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In nearly every presidential election cycle, a narrow set of so-called religious issues comes to the fore. In recent decades that set has been abortion, LGBTQ rights, and religious liberty. Candidates fall on one side or the other, and predictable controversies erupt. It’s exhausting to see people of faith lumped into a media narrative that largely only follows white Christians.
But I believe that tired and oversimplified narrative is changing — and the crises of 2020 are making that change clearer than ever.
COVID-19 is changing American life and will continue to do so — not just in the sickness and death it is causing, but also by how it has laid bare the inequalities and injustices of our social system that makes the suffering so unequal. The COVID-19 pandemic has made plain the racial inequities in our society, as Black, Latinx, and Indigenous Americans are hospitalized with the virus at roughly five times the rate of white Americans. We’ve also seen far too-long-delayed awakening among many white people about our nation’s systemic racism, sparked by the public killing of George Floyd. An excruciating 8 minutes and 46 seconds has led to a deeper conversation about the last 401 years of slavery and racism — partly because the whole nation was home and watching. These twin crises proclaim a message that resonates with people of faith, and perhaps even reaching some of Donald Trump’s traditional base: white Christians. We shall see.
That message: Racism is a religious issue. Not only that, I would argue that racism is the central religious issue in this election.
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