In God America Trusts: Religion And US Presidential Election 2020

LAST fortnight, Kolkata High Court had to intervene to temper Mamata government’s move to give Rs 50,000 to Pujo pandals during the just concluded Navratra festivities. Having given similar grants to Madrasas for their upkeep and preacher salaries, the move was Mamata Banerjee’s act of balancing majority Hindu sentiment in election year. While religion in politics is an evergreen subject in India, from BJP’s Ram temple to Congress’s soft Hindutva, how does religion fare at the hustings in the United States of America amid a hotly contested presidential election?  

On the first day of Navratra on October 17, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden tweeted his wishes to the American Hindu diaspora. Same day, his running mate Kamala Harris’s niece Meena tweeted – later deleted – a photoshopped picture showing her aunt as Goddess Durga, and Biden as her Lion as she slays guess who in the form of Mahishasur? Trump! As I write this, a pinned Biden campaign video begins with a church in the first frame. Another video tweeted October 19 informed voters how Biden was backed by as many as 1600 faith leaders who would advice his presidency in case of his win. On multiple occasions through the campaign, Biden has called it a “battle for the soul of America,” – a phrase with Biblical roots. 

Let’s come to Donald Trump and the Republicans now. In what would go down as the parting gift to his core constituency of conservative right by president Donald Trump if opinion polls come true and he loses, Monday confirmation of justice Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court further confirmed the conservative majority of the apex court for years and decades to come. It comes less than a week before the results day on November 3 and would have qualified as a no-go area in normal times. Vice president Mike Pence giving a stump speech soon after the Barret confirmation, took pride in the fact that Trump administration had appointed three conservative justices (in the Supreme Court) and 230 conservative judges in various federal courts across the country. Imagine a discourse in India where we discuss BJP and Congress judges!  

In the same speech, Pence called Trump as the most pro-life president in American history – referring to a core Catholic belief that censures abortions as against life. One of the key divisive issues in almost all recent American presidential elections has been the status of a 1973 US Supreme Court verdict in Roe v Wade which allowed abortions, and guaranteed women’s right to choose. Almost every Supreme Court nominee in the last three decades has got asked their views on the case. While liberal Democrat nominees have not minced their support for Roe v Wade from Clinton nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Obama nominee Soniya Sotomayer, conservative Republican nominees from Barrett to Kavanaugh earlier have mostly evaded the question, deferring to presence of the case in the US statutes. This might change though with a very decisive conservative majority now in the US top court. The surge in postal voting past fortnight – almost one fourth of Americans have already voted through mail ballot - just might have a Barrett connection, and indicate toward a polarized results day. 

Amid the ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests that turned violent across America, including in front of the White House in Washington DC, President Trump made a visible show of his Christian credentials, walking across the Lafayette Square to the St John Episcopal Church and getting pictured with a Bible in hand. Having authorized use of force by National Guards to quell protesters around the federal Capital, the photo op was seen as an attempt at projecting sacred sanction behind the State action. 

Trump attended a church event in Carson City, Nevada, on October 19, where a bunch of pastors spoke of the President as “Heaven sent angel” and narrated how the President had supported the Church with his multiple visits, given voice to the unborn, moved US Embassy to Jerusalem in Israel, and had chosen judges who stand for conservative Judeo-Christian values. Two days earlier, on October 17, academy award winning actor and father of Angelina Jolie, Jon Voight, released a video invoking God in his support for Trump. To quote him: “God will cast his healing breath across this land….and I assure you that Jesus, Moses would stand their ground and ask all to vote for truth. My children of God your only hope is this greatness and you must vote for this man in office the President of the United States.” Voight’s pinned tweet is captioned Evil, invoking a Christian imagery guess for Biden! 

A recent New Yorker article, discussing the role of religion in American politics, recalled Trump’s calling his Yuletide tax-cuts in 2017 as a Christmas gift, and President Barack Obama singing a Bible hymn at a Church ceremony in South Carolina in 2015. Early in his presidency, Obama had used his Muslim legacy to pursue his diplomacy, when in his 2009 speech at Cairo University he recalled influence of Azaan during his growing up years in Muslim majority Indonesia. The lofty speech was an outreach to the Muslim world aimed at solving the Israel-Palestine dispute, in some ways contributing to Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize. It’s a different matter that a transactional Trump has recorded better success in the Arab-Israeli conflict. 

The history of religion in American politics goes back to the nation’s founding years. While religion is not directly part of the written constitution, President Abraham Lincoln issued Proclamation 97 in the year 1863 appointing April 30 every year as the day of the prayer and fasting. The presidential decree recognizes authority of God over affairs of men and nations and asks citizens to abstain from their secular duties and dedicate the day to the Lord in prayer. As the New Yorker article notes, Lincoln in his second inaugural address framed the two warring sides thus: “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.” In God We Trust says the dollar.