerries said. “People can hear each other’s truths even if they don’t agree with them.”The cast headlined by Murray featured other noted actors including Frankie Faison and David Strathairn. But Matthew Starr, mayor of the Knox county town of Mount Vernon, was cast as Job’s accuser. The Republican, a supporter of Donald Trump, said he hoped the event could lead to less shouting and more listening.“God does not say that bad things aren’t going to happen but he does tell us, when they do, we’re not alone,” Starr said. “That’s the hope for me, is that we get a chance to lean into our faith, we get a chance to lean into our neighbors, we get a chance to lean into each other, our family, a little bit more.”Knox county, a community of about 62,000, lies about an hour east of the Ohio state capital, Columbus. Most in the county work blue-collar manufacturing jobs. The county is 97% white and voted for Trump by nearly three to one. An exception is Kenyon College, a small liberal arts school outside Mount Vernon. Voters there and in the village of Gambier voted eight to one for Joe Biden.Marc Bragin, Jewish chaplain at Kenyon, said he hoped the reading would help people look beyond their differences. Pastor LJ Harry said he did not believe Knox county is as divided as other places in the US. The police chaplain and pastor at the Apostolic Church of Christ in Mount Vernon said most in the area were united in their support for Trump and for law enforcement.Harry said the biggest point of contention was over mask-wearing, with many resisting Republican governor Mike DeWine’s statewide mandate. He also likened Knox county’s need for healing to that of a patient who has left intensive care but remains in a step-down unit.Harry said the message he hoped people took from the Job reading was that “God has this in control, even though it feels like it’s out of control”.In the biblical tale, God uses Job’s losses to share broader truths about suffering. The story ends with the restoration of what was taken, and more.“Our hope is not that there’s going to be a group hug at the end of the thing,” Doerries said, “or that we’re going to resolve all our political differences, but that we can remind people of our basic humanity: what it requires to live up to basic values such as treating our neighbor as ourselves.” More

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      Church leaders urge UK government to sign UN anti-nuclear treaty

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      The leadership of the Church of England is calling on the UK government to stand with 50 other nations in signing a historic international treaty banning nuclear weapons.
      Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, and Stephen Cottrell, the archbishop of York, have put their names alongside those of 29 bishops to a letter published in the Observer and reproduced below saying that the UK’s support for the United Nations’ Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons would give hope to people seeking a peaceful future.
      The treaty will come into force on 22 January 2021, having reached the required 50-signatory threshold after Honduras ratified it three weeks ago. None of the world’s nuclear powers, however, have signed up, and the US has called support for the move a “strategic error”.
      But António Guterres, the UN secretary general, said the treaty’s ratification was “the culmination of a worldwide movement to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons”. Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said it was “a victory for humanity, and a promise of a safer future”. More

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      Soul of the nation: how Joe Biden's faith will shape his presidency

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      He carries a rosary in his pocket, one that belonged to his dead son, Beau. On election day last Tuesday, he went to mass, as he does every Sunday.
      In his victory speech on Saturday night, he quoted from Ecclesiastes: “The Bible tells us that to everything there is a season – a time to build, a time to reap, a time to sow. And a time to heal. This is the time to heal in America.”
      For only the second time in US history, a Catholic will occupy the White House when Joe Biden is sworn in as the country’s 46th president. A man of profound faith, he has pledged to restore the “soul of the nation” after four years of rancour.
      At his side will be a vice-president who, as well as being the first woman of colour to hold the position, comes from a family that has embraced the Baptist church, Hinduism and Judaism.
      Catholic bishops in the US were quick to congratulate the president-elect, acknowledging that he will be only the second president to be a Catholic, John F Kennedy being the first.
      “At this moment in American history, Catholics have a special duty to be peacemakers, to promote fraternity and mutual trust, and to pray for a renewed spirit of true patriotism in our country,” said José Gomez, archbishop of Los Angeles and president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
      Biden’s Catholicism is at the core of his life and is likely to shape the way he governs as president.
      “I’m as much a cultural Catholic as I am a theological Catholic,” he wrote in his book, Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics. “My idea of self, of family, of community, of the wider world comes straight from my religion. It’s not so much the Bible, the beatitudes, the Ten Commandments, the sacraments, or the prayers I learned. It’s the culture.”
      Less than two weeks ago, in an article for the Christian Post, Biden wrote: “My Catholic faith drilled into me a core truth – that every person on earth is equal in rights and dignity, because we are all beloved children of God.”
      As president, he added: “These are the principles that will shape all that I do, and my faith will continue to serve as my anchor, as it has my entire life.”
      Several of Biden’s campaign ads featured footage of his meetings with Pope Francis. In a 2015 interview, Biden said Francis was “the embodiment of Catholic social doctrine that I was raised with. The idea that everyone’s entitled to dignity, that the poor should be given special preference, that you have an obligation to reach out and be inclusive.” More

