The GOP’s Catholic voter problem
It’s no coincidence that three Rust Belt states with large populations of Catholics helped put the Democrats back in the White House in January of 2021.
Courtesy of Ryan Burge
November 6, 2020
By Ryan Burge

Produced in collaboration with the Association of Religion Data Archives.

(RNS) — It has been three presidential election cycles since a Catholic candidate stood for the office, and while some things have changed — not least the pope — the importance of northeast Catholic voters is as important as ever.

According to VoteCast, the Associated Press’ analysis of the vote, Joe Biden earned a 50-50 split among Catholics in 2020. That’s a stark difference from the significant margin that President Trump enjoyed in his 2016 victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton, when he garnered nearly 60% of the Catholic vote.

What made the difference this time around?

To answer that question, I turned to the Religion Census data from the Association of Religion Data Archives to examine how the share of Catholics in U.S. counties related to their vote for the Republican candidate in the elections of 2000, 2016, and 2020.


Courtesy of Ryan Burge

It turns out that while Trump stays on par (or better) with the Catholic vote nationwide, the GOP’s share of the Catholic vote has been slowly dropping wherever Catholics are more thickly clustered. Trump’s 8 percentage point drop from 2016 with these voters — especially in the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — is a continuation of a longstanding trend.

On the first scatterplot chart, the dashed line shows that in counties with very low shares of Catholics, Trump’s 65% share of Catholic voters in 2016 outpaced George W. Bush’s haul in 2000 of just under 60%. In highly Catholic counties, however, Trump did only slightly better, with about 55% of the vote compared to Bush, who was closer to 52%.

When I took a closer look, examining only larger Catholic-rich counties (where at least 50,000 votes were cast in 2020), there was no discernible pattern. At the county level, too many other factors can affect the direction of the vote, particularly, it seems, what kind of Catholics are dominant.

For instance, on Staten Island, New York, (Richmond County) and the East End of Long Island (Suffolk), whose Catholics tend to be well-settled descendants of 19th-century European immigrants, Trump did much better this year than George W. Bush did two decades ago.

However, in Union County in northern New Jersey, which has a large population of more recent Hispanic immigrants, Trump only earned 26% of the vote, down 11 percentage points from Bush’s total in 2000. The same pattern is true in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Trump did 6 points worse than Bush did.


Courtesy of Ryan Burge

At the state level, however, the story came back into focus.

In each of the three elections under study, the Republican earned between 55% and 58% of the Catholic vote. However, as the share of Catholics in the state increases, Trump actually loses votes more sharply than Bush did. In the 2000 election, for every 10% increase in the percentage of Catholics in a state, Bush lost 4.9% more of the vote. For President Trump in 2020 that decline was a bit steeper at 5.8%. That rate is a bit worse than his performance in 2016 when it was a 5.3% decline.

The Republicans’ ability to draw these Catholics in densely Catholic states, in other words, is declining, but the decline has accelerated under Trump: While the GOP’s declining share among clustered Catholics fell 1% from 2000 to 2016, it dropped another 0.50% in just four years.

To put all of this in perspective, if Pennsylvania had the lighter Catholic concentration of a place like Iowa, the president would be enjoying a 55% vote margin, all else being equal, in the Keystone State and may well have kept the White House.


Courtesy of Ryan Burge

Obviously, the electorate of a state hinges on much more than religious concerns, but it’s no coincidence that three Rust Belt states with large populations of Catholics helped put the Democrats back in the White House in January of 2021.

(Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University and a pastor in the American Baptist Church. He can be reached on Twitter at @ryanburge. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Ahead of the Trend is a collaborative effort between Religion News Service and the Association of Religion Data Archives made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation. See other Ahead of the Trend articles here.

Pope’ Albert Mohler and the catholicization of conservative evangelicalism
The pope's adoption of civil unions has sharply delineated a momentous shift from the Baptist battles of the last generation

Combination photo of Pope Francis, left, and the Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr. Photos by Gregorio Borgia and Emil Handke

October 30, 2020
By Jacob Lupfer

(RNS) — A documentary about Pope Francis that premiered in Rome last week (Oct. 21) captured the pontiff endorsing civil unions for same-sex couples. In the days that followed, conservatives and liberals across the Christian world sparred over the meaning of the Holy Father’s words.

The pope said a “civil cohabitation law” is necessary because same-sex couples “have the right to be covered legally.”

While Francis often speaks provocatively when he aims to open a discussion, commentators seized on his supposed lack of clarity to resume an intractable debate about the place of same-sex couples in the church and society.

Before Catholic archbishops in most U.S. metro areas even weighed in, reactions emerged from Nashville, the Vatican of American evangelicalism. Within hours of the video’s release, a Southern Baptist Convention agency head, as well as the current SBC president and a recent past president, had put out statements blasting the pope.

None of the Baptist bigwigs addressed the question of civil unions. Each simply made a statement against same-sex marriage, throwing in an assertion of the Bible’s sole and absolute authority for good measure. Catholic responses tended to take one of two forms, each continuing recent departures from expectation.

Conservative Catholics (lay and clergy), who once observed a norm of reverence for the Bishop of Rome, trashed the Holy Father with angry bewilderment at best — and abject disdain at worst. LGBTQ-affirming Catholics, meanwhile, who once regarded Church teaching on marriage and sexuality as heartbreaking but immutable, spoke openly of their hope that Francis will open the door to the eventual affirmation of LGBTQ Catholics in the sacramental life of the Church.

