America’s politics of faith still holds sway

If Democrats hope to change minds and hearts in 2016, they would do well to recognise the power of sincere religious conviction like Carter’s

Jimmy Carter’s cancer diagnosis has prompted a favourable re-evaluation of the former American president’s legacy from Democrats who spent much of the last two decades distancing themselves from his perceived liberal idealism. His personal integrity, commitment to human rights and peacemaking as president and ex-president have all been rightly lauded. Yet, one standout Carter quality is still largely off-limits for those in his party: His very public religiosity.

For most of the 20th century, America’s leaders generally invoked the Almighty in only the loosest of terms. Presidents acted as chief priests of the civil religion — calling on Providence to favour the nation, affirming that citizens’ rights were endowed by a Creator and asking God’s blessing at the end of speeches. They avoided bringing their private religious convictions into their political lives. As a candidate in 1976, Carter broke that convention deliberately. He spoke openly of his personal faith, professing himself a born-again Christian.

Carter’s faith, then and now, clearly gives him not only a “deeper sense of inner peace” (his words), it has informed his whole political mission. He has always gravitated towards the liberal strands of his Baptist tradition, strands that emphasise care for the poor, racial tolerance and an aversion to violence, citing a quote from theologian Reinhold Niebuhr as an inspiration: “The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.” (Carter broke ties with the Southern Baptist Convention in 2009 over its stances on women, but he remains a devout Baptist.)

As a presidential candidate, Carter tapped into common Christian themes that unite Americans across race, class and geography. He spoke often of love and charity, brotherhood and compassion, framing his campaign through moral imperatives as much as political ones. Although he entered the race as a little-known outsider, this message resonated with an electorate disheartened by recession, Watergate and Vietnam. His promise to “never tell a lie to the American people” — quixotic by today’s standards — reassured the scandal-weary voters of 1976. After his unlikely victory, Carter’s faith was clearly reflected in his presidency. He said “fairness, not force” should guide international affairs, and gave up the Panama Canal. He likened his push for a national energy policy to “the moral equivalent of war”.

Americans did not always respond favourably. On July 15, 1979, Carter delivered what came to be known as the “Malaise Speech”. America’s economic woes, he said, stemmed from “a moral and a spiritual crisis”. Critics called it pessimism instead of leadership, and Ronald Reagan swept into the White House the next year with a more hopeful message.

Clear demographics

Reagan’s success was driven by the defection of evangelicals from Carter’s camp. Although they favoured Carter by 21 points in a Gallup poll two months before the 1980 election, many began to feel that he had drifted too far to the left. Two-thirds of white evangelicals ultimately cast their ballots for Reagan.

Yet a striking thing happened. In 1984 Democrats did not make a serious bid to win back religious voters. Instead, they nominated Walter Mondale, Carter’s vice-president, who never brought his faith into the public sphere. To the contrary, he told voters that politicians should keep their “nose out of religion”. Reagan, running his ‘Morning in America’ campaign, handed Mondale the most devastating electoral college defeat in American history, 525 to 13. The demographics remain abundantly clear. Even though religiosity is dropping in the United States, according to the Pew Center, more than 70 per cent of Americans still consider themselves Christian and about 6 per cent follow other faiths.

Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry were all privately religious, but they did not justify their positions through religious morality or references. By contrast, the two Democrats since Carter to secure the White House were adept at using their religious worldview to connect with voters. Bill Clinton often deployed Scripture to reinforce his arguments about poverty, while Barack Obama famously saved his candidacy with a speech tracing America’s present racial discord to the “original sin of slavery”.

If Democrats hope to change minds and hearts in Middle America in 2016, they would do well to recognise the power of sincere religious conviction like Carter’s. If approached with faith in mind, religious moderates might be more open to Democratic positions on issues such as environmentalism, universal health care and prison reform. Carter’s remarkable legacy teaches this: Republicans ought not take the support of churchgoing Americans for granted.

John-Clark Levin is a graduate of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and an author on politics, technology, and security.

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