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      Majority of Christians wouldn’t back Trump | Letters

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      While agreeing wholeheartedly with your editorial (It’s time to dump Donald Trump. America’s only hope is Joe Biden, 27 October), your suggestion that “white Christian America” is a unified block vote for the Republicans gave a seriously misleading impression. In my 50 years of observing US churches, I would guess a majority of Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and black churches – and even many Catholics and Baptists – would never support Trump.
      The least you could say in terms of accuracy is to use inverted commas around “Christian”, or write “evangelical Christian”, or even more accurately “self-styled Christian”, as much of what they say and do has very little to do with the teachings of Jesus.Rev David HaslamEvesham, Worcestershire
      • Regarding your searing editorial, why not come off the fence and tell us what you really think? Seriously, it summarises, with admirable strength and clarity, the implications of the choice facing Americans next Tuesday, as well as the potential impact of that choice on the UK. Perhaps you could use your international reach to arrange for the text to be displayed on rolling electronic billboards outside every polling station in the US, to remind queueing voters of the significance of the choice they are about to make?Phil MurrayLinlithgow, West Lothian More

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      Holy war: Republicans eager to focus Amy Coney Barrett hearings on religion

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      When Donald Trump’s latest supreme court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, arrives before the Senate judiciary committee for her confirmation hearings on Monday, Democrats will be out to raise an alarm that Barrett could help strike down the Affordable Care Act in the very first case she hears.But in the weeks leading up to the hearings, Republicans have been out for something else entirely: a holy war.The future of the supreme court hinges on the Barrett hearings. But the hearings will be backgrounded by a political fight over religion that is potentially as important as the question of whether Barrett replaces Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late liberal justice, on the court.If Republicans can make it look like Democrats are attacking Barrett, a conservative Catholic, for her religious views, they believe, that could stir enough political anger to rescue a couple of tight Senate races in the elections on 3 November – and potentially save the teetering Republican Senate majority.Democrats hope to defeat the Barrett nomination on the merits.But they also hope to take control of the Senate next month, claim the White House, and then pass a bulwark of laws on key issues – healthcare, reproductive rights, marriage equality, voting rights, the climate emergency – to withstand what could be decades of tendentious rulings by a supreme court with as many as three Trump-appointed justices on it.The current Senate judiciary committee chair, Lindsey Graham, who happens to be among the most endangered Republican incumbents, explained the Republican strategy last month on Fox News, saying Democratic protests over credible sexual assault allegations against Trump’s supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh helped Republicans in the 2018 midterm elections.“Kavanaugh really did help Republicans pick up Senate seats because they went too far,” Graham said.In a transparent attempt to whip up a comparable spectacle around the Barrett nomination, Senate Republicans have produced an ominous video featuring tense footage from the Kavanaugh hearings and accusing Democrats of a “radical power plot” to attack Barrett over her religious beliefs.But prominent Democrats have urged a minimum of pageantry during the Barrett hearings and a focus on Barrett’s views on the healthcare law, abortion, same-sex marriage and other issues.“It is going to be really important to not give Lindsey Graham and the rest of the Republicans a moment of righteous vindication over a circus-like atmosphere,” the former Democratic senator Claire McCaskill said on a popular politics podcast this week.“So I just think this is one of those times when some of our most passionate supporters that are so angry on behalf of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that they’ve got to realize that there is a better way than flooding the halls with women in handmaid costumes.”To protest against the Barrett nomination earlier this month, activists stood outside the supreme court wearing red robes and white bonnets, recognizable from the TV series based on the Margaret Atwood novel of female subjugation, The Handmaid’s Tale.Democrats should focus on the threat posed to healthcare by Barrett, who in 2017 published a critique of Chief Justice John Roberts’ 2012 ruling to uphold the Affordable Care Act, said Ben Jealous, president of the progressive People for the American Way group. On 10 November, just one week after the election, the supreme court is scheduled to hear a separate case that could vacate the law.“The confirmation hearings have to be all about what the nomination is about: destroying healthcare for millions of Americans,” Jealous said. “Anybody who wants to make this about a nominee’s personality, or even the life they’ve lived so far, is missing the point.”Democrats on the committee acknowledge they do not currently have the votes to stop the nomination from moving forward, and Senator Cory Booker said last week that procedural stalling measures would not work – because the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, could merely change the rules to keep the nomination on track.Progressives must not write off the Ginsburg seat as lost, however, said Neil Sroka of the progressive Democracy for America group. More

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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