Catholic and evangelical responses thus revealed a reversal of sorts: As Catholics follow their consciences and defy Church authority on a growing range of issues, American Catholicism is being protestantized. Evangelicalism, at least its Southern Baptist form, is being catholicized, meanwhile, as ideological cohesion and less toleration of individual conscience grows under the watch of a more centralized authority.

The growing Southern Baptist tendency to ground their politics and doctrine in natural law is a direct nod to Christian-ethical thinking long familiar to Roman Catholics but quite new to biblicist evangelicals. It has made brothers-in-arms of conservative evangelicals — anti-Catholic just a few generations ago — with traditionalist Catholics in a culture war they both seem to be losing. Both focus on sexuality and de-emphasize or dissent from a global ecumenical consensus on other moral issues that exists outside white American Christianity.

Southern Baptists will insist they have no authority but Scripture, but it is impossible to deny that the nation’s largest Protestant denomination has taken uncommon authority to itself since squelching dissent when the SBC purged moderates from its leadership in the 1980s.

This was accomplished largely through the appointive power of the SBC president, with committees and boards of trustees that act as parallels to Vatican congregations that wield power and personnel to preserve purity.

These Baptists have done a masterful job of rooting out opposing ideologues, dispatching opponents to irrelevance and grooming successors through plum appointments and prestigious positions.

The Rev. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary since 1993 and now SBC president-designate, may look like the furthest thing from a pope, and his circle of deputies and protégés may not resemble the Catholic cardinalate, but Mohler has reshaped his institution and denomination just as popes have put their personal imprint on the Vatican and the Church at large.

It’s not my intention here to say what churches can or should do regarding LGBTQ affirmation. Some may point out that a growing number of shrinking Christian denominations fully affirm LGBTQ people. Why these traditions remain so unappealing in spite of being on the right side of history, however, is a subject for another day.

The pope’s comments on civil unions, rather, has sharply delineated a momentous shift from the Baptist battles of the last generation, where deference to authoritative leadership was anathema.

The problem with such authority, as Baptists of ages past suggested, is that centralized authority leads to battles that have more to do with power than righteousness. What Francis seems to recognize more clearly than his fans or critics is that LGBTQ Christians are not a theological problem to be solved or a political foe to be defeated. They are people with deep familial and spiritual longings.

For now, princes of the Southern Baptist Convention shut the door on LGBTQ people with a catholicized turn-or-burn. And though protestantized Catholics post pro-LGBTQ theses on the door of the Church, I’m afraid in the end it will only slam shut and break their hearts.

(Jacob Lupfer is a writer and political strategist based in Baltimore. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily represent those of Religion News Service.)

Evangelical Christians once were saved. After Trump, they’re lost.
Trump did more than capture white evangelical Christians’ votes: He in many ways became the face of white evangelicalism.
Supporters of President Donald Trump pray during an “Evangelicals for Trump Coalition Launch” at King Jesus International Ministry on Jan. 3, 2020, in Miami. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)

November 24, 2020
By Michael O. Emerson, Joel Edward Goza

(RNS) — For reasons that have to do with our reading of the Bible, the both of us moved as adults from our middle-class white worlds to poor Black communities: Michael and his family from all-white small towns of Minnesota to the largest African American area of Minneapolis, and Joel from a white suburb of Houston to that city’s poorest neighborhood.

We were then and are now both white Christians. Our faith and our faith communities were and are our lives. Little prepared us for what we found in our new neighborhoods. We had been baptized into a brand of Christianity that blends white middle-class assumptions with the logic of conservative talk radio into a finely cooked soup for the soul.

When we moved into places that had been ravaged by poverty, our worlds did not just turn upside down. They died.

Our worlds — or rather our worldviews, in the parlance of evangelicalism — died because almost everything we knew about poor Black communities was rooted in uninformed caricatures and lies. We had trusted in the political rhetoric white Christians loved, the rhetoric of law and order, of the war against drugs and the welfare state, the war to save America’s exceptional soul.

RELATED: Pompeo’s rights commission distilled decades of evangelicals’ hopes

For much of the last four years, Donald Trump has put this rhetoric at the center of his message. Trump will be remembered as a president who did more than capture white evangelical Christians’ votes: He in many ways became the face of white evangelicalism.

In this Sept. 1, 2017, file photo, religious leaders pray with President Donald Trump after he signed a proclamation for a national day of prayer to occur on Sept. 3, 2017, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

The irony is that, unintentionally, Trump’s morality — or more accurately, his lack thereof — has forced many white evangelicals into a long overdue reckoning with their culture’s indifference to systemic racism and its unholy alliance with partisan politics. We once were saved. Now we were lost.

That journey began not with Trump’s election in 2016, but some 40 years ago, when white evangelicals allied with Ronald Reagan. Any careful reading of the history of America’s public policies shows our nation’s economic and racial crises were manufactured by both parties. But the marriage between white evangelicalism and the modern version of the Republican Party made these crises worse.

As detrimental were the lies we told ourselves. Reagan talked about the character of “welfare queens” and the threat of inner-city crime, and we believed he was telling the colorblind truth. We had been trained to believe the true sources of racial inequality reside in those communities: Black criminality, Black sloth, broken Black families and a lack of Black brilliance.

At the same time, white Christians carefully crafted a form of the faith that made our racial and economic sins invisible to us. The self-interest of free market capitalism magically harmonized with the self-sacrificial love of Christ. The fight for racial or economic justice, in fact, were already won — at least if you believed, as Reagan affirmed for us, we lived in a nation that was a city on a hill and a light for the world.

We believed these fictions because we never knew Black America. But as Black communities and churches became our homes and Black people became part of our circle of friends and family, we came to see that nearly everything we “knew” about Black people, white people, poverty and the basic principles of Christianity were shaped by lies with lethal racial edges.

