Here’s how Biden can keep the faith, and spread it
Joe Biden belongs to a marginalized minority. Or, at least, a once-marginalized minority.
I know, I know, he’s a straight, white male. But he’s also a Catholic, and only the second person of his faith to be elected to the nation’s highest office.
The historian Arthur Schlesinger called anti-Catholicism “the deepest bias in the history of the American people.” It is common knowledge that John F. Kennedy had to give a speech distancing himself from the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy in order to be an acceptable candidate for president in 1960, but suspicion of Catholics runs far deeper than that in American history.
In the early 17th century, John Winthrop spoke about building a bulwark against “Popery” in his establishment of Puritan Boston. In 1844, anti-Catholic mobs in Philadelphia burned churches and carried out violent attacks that killed dozens. In the 1850s, the anti-Catholic Know Nothing Party (the QAnon movement of its era) elected some 75 people to the U.S. Congress. In 1928, Al Smith, the first Catholic to run for president on a major-party ticket, was torpedoed by the anti-Catholic ferocity of the Ku Klux Klan.
The political scene in America looks much different today. Six Catholics sit on the Supreme Court, including the most recently appointed justice, Amy Coney Barrett. Over 30% of Congress is Catholic. Not so long ago, conservative politicians raised suspicions about Catholics being more loyal to the Vatican than to the United States. These days, people like Newt Gingrich are leaving evangelical Protestantism and converting to Catholicism.
It is striking to me that in all of our public conversation about diversity and prejudice, so little has been said about how Catholics moved from being a group of people whowere violently marginalized to being a group at the
center of power. Forme, the lesson is simple: America can change, and those on the margins can often reshape society for the better.
The educational and health care institutions that Catholics founded in the 19th century for their own socialwelfare— often because theywere discriminated against in Protestant-dominated schools and hospitals— began to pro actively welcome people from all faiths and races in the 20th century. In fact, that is how I came to be in this country. The University of Notre Dame, an educational institution founded by French Catholic priests in the 1840s for the benefit of poor Midwestern Catholic boys, admitted my father, an Ismaili Muslim immigrant from India, to its MBA program, Class of 1977.
This is the best kind of American story, one thatwe have seen
with African Americans and Jews, aswell: A community that finds itself facing unrelenting prejudice fights not only for its own place in America, but for an America where people of all identities have a place.
You can see the evidence of this openness to others and connection with diversity in how Biden expresses his Catholic faith. So often, he sides with the nuns who live the faith through service on the ground over the hierarchy that makes the rules. When he held a postelection call with Pope Francis, itwas to talk about caring for the poor, ensuring that immigrants are welcomed and treated with respect and safeguarding the environment.
When it came to choosing a running mate, meanwhile, Biden selected someone of not only a different race and gender, but also a different faith. Vice President
elect Kamala Harris, whose husband is Jewish, grew up with a Hindu mother and a neighbor who took her to a Black Baptist church.
Despite that progress, too many religious communities still face the kind of overt discrimination that Biden’s Catholic community has overcome. The bigotry of the outgoing Trump administration has prompted a resurgence in Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry. The Biden administration should face this challenge headon; religious prejudice is not just an attack against the dignity of a community but also a barrier to its ability to contribute to the greater good.
When it comes to race, meanwhile, the country has yet to fully acknowledge— let alone move beyond— the systemic racism that has punished and held back
Black Americans for centuries. Biden’s life reminds us that historical hatred and discrimination can be overcome. Harris’ life reminds us of just howhard itwill be to fully do so.
Biden loves to end his speeches by telling the story of how his grand father would send him off to school everyday by saying, “Keep the faith, Joey.” His grandmother would add, “No, spread it.”
It took far too long, but America has kept the faith with Biden’s Catholicism. The great challenge of his presidency will be whether Biden can spur the country to finally keep the faith when it comes to race as well.