Candidate a key part of Dems’ religious ‘revival’
WASHINGTON — When Marianne Williamson last visited Unity of Houston, she brought many in the crowd of some 700 people to tears as she apologized to the nearly 200 black people in the audience for years of American racism — slavery, lynchings, murders, mass incarceration and more.
It was a preview of how, a year and a half later, the presidential hopeful would forcefully talk about racism as one of 10 Democrats on a debate stage in Detroit, in a performance that made her the most Googled candidate of the night.
While many people were just discovering Williamson last month, she’s well known at Unity, a progressive church where she has spoken many times and regularly draws crowds of hundreds. The Rev. Michael Gott, the senior minister there, said the congregation has experienced an “awakening of social conscience” led by Williamson, who says she’s running for president to spark just such an awakening across America.
As she crosses the U.S. with her campaign, the Houston native says she sees evidence that the religious left has been reinvigorated by President Donald Trump as he’s stoked racial hatred, separated families at the border, dismantled environmental protections and more.
“I’ve sometimes felt that Republicans don’t walk their talk, but Democrats don’t talk their walk,” Williamson said. “That’s starting to change now, though, as more and more people realize that the spiritual path is simply the path of
the heart, and how can you claim to be a spiritual seeker if you’re not speaking up about heartless policies? Saying no to what is unacceptable is as important as saying yes to what’s possible.”
Williamson isn’t the only 2020 contender pushing Democrats to more aggressively seek the religious vote. Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind., has also waded in, saying in June that “a party that associates with Christianity to say it is OK to suggest that God would smile on the division of families at the hands of federal agents, that God would condone putting children in cages, has lost all claim to ever use religious language again.”
Experts say it’s a deep well the Democrats could tap. While the party has long tried to court black churches, left-leaning white evangelicals are becoming increasingly active in the political sphere, as well. That’s an area they haven’t been as engaged in since the rise of the religious right in the ’70s and ’80s, despite a history of political activism that reaches back to abolition and the civil rights movement.
“What you have is a bit of a revival,” said Eric McDaniel, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies religion and politics. “What you have is, particularly on the part of white evangelicals or white mainline Protestants who do lean liberal, saying, ‘I’m not against religion, I’m reclaiming my religion.’”
Williamson, who is Jewish, said she believes that people of faith have felt that their spiritual values were invalidated by progressive political language that has become “so oversecularized over the last few decades — except in African-American churches, where spirituality and progressive politics were never divorced.”
Williamson likely isn’t long for the presidential race — barring a miracle, she probably won’t meet the fundraising and polling requirements to make a homecoming trip to Houston for next month’s Democratic presidential debates. As she’s inspired some, her run has also sparked controversy, especially over her past skepticism about vaccines and prescription medication for depression. And her spiritual approach — she says she’ll “harness love” to defeat Trump — has drawn some jeers in the campaign.
“She is a personification of a liberal stereotype that a lot of middle-of-the-road Americans have,” Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, told the New York Times. “This is pet rocks and crystals. I find her hip, very interesting to listen to and a little wacky.”
Still, her candidacy speaks to a subset of Democrats that seems to be growing.
National groups such as Washington, D.C.-based Faith in Public Life are gaining members as they advocate for immigration reform, universal health care and racial justice. The group now counts more than 42,000 faith leaders among its ranks. In Iowa, the first state to vote in the primaries, two-thirds of Democratic voters are Christian, and a growing number of them identify as progressive Christians. Meanwhile, national polling suggests that just 23 percent of white Democrats are highly religious, according to Gallup.
In Austin, interfaith public policy group Texas Impact has been overwhelmed in recent months, said Bee Moorhead, the group’s executive director. The group now has some 25,000 members — with the growth of membership and donations accelerating and more demand than its staff can handle, she said. The group hosted just two advocacy days at the Legislature in 2017. It held at least six this year.
Moorhead, who’s led the group for 20 years, said that when she used to travel to congregations around the state, talking to them about how to get more involved, she regularly faced pushback: “People would say, ‘I’m not sure that’s appropriate for the faith community.’” Now, she said, she gets “virtually zero.”
“When things have not been as extreme, it’s pretty tempting for, you know, middle-class or upper-middle-class people of faith to say, ‘My thing is, I’m doing all these mercy ministries, I go on mission trips and I give money — I’m not mixing politics and religion,’” she said.
The crisis on the border is probably the biggest thing motivating Texans who are getting involved, Moorhead said. Her group has a program called Courts and Ports that takes clergy members to Brownsville to learn about the immigration and asylum process so they can then speak knowledgeably to lawmakers about how they should address the situation.
But it’s not only immigration. Climate change and racial justice are also major motivating factors, she said.
“There is now a much more universal acknowledgment that we have to be engaged in the body politic — that your faith demands that you step out into the public square,” she said. “There have always been prophetic actors on the left, too, but what you would see today across the board would be a heightened sense that, ‘I need to be engaged in public policy, it’s not enough to sit and give money to the church.’”
“I’ve sometimes felt that Republicans don’t walk their talk, but Democrats don’t talk their walk.” Marianne Williamson