President Ronald Reagan speaks at a rally in Minneapolis in 1982. Photo by Michael Evans/Creative Commons 

THE MORAL MAJORITY = THE TEA PARTY= TRUMPISM

Despite our racist beliefs about Black people’s work ethic, we kept encountering people working double shifts. Despite our racist beliefs that Black people in poor communities were often criminal and violent, we kept encountering churchgoing folks praying for peace. Despite our racist convictions about Black people’s misplaced priorities, we kept encountering family-oriented people focused on getting education for their children and loving our country despite its sins.

In our new environments, we learned what we should have known all along: When white Christians fail to stand in solidarity with Black people and immigrants, there is really nothing Christlike about our Christianity.

As we formed new commitments to communities of color, we were ostracized from the faith community that baptized us. We once were saved, but now we were lost.

Millions of evangelicals now find themselves lost as well, as one of the least Christlike men to lead the country is now nobody’s president, but is their leader. This didn’t happen four years ago or in this election, but decades ago: Trump is the price of the evangelical church’s rejection of the vision of Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders who demanded we address America’s original sins of racism and greed.

It is the price of not listening when Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells called for white Christians to stand in solidarity with their suffering, knowing if they did, white Christians — and our nation — would be reborn.

RELATED: President Trump is a religious leader

Unless white evangelicals radically reorient their political commitments, Trump will continue as the face of white evangelicalism. To move in a different direction, white evangelicals must begin questioning their assumptions and begin to champion racial and economic justice.

Coming from the evangelical tradition, we imagine what our nation could be if evangelicals expand from being simply pro-birth to holistically pro-life. As we move forward, evangelicals have the opportunity to understand individual sinners really can create sinful systems, laws and policies.

The time is now to imagine what our nation could look like if evangelicals invest in an honest reckoning with our nation’s racial sins and our role in perpetuating them. The time is now to imagine what it would look like for white evangelicals to stand in solidarity with the people — Black, poor and sick — who our willful blindness and our nation’s policies crucify.


(Michael O. Emerson, a professor of sociology at the University of Illinois Chicago, is co-author of the award-winning book “Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America.” Joel Edward Goza is the author of “America’s Unholy Ghosts: The Racist Roots of Our Faith and Politics.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily represent those of Religion News Service.)

Is democracy sacred?
"Though politics relies on virtue, this does not make it religious," writes Anthony D. Baker.
Voters mark their ballots at a church in Stamford, Conn. AP Photo/Jessica Hill

November 6, 2020

By Anthony D. Baker

(The Conversation) — With millions of votes yet to be counted and the election far from being decided, President Trump falsely claimed victory and called for a halt to vote-counting. His rival, Joe Biden, meanwhile, vowed that every ballot would be counted.

Such moments of political drama could have some of us grasping for religious imagery and language. Indeed, one protester at a post-election rally in Missouri was quoted putting the fight over votes in explicitly sacred terms: “Votes are the host, they are a holy item right.”

It echoes the language of politicians themselves. A month before the Nov. 4 election, a Democratic congressman called Trump “a threat to our sacred democracy.” And Vice President Mike Pence used explicitly religious language in his speech at the Republican National Convention in August.

RELATED: Citing Scripture, Pence switches out Jesus for the American flag in convention speech

This election is “a time of testing,” he said. Blending images of the flag over Fort Henry with a biblical passage from Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, Pence continued: “So let’s run the race marked out for us. Let’s fix our eyes on Old Glory and all she represents… And let’s fix our eyes on the author and perfecter of our faith and our freedom.”

At one level, the use of such religious language makes sense. Nations are, like religions, institutions. Also like religions, they are held together by rituals. A nation coming together to vote may feel a bit like a faith community gathering for worship, especially given that many places of worship double as voting stations.

However, in my research in Christian theology, I have found that the analogy between political and religious activity has important limits.

To understand why, it is worth looking to one of the most influential Christian thinkers on the boundary between the political and the sacred, the 13th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas.

Political virtues

A stained glass window of Thomas Aquinas in St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, Central City, Kentucky.
Nheyob via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-NC-SA

Politics, in Aquinas’ reading, is defined as the way humans organize their common pursuit of a good life, a life formed by virtues like courage. If we could all be courageous together, we would be well on our way to being good citizens.

Putting these virtues into practice is challenging, though, and Aquinas says it will involve “some kind of training.” Eventually, individuals might live courageously because they want to live in a society where courage is a commonly held to be good.

In the meantime, though, a society needs “training” through laws, proper enforcement and appropriate judicial intervention, so that it can regulate at least a minimal measure of virtue.

Aquinas suspected that some blend of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy was the best path to this common good: Such a state could have a unified voice, a counsel of trusted sages and the voice of the people to hold both accountable.

However, political virtue will always involve the possibility of coercion for those who fail to practice it. Most recently, we see this in the activation of the National Guard to help ensure safe and fair voting procedures throughout the states.

This is appropriate, on Aquinas’ terms. When the common good is under threat, “civic virtue comes armed,” as American theologian Stanley Hauerwas puts it in his interpretation of Aquinas.
Religious virtues

Though politics relies on virtue, this does not make it religious.

To be religious is, according to an ancient definition Aquinas first finds in the Roman Statesman Cicero, to give special attention, or to “read again”: re-legere in Latin. This suggests to Aquinas that religious understanding is acquired through rereading the world, taking in how situations exist “in relation to God.”

The virtues and teachings that surround this reorientation are ones that Aquinas calls “sacred teaching.” They are “learned through revelation” and “accepted by faith.” This does not mean that religion should reject reason, since for Aquinas religious thought uses reason to explore sacred revelations.

