Trump to win religious vote in US election

As Americans remain with less than a week to go to the polls, the heightened political manoeuvres between the Donald Trump-led Republican party and the Joe Bidden-Democratic party has been jostling to win over the hearts of the religious. Trump has raised the banner of promoting conservative religious ideals and rights while Biden has largely fronted liberal and progressive religious ideals.
 
Adjudicating the ‘contest’ between the religiosity of President Trump and his main challenger Biden is not easy since the parameters of measuring religious affinity may be different. President Trump is a Presybetarian, but since vying for political office, he has surrounded himself with Pentecostal and charismatic big name pastors, including Paula White, who is now a White House staff. 

Other Born-again Christians include renown neuro-surgeon Dr Ben Carson, the only Black person in Trump’s cabinet. Although Trump might be the first US President in recent memory to institute prayers before Cabinet, he is not known to attend any church. Trump’s most preferred verse in the Bible when probed by media is said to be ‘an eye for eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 

Biden, is self-confessed Roman Catholic with Irish roots, who attends mass every Sunday. Although Biden is described as devoted Catholic, he is criticised in some quarters for not being Catholic enough. The defining religious temperature gauge of the two presidential candidates is not so much their personal faith, or lack of it, but the agenda that each has to promote religious liberty and freedoms.
 
President Trump and the Republican party are mainly supported by White Evangelical and Pentecostal denominations and other conservative religious constituencies, including Roman Catholics and conservative clergy of colour, who comprise Blacks, and Latinos, among other.

What has endeared Trump to the conservative religious forces is his support for conservative religious values, appointment of conservative judges, including the most recent nomination of a staunch Roman Catholic top academic legal mind Amy Coney Barrett. Trump is praised for his ‘biblical’ support for the nation of Israel, including transferring its capital city from Tel-aviv to Jerusalem among other issues. Biden is being supported by a select group of mainly religious progressives who subscribe to liberal secular values. 

The irony with Biden’s much-touted strong Catholic faith connection is that some of his strongest support bases are the far-left Marxist largely Anti-Christian Black Lives Movement (BLM) and Antifa. These groups have been involved in the symbolic burning of Bibles and the decapitation of what is dubbed Westernised ‘racist’ statues like that of Jesus Christ and the Catholic venerated Virgin Mary. 

Perhaps Biden’s aversion to core Catholic teachings becomes more vivid when he is recently quoted to have vowed to repeal the Helms and Hyde Ammendment that protects taxpayers from having to fund abortions, yet this case was recently won by the Little Sisters of the poor on account of violation of their religious rights deprived of them by the Obama Health Care Act.

Trump, therefore, emerges as the most likely candidate to win over more religious votes not because of his faith, but because of his support for conservative religious values through the law and appointing conservative judges on the bench. It is not surprising that the Pew research centre last fall found out that more than a half of Americans 54 per cent regarded the Republican Party to be friendly to religion while only 19 per cent said the same of the Democrats. 

It is interesting to note that while religion in the United Kingdom (UK) is no longer an issue of political debate, in fact religion is as good as dead in UK, in USA it is one of the most crucial issues permeating covert and overt political discussions. 

Rt Rev Dr Fred Sheldon Mwesigwa is the Bishop of Ankole Diocese & Chancellor Bishop Stuart University. [email protected]