In a time of intense anxiety across America, an influential clergyman brands a president he opposes for re-election as “essentially” the same as a foreign “dictator,” and even calls him the “Fuhrer.”
When? Who? Though opponents of Donald Trump have applied an alternative N-word— “Nazi” — during the equally tense 2020 campaign, The Guy is talking about some harsh words aimed at Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was seeking his controversial third term.
The president’s accuser was the Rev. Charles Clayton Morrison, who served 39 years as editor of the “mainline” Protestant Christian Century magazine, who despised Roosevelt’s military preparedness and the draft. As an anti-war socialist, he thought Adolph Hitler’s conquests, though displeasing, could create “a united Europe governed from the German center, with a unified planned economy” that would supplant “perverted” capitalist influences.
Journalists of that era would have been well advised to also seek out contrasting religious views from a trio of eminent Roosevelt friends in the New York City clergy establishment, Protestant Professor Reinhold Niebuhr at Union Theological Seminary, Jewish Reform Rabbi Stephen Wise and the recently appointed Catholic Archbishop Francis Spellman. Reporters always need to know who to call for diverse points of view.
The Guy’s musings about matters 80 years ago are provoked by a list of 20 campaign sources suggested to the media by the Religion News Association’s handy ReligionLink website.
Journalists can reflect on how times have changed. A 2020 listing can offer no divines with the public stature of those 1940 leaders. ReligionLink cites no thinkers from religious periodicals like the Century, or Christianity Toda, or the Catholic America, Commonweal,or conservative EWTN media cluster, or the Jewish upstarts at www.tabletmag.com.
For some reason, the list bypasses religion analysts at the Washington think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, Ethics & Public Policy Center, Brookings Institution or Center for American Progress. With legal conflicts raging, the listing proposes calls to Rachel Laser at Americans United for Separation of Church and State but no attorney backing contrary religious liberty claims from the Becket Fund or the Alliance Defending Freedom — groups active in arguing cases at the U.S. Supreme Court.
On a list heavy with academics, it’s surprising not to see John C. Green of the University of Akron, the poli sci patriarch on the religion factor since the 1980s, or any specialist on the vast Southern Baptist Convention and white southern evangelicalism. Consider, for example, the social-media savvy scholar Thomas Kidd at Baylor. The absence of Russell Moore, the SBC’s spokesman on social issues, is perhaps justifiable because he’s more Never-Trumpy than his constituents.
Yet the list has Dallas Pastor Robert Jeffress who, though a Fox News theologian-in-residence, is unrepresentative of the evangelical Trumpublicans due to things like his fierce anti-Catholic beliefs. Who, then? Jerry Falwell Jr. is, of course, damaged goods, so why not former Falwell colleague and Trump advisor Johnnie Moore?
Reporters will spot that Jeffress is the only Trump booster listed alongside several Democratic operatives. Speaking of Democrats, President Bill Clinton’s press secretary Michael McCurry, now leading Wesley Theological Seminary’s Center for Public Theology, would have been an interesting pick, as would President Barack Obama’s religious strategist, Michael Wear.
As ever, The Guy points writers to the Catholic experts because white Catholics will be a key swing vote, and Trump is gaining among Latino Catholics. Also, keep an eye on Latino evangelicals, a minority group that’s the specialty of listee Arlene Sanchez-Walsh at Azusa Pacific University.
Along with the names, ReligionLink highlights varied news articles going back to 2016. The Guy would have added one item to note conservative Catholic wariness toward fellow Catholic Joe Biden and especially his Protestant running mate Kamala Harris, targeted here. In a tight race, Catholic solidarity — especially among traditional Catholics — could hurt Democrats.
But the Catholics for Biden organization this week announced support from three dozen notables listed here, among them former Catholic Relief Services CEO Carolyn Woo and many, many progressive politicians. There are four different groups of Catholics organizing support for the president, but Catholics for Trump is a good place for reporters to start.
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