The religious learner needs some distance from what theologian Stanley Hauerwas calls the “armed” practices of the political institutions, so that they turn to the world again to see it in sacred ways.

In other words, a state needs a police force so it can protect vulnerable people from failures of virtue. But sacred practices like worship and prayer require the opposite: a freedom from state coercion, so that people can practice religion without that religion being legally enforced.

My research into Reformation-era England offers an example of this. An edict by the queen gave her the authority to prosecute people for not attending Sunday worship. Many found this coercive measure to cast a shadow over the authenticity of that worship itself.

This is not to suggest that the religious and the political ought to be completely isolated realms of life. Aquinas argues that a just society, ordered by laws which ensure that everyone can be given what is due to them, will also allow for the “special honor” that “is due to God as the first principle of all things.”

Aquinas thinks then that this second reading – religion – is a necessary component of the common good. A good government will allow for people to pursue the sacred. It it will not, though, confuse its own potentially coercive virtues with those sacred practices.

Sacred truths

Portrait of Thomas Jefferson.
Rembrandt Peale via Wikimedia Commons

"And the day will come,

 when the mystical generation of Jesus,

 by the Supreme Being as His Father,

 in the womb of a virgin,

 will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva

 in the brain of Jupiter."

 

-- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

 Letter to John Adams, from Monticello, April 11, 1823.

When seeking his own high-stakes language to describe the rights that the American colonies were willing to fight for, Founding Father Thomas Jefferson wrote, “we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.” It was Benjamin Franklin’s pen that gave the phrase its more economic and agnostic tilt: not sacred, but “self-evident.”

Franklin, Aquinas would have said, hit closer to home, though perhaps for reasons outside the founder’s purview. Neither political rituals nor the values they instill are sacred, even if they can hold the space for practices that are.

The counting of votes is a cornerstone of modern democracy and hearing a president call for a halt to the count is a disorienting moment that could leave many scrambling for the right adjective. According to Aquinas, however, “sacred” is not the right one.

(Anthony D. Baker is professor of systematic theology at Seminary of the Southwest.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily represent those of Religion News Service.)

USA

Hate crime deaths reach all-time high, despite chronic underreporting
Three things the Biden-Harris administration can do to help address the pandemic of hate in our country.
Image by Dino KF Wong/Pixabay/Creative Commons

November 18, 2020
By Simran Jeet Singh

(RNS) — It has become one of the most consistent trends in the Trump era: The number of total hate incidents increased again last year, according to the FBI’s annual hate crime report, released Monday (Nov. 16). There were 7,314 hate crimes reported in in 2019, nearly 200 more than in 2018 and the highest level in more than a decade.

Perhaps more strikingly, the number of hate-based deaths recorded reached an all-time high since the FBI started tracking those statistics in 1995. Fifty-one people were killed in deadly hate crimes in 2019.

Unfortunately, these statistics are no longer surprising. What might shock some, however, is that this data represents only the tip of the iceberg. In 2019, only about 13% of local law enforcement agencies — 2,172 out of 15,588— reported that hate crimes took place to the FBI. Worse, that’s fewer law enforcement agencies than in previous years.

What we don’t know about hate in this country, in other words, casts a looming shadow over what we do know.

RELATED: Why do racists hate ethnic and religious clothing?

According to the FBI data, there was about a 7% increase in hate crimes motivated by religious bias, which drives nearly 20% of all hate crimes. The majority of religious bias crimes are anti-Jewish, and those rose 14% in 2019.

Anti-transgender hate crimes also proliferated, rising by 20% compared with 2018.

But most hate crimes in 2019, as in previous years, were driven by racial bias and target Black individuals.

The FBI doesn’t detail why hate crimes increased, but it’s not hard to imagine that when the president of the United States fans the flames of hate, the incidents of hate would increase and accountability for hate-inspired crimes would decrease.

President-elect Joe Biden ran on a commitment to restoring the soul of our nation, launching his campaign as a direct response to the white supremacist violence that erupted in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. But his election alone won’t reverse our current trend. How can we increase reporting from law enforcement agencies and decrease the overall quantity and deadliness of hate crimes in America?

Here are three things the Biden-Harris administration can do to help address the pandemic of hate in our country.

First, the new administration must prioritize hate crime prosecution by appointing leaders in the Department of Justice who are committed to enforcing federal hate crime laws. Being willing to address hate when it occurs is critical to quelling bigotry.

Second, a Biden Justice Department can call on state and local law enforcement agencies to provide accurate hate crime data to the federal level. Currently, there is no law mandating accurate reports on hate violence to the FBI, and the lack of accountability and incentive results in severe underreporting.

While the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that approximately 250,000 hate crimes occur every year, the FBI only receives an average of 6,200 reported incidents annually — less than 3% of the overall picture. New mandates on accurate reporting can help change that.

This severe underreporting is a byproduct of limited resources. In making hate violence a priority, the new administration must, thirdly, push forward legislation that improves funding for resources at the state and local level.

The federal government can do this by passing the Khalid Jabara-Heather Heyer NO HATE Act. This bill, named for two victims of hate crimes that were not reported as such, would improve hate crime tracking by providing necessary training for law enforcement officials and by establishing hate crime reporting hotlines for people who are targets in hate.

These are three simple steps the Biden-Harris administration can take to reclaim this country from the clutches of hate, and to begin to create a path toward healing, justice and the restoration of our nation’s soul.

The many stories of Diwali share a common theme of triumph of justice
The Indian festival of lights is arguably the most important holiday of the year for South Asian families

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People shop for lanterns at a roadside stall ahead of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, in Mumbai, India, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2020. Diwali will be celebrated on Nov. 14. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

November 13, 2020
By Natasha Mikles

(The Conversation) — As many Indian Americans celebrate the election of the first Black and South Asian woman, Kamala Harris, to the White House, many will also be celebrating the festival of Diwali on Saturday, Nov. 14.

Sometimes called the Indian festival of lights, Diwali is arguably the most important holiday of the year for South Asian families.

The festival, which is observed by Hindus, Sikhs and Jains, lasts five days in its entirety. Traditionally the third day is considered the most important. During this day, families gather to light candles, eat sweets and place lit lamps in their public-facing windows.

As a scholar of Asian religion and popular narratives, I’m interested in Diwali because it demonstrates how ancient tales in epics become part of religious practice.
Popular stories from Hinduism

There are many stories around what exactly Diwali commemorates and why it is celebrated.

Among Hindu families, many claim the festival celebrates the defeat of the evil demon king Ravana by Rama – an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu and the hero of India’s Ramayana epic. In the most famous part of this epic tale, Rama’s wife is abducted by the demon Ravana, and Rama must journey to the land of Lanka to save her with the assistance of his brother.

A different tradition states that the festival commemorates the defeat of the demon Narakasura by Lord Krishna. Like Rama, Krishna is an incarnation of the god Vishnu, who has come to assist humanity in its time of need.

Stories tell of Krishna’s efforts to rid the world of demons. In this particular story, the King Naraka gains extraordinary abilities through a deal with a demon and becomes intoxicated with power.

Narakasura, as he is now called, destroys the kingdoms around him and eventually plans to assault even the heavens. Krishna appears and uses his divine powers to neutralize Narakasura’s weapons, eventually beheading him with a multi-pronged discus.

Other traditions associate the festival with the birth of the goddess Lakshmi and her marriage to Vishnu. In the Hindu tradition, Lakshmi is worshipped as the goddess of wealth, while Vishnu is seen as the preserver of humanity.

Hoysala Architectures. Image courtesy of Bikash R Das via Wikimedia/Creative Commons

While there are many stories of her birth, the most prevalent is that Lakshmi appeared during the churning of the divine ocean of milk from which the nectar of immortality comes during a fight between the gods and demons. After appearing, she chooses to marry Vishnu and to assist him in working for the benefit of humanity.

In southern India, Hindu families commemorate the defeat of the demon Hiranyakshipu by Narasimha, the lion-headed incarnation of Vishnu. Like many Indian stories, Hiranyakshipu is a demi-god who believes he is immortal after receiving a divine blessing from the Hindu creator-god Brahma that lists the conditions for his death.

According to the boon, he cannot be killed at day or at night, inside or outside, by human or by animal, by projectile weapons or by hand weapons, and neither on the ground nor in the sky.

In response to Hiranyakshipu’s terrorizing of the heavens and Earth, Vishnu then incarnates as the lion-headed god Narasimha to kill the demon. He kills him at dusk, on the step of his house, as a chimeric lion with his claws as he lies on Narasimha’s lap – all conditions that satisfy the elements of the boon.
Stories from other religions

The Diwali tradition is celebrated by Jains and Sikhs as well, who have their own interpretations of the festival. For Jains, Diwali celebrates the nirvana, or enlightenment, of Mahavira, the 24th spiritual teacher of the Jain path and the contemporary tradition’s founder.

A jain sculpture showing Mahavira Keezhakuyilkudi, Madurai, Tamilnadu, India. Photo by Francis Harry Roy S via Wikimedia/Creative Commons

Sikhs consider Diwali a commemoration of the release of Guru Hargobind, the sixth of 10 spiritual leaders, and 52 other men who were imprisoned by the Mughal Empire that ruled the Indian subcontinent from 1526 to 1857.

After the public execution of his father by Mughal leaders, Guru Hargobind became increasingly passionate about forming an independent Sikh homeland through military action if necessary. He was eventually jailed by the Mughal Emperor Jahangir, but was released two years later on the day of Diwali.

Popular legends state that when he was freed, Guru Hargobind tricked the Mughal emperor into allowing him to bring out as many men as could hold onto the hem of his cloak and, in this way, helped release 52 other prisoners who held onto 52 threads coming off of his garment.

Origins of Diwali

The multiplicity of interpretations for why Diwali is celebrated and questions regarding the festival’s exact origins may have one potential answer: that the narrative of origins is an afterthought to rituals.

This problem is illustrated in a well-known episode of the sitcom “The Office,” where the Dunder Mifflin team attends a Diwali celebration at a local Hindu temple. Before they go, they ask Kelly – the Hindu office worker who is playing hostess – to explain the origins of the festival.

She demurs, stating “I don’t know; it’s really old, I think,” before excitedly discussing the beautiful clothes everyone wears, the dancing and the food. Mindy Kaling, who plays Kelly and wrote the episode, explained that she based Kelly’s cluelessness on her own, noting that – despite identifying as Hindu – she had to do significant research into her own religious tradition to write the episode.

In other words, while she was aware of and excited about the rituals, the narrative explanation was secondary to joining with her community in celebration.

But this does not mean that narrative may be inconsequential. It is important to think what these multiple narratives about Diwali’s origins may be able to tell us about the Indian culture.

Asian religions scholar Robert Ford Campany suggests that narratives entail a subtle form of argument that “reveal, argue, or assume something significant about the world, about spirits, about relations between humans and other beings, or about the afterlife and the dead.”

Perhaps these diverse origin stories of Diwali point to a shared argument that Indian culture is making about the world: that good – whether as one of the many avatars of Lord Vishnu, an enlightened Jain prince, or an imprisoned guru – will necessarily triumph over the evils of demons, injustice and ignorance.

Certainly that’s an argument worth celebrating, especially in the chaotic times we live in today.

(Natasha Mikles is a lecturer in philosophy at Texas State University.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily represent those of Religion News Service.)

USA

How Sikhs combine spirituality with civic engagement
In a pivotal election, Sikhs are making their voices heard in ways that are as true to Sikhi as they are to the best American values

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Volunteers prepare meals at the Sikh Gurdwara San Jose for distribution to those affected by Northern California wildfires, Sept. 6, 2020, in San Jose, California. Photo courtesy of United Sikhs

November 3, 2020
By Simran Jeet Singh

(RNS) — This is a pivotal election, and Sikhs — like countless other Americans — are making their voices heard, in ways that are as true to Sikhi as they are to the best American values that will help us after the election is over.

There is a long history of civic participation in Sikhi. The founders of the faith, the 10 Sikh Gurus, were leaders who engaged politically in various ways, from organizing communities and establishing cities to meeting with emperors and opposing tyrants.

The basis for Sikh political engagement could not be more clear. The Gurus’ teachings call on all Sikhs to actively take on justice work. We are all called to be saint-soldiers, cultivating ourselves spiritually while also serving all those around us. Seva — selfless service in Punjabi — is a natural outgrowth of love: People who are truly connected spiritually will feel moved to reduce suffering and seek justice.

This balance of the internal and external is captured by the Sikh concept and practice of miri-piri, that we must each engage our inner cultivation while extending our love beyond ourselves. It’s this basic outlook that creates a foundation for Sikhs to participate in their communities.

So what does this intersection of spiritual life and civic engagement look like in practice?

It starts locally. The turmoil of 2020 has provided ample opportunities for Sikh sangats, as we call our congregations, to respond to increased need in their communities. Across the country, Sikhs, through their gurdwaras (houses of worship), individually or in small groups, have stepped up to provide foodstuffs, hot meals and sanitary supplies to a wide range of people, including health care workers on the front lines, area food banks, international students, homeless populations or anyone else who needs some extra help.

But the Sikh community is leaning in to civic engagement beyond charity work. Sikh communities from Connecticut to California were active at many #BlackLivesMatter demonstrations over the summer that followed the killing of George Floyd, in many cases distributing food, water and medical supplies to protesters.

Sikh Coalition volunteers during a phone bank make calls to reach Sikh voters in key swing states. Photo courtesy of the Sikh Coalition

This month, Sikh organizations have been working hard to make sure that Sikh Americans have been registered and motivated to vote. The Sikh Coalition, for which I serve as a senior fellow, has recruited sevadaars (volunteers) from the community to help their sangat members check their voter registration and provided a free tool to do so through advocacy platform Phone2Action.

The group just launched a phone banking initiative of unprecedented scale for the community, working to connect sevadaars with thousands of Sikh households in key swing states to answer questions about election procedures and deadlines.

Sikhs are coming out to vote not just because they care about civil rights, religious freedom and immigration issues, but because they’re Americans who care about a wide range of issues, from tax rates to health care and foreign policy to the minimum wage.

Moreover, Sikhs are trained to use their privilege to seek justice and to stand with the most vulnerable from a spirit of oneness, love and selfless service.

Based on what I am seeing on the ground in communities all across the country, I feel encouraged that Sikh civic engagement is increasing in America. We can only hope that their values will help propel our country in the right direction.

USA

Muslim voters doubled their turnout, turning a much-watched minority into an influential one
Many groups have made significant gains in their ability to deliver the vote in 2020, perhaps the most influential of which is the Muslim American bloc]

Voters wait in line to fill out a ballot on the last day of early absentee voting before tomorrow's general election at the Northwest Activities Center in Detroit, Monday, Nov. 2, 2020. Michigan was one of several states with a high Muslim voter turnout. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

November 9, 2020
By Simran Jeet Singh

(RNS) — In the long election week just passed, Americans obsessed over a half-dozen states whose razor-thin margins between Democratic and Republican votes were the keys to the U.S. presidency.

In those same states those small differences meant that communities that are not typically considered politically influential had an outsized power to swing the balance.

A majority of the credit for this swing has gone to Black voters — and rightfully so. But there are many groups that have made significant gains in their ability to deliver the vote in 2020, perhaps the most influential of which is the Muslim American bloc.

We can see a similar picture when we look at Muslim voter turnout. In 2016, an estimated 400,000 Muslim Americans voted in the presidential election. In 2018, that number is believed to have doubled to approximately 800,000 Muslim voters.

RELATED: Muslims in Michigan, a key vote in a must-win state, on track for record turnout

According to an NPR poll, 64% of Muslim voters supported Biden nationally, while 35% backed Trump.

These numbers are staggering in their own right, but they are especially consequential in that large proportions of these numbers come from Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, North Carolina and other swing states.

The magnitude of the Muslim vote is perhaps most noticeable in Michigan, where an estimated 80,000 Muslim Americans voted via mail-in ballot alone. In 2016, Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in Michigan by 11,000 votes. This year, Joe Biden took Michigan handily, gaining nearly 150,000 more votes than Trump.

Building community power does not happen overnight. An important part of the story here is an organization called Emgage, a Muslim advocacy group that has been around since 2008 but was catalyzed in 2016 following Trump’s election. According to its CEO, Wa’el Alzayat, the Muslim community’s feeling of being under siege by its own government moved the organization to activate the Muslim electorate.

“It wasn’t just enough just to be here. We wanted our people to show up. We wanted to drill down on election as part of a culture that happens every year,” said Alzayat. “We wanted people in our community to get into the practice of being involved and feeling like their voice matters.”

For the past three years, Emgage has been expanding and professionalizing its operations, increasing its impact each year. It began by organizing Get Out the Vote campaigns in key states, and as its footprint grew, it established brick-and-mortar offices with staff and organizers.

The group’s strategy is informed by data collection and by mulching the information it gathers about local populations and trends, while adding its own working knowledge of local, state and federal electoral laws. This information drives its voter outreach efforts: voter registrations, phone-banking, canvassing and digital strategies.

RELATED: Five states elect first-ever Muslim lawmakers, from Oklahoma to Delaware

The organization’s Million Muslim Votes campaign, launched in 2019, brought together a network of partners, spreading this information to leverage it as widely as possible. The collaboration yielded more than 1.8 million phone calls and 3.6 million text messages to Muslim Americans around the country.

In Michigan alone, where Alzayat called the Muslim vote “essential,” Emgage’s staff and volunteers sent 2.2 million text messages and made more than 460,000 phone calls.

The process of political organizing is not glamorous, but it is in keeping with democratic ideals and in fact reinforces and strengthens them. Let’s hope that Muslims and all other marginalized communities continue to work to be heard so that all Americans will find equal footing in shaping our collective future.

This story has been corrected. An earlier version stated that an estimated 80,000 Muslim Americans had voted in Michigan; this is an estimate for mailed ballots only.

55 years ago, a cardinal’s ‘special reverence’ for the Jews redeemed ‘Nostra Aetate’

The proclamation sparked a systematic effort by the Catholic Church to transform its past bitter relationships with Jews and Judaism.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel meeting in New York with Cardinal Augustin Bea, who shepherded the process of Catholic introspection that led to "Nostra Aetate," on March 31, 1963. Photo courtesy of American Jewish Committee

October 28, 2020
By A. James Rudin

(RNS) — Fifty-five years ago, on Oct. 28, 1965, an extraordinary global religious “game changer” took place in Rome.

At the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, after three years of intense deliberation and debate, the world’s Roman Catholic bishops voted overwhelmingly that day to adopt the historic declaration titled “Nostra Aetate (In Our Time).”

The proclamation, promulgated by Pope Paul VI, set in motion a revolution of the human spirit and sparked a serious and systematic effort by the Catholic Church as well as other Christian bodies around the world to transform their past bitter relationships with Jews and Judaism.

The English translation of the original Latin text, only 624 words in length, rejected the ancient lethal and odious charge that the Jews were “Christ killers.” (It was the Roman occupiers of the land of Judea who executed Jesus.)

The specific term “anti-Semitism” (hatred of Jews and Judaism) appears in “Nostra Aetate”: The church, it reads, “ … decries hatred, persecution, (and) displays of anti-Semitism directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.”

The declaration also specifically called for “mutual understanding and respect” and the establishment of “biblical and theological studies” as well as “fraternal dialogues” between Catholics and Jews.

Pope Paul VI in 1963. Vatican City official photo/Creative Commons

In 1965, it was understood that future generations of Catholics and Jews would be required to give life and meaning to the tightly worded declaration, but a solid, hard-won foundation had been laid. In fact, the past 55 years have seen more positive relations between Roman Catholics and Jews than in the first 1,900-plus years of the church’s existence.

While the vote in 1965 was overwhelming, a year earlier it seemed clear to many observers that any constructive groundbreaking statement on Catholic-Jewish relations was doomed. Various versions of such a document had stalled in the Vatican Council’s drafting committee, despite the strong support of Popes John XXIII and Paul VI for systemic changes within the world’s largest Christian community.

The strategy of bishops who opposed any positive statement about Jews and Judaism was to “table it for further study”: a well-known bureaucratic prescription for a certain death.

Faced with that dire possibility, just 20 years after the murderous Holocaust in the heart of what Pope John Paul II called “Christian Europe,” many American Catholic leaders became alarmed. Cardinal Richard James Cushing, then archbishop of Boston, was fearful no action would be taken on the critical issues of deicide and anti-Semitism. He felt an urgent need to express his concerns in person in Rome.

Cushing led the forces not only of the United States but of all Catholics, recruiting similar positive views from other parts of the globe. He especially wanted to speak personally to his brother bishops assembled in Rome during the Vatican Council.

His focus was on the need for his beloved church to rid itself of anti-Semitism, a terrible prejudice that defamed Jews and debilitated Roman Catholics everywhere. Cushing, who always hated leaving his beloved Boston, nonetheless traveled to Rome and delivered the greatest speech of his life on Sept. 28, 1964.

The cardinal’s remarks, given in St. Peter’s Basilica, were delivered in Latin with Cushing’s raspy, heavy New England accent. It drew wide attention and exhilarated many of his fellow bishops. One observer recalled that the Bostonian’s strong voice overwhelmed the microphones and echoed throughout the basilica.

Cardinal Richard Cushing in the 1960s. Copyright City of Boston

When he finished speaking, his rapt audience applauded Cushing. I strongly believe his powerful heartfelt words saved “Nostra Aetate” from oblivion.

In a time of increased acts of anti-Semitism in the United States, Europe and other parts of the world, Cushing’s words resonate today, more than a half-century later: “ … How many (Jews) have suffered in our own time? How many died because Christians were indifferent or kept silent? If in recent years, not many Christian voices were raised against those injustices, at least let ours now be heard in humility.”

We must, he continued, “foster a special reverence and love for the children of Abraham. … (Jews) are Christ’s blood relatives. … (We cannot) burden … generations of Jews with any burden of guilt for the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus. … In clear and unmistakable language, we must deny that the Jews are guilty of our Savior’s death.”

He concluded, “In this august assembly, in this solemn moment, we must cry out: There is no Christian rationale — neither theological nor historical — for any iniquity, hatred or persecution of our Jewish brothers. … Great is the hope … that this sacred synod will make such a fitting declaration … ”

His speech was widely reported and his portrait appeared on the cover of Time magazine, a recognition at the time of his personal leadership.

Thanks in great part to the efforts of Cushing and other American Catholic leaders, exactly 13 months after Cushing’s speech, the Vatican Council did, in fact, ” … make a fitting declaration” that would not have happened without the Boston cardinal’s leadership.

(Rabbi A. James Rudin is the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser and the author of “Cushing, Spellman, O’Connor: The Surprising Story of How Three American Cardinals Transformed Catholic-Jewish Relations.” He can be reached at jamesrudin.com. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Pope Francis on civil unions: Another step toward common ground with the LGBTQ movement
Underlying the pope’s support for gay civil unions is his own long history decrying homophobia and calling for LGBTQ people to be treated with respect and dignity.
Pope Francis waves at the end of his Angelus noon prayer from the window of his studio overlooking St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican, Oct. 25, 2020. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

October 29, 2020
By Alphonso David, James Martin


(RNS) — In a significant step for the Catholic Church, Pope Francis signaled his support for civil unions for same-sex couples in a documentary released last week. This is the first time Pope Francis has so clearly and so publicly recognized the value of civil legal protections for same-sex couples.

As archbishop of Buenos Aires, Francis (then Jorge Mario Bergoglio) made similar statements in private. Later, as pope, he mentioned these legal protections in subtle ways in books, interviews and press conferences, but never as clearly as in the new documentary, “Francesco,” which includes comments on civil unions taken from an interview with a Mexican journalist last year.

The movement for LGBTQ equality has an especially complicated relationship with the Catholic Church, which has only rarely affirmed LGBTQ people’s dignity and their rights to legal protections. History is rife with examples of clergy and laypersons persecuting, rejecting and marginalizing LGBTQ people, even within the church — at times, in violation of the church’s own teaching of love, mercy and compassion.

And while history is also full of stories of radical love and inclusion by Catholic leaders and laypeople (the church’s medical care for those living with HIV/AIDS in the 1980s is one of these many untold stories), senior church leaders’ opposition toward, and minimal advocacy on behalf of, the LGBTQ community is a tragic legacy.

RELATED: Six things you need to know about Pope Francis and gay civil unions

Even today, we see church leaders in Poland declare LGBTQ people as a “rainbow plague,” comparing the movement for LGBTQ equality to Nazism. In Uganda, some bishops have sided with repressive laws that criminalize same-sex relations.

The pope’s comment, then, is but one step in the long and often arduous journey for treating LGBTQ people with the “respect, compassion and sensitivity” that the Catechism asks, and the love and mercy that Jesus demands.

Pope Francis delivers his message on the occasion of the weekly general audience in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican on Oct. 21, 2020. Francis endorsed same-sex civil unions for the first time as pope while being interviewed for the feature-length documentary “Francesco,” which premiered at the Rome Film Festival. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Many LGBTQ people today would agree with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s famous comment that civil unions are nothing more than a “skim milk” version of marriage. But, though small, this step by the pope helps to establish common ground between the LGBTQ movement and the church, however tenuous.

That common ground is a mutual understanding of our shared humanity and dignity.

Underlying Francis’ statement is his own long history decrying homophobia and calling for LGBTQ people to be treated with respect and dignity. Signaling support for civil protections is but an extension of his overall pastoral ministry to LGBTQ people, which is attempting to reconcile church teaching on human dignity and nondiscrimination with church practice.

It’s worth noting that this is the first pope ever to use the word “gay” publicly. Francis has often spoken of the need for LGBTQ children to be welcomed by their parents and families and has reminded his followers that Jesus Christ would never say, “Go away because you’re homosexual.” His papacy is surely the most open to LGBTQ people in the history of the church.

Catholics in the United States and around the world are increasingly coming to recognize that LGBTQ people belong in the church and that they deserve to be treated with the utmost respect in their homes, in their families, in their faith communities and in the public square.

Francis’ most recent statement may mark a moment for all faith leaders and people of faith to further reflect on how their own actions are advancing — or working against — greater progress and inclusion.

Just a few weeks ago, Francis published his third encyclical, “Fratelli Tutti,” a papal letter addressing pressing moral and theological questions. Rooted in the parable of the good Samaritan, the letter is a summons to affirm and defend the dignity of all by creating more just and inclusive societies. Francis reflects on the underlying imperative of the parable, an ethic of justice and inclusion rooted in our common humanity and the need to defend the common good.

He wrote: “The parable does not indulge in abstract moralizing, nor is its message merely social and ethical. It speaks to us of an essential and often forgotten aspect of our common humanity: we were created for a fulfillment that can only be found in love. We cannot be indifferent to suffering; we cannot allow anyone to go through life as an outcast. Instead we should feel indignant, challenged to emerge from our comfortable isolation and to be changed by our contact with human suffering. That is the meaning of dignity.”

LGBTQ people deserve to be treated with respect, compassion and sensitivity, and deserve to be welcomed and protected. On this, the LGBTQ movement and the pope can find common ground. Leaders within all churches and in the public square can see in Francis’ words an invitation to defend the rights and dignity of the LGBTQ community and to create more just and inclusive societies for all human beings.

(Alphonso David is the president of the Human Rights Campaign. The Rev. James Martin is an American Jesuit priest and writer. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily represent those of Religion News Service.)