As I watched this year’s Democratic National Convention live, there were moments when it became clear that Democrats were, and are, winning on messaging. “There’s no way Republicans can compete with this,” I said out loud multiple times as Doug Emhoff, Kamala’s husband, and Cole and Ella Emhoff, her stepchildren, spoke about family life with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, with Cole unforgettably describing how “Kamala became Momala.” I said it as folksy Minnesotan Tim Walz, Harris’s VP pick who stuck Republicans with the seemingly unshakeable “weird” label, shouted out love to his family and credibly talked about responsible gun ownership (while advocating a ban on assault weapons), before slipping into his high school football coach persona and ending with a pep talk.
This is a stunning reversal of the political tendency in play since, well, at least as long as I can remember, which makes sense, given that I was born in 1980, the beginning of the “Reagan revolution.” That’s the year Republican nominee Ronald Reagan’s “great national crusade to make America great again” took the country by storm, and the Christian nationalist evangelical Right became an entrenched Republican constituency, transforming American politics in ways that are still playing out.
But somehow, in just a few short weeks, Republicans have gone from being “real Americans” to being obnoxious “weirdos,” and Democrats have gone from being “stiff,” “wonkish,” and “out of touch,” to wowing Americans with heartwarming narratives about family and freedom. Republican attempts to take back the momentum by defending VP-candidate JD Vance’s misogynistic barbs about “childless cat ladies” and mocking Gus Walz (Tim Walz’s neurodivergent son) for showing emotion as he watched his dad speak, have only managed to make Republicans look even more out of touch—like people you wouldn’t want to have a beer with (in contrast to Walz, who looks like a guy from a beer ad).
While there’s political value in Democrats “taking back” certain key narrative frames from Republicans (like ‘family’ and ‘freedom’), the Democratic leadership still displays a lack of imagination about how to embody their vision of a genuinely inclusive, free, pluralist United States. I’m sure that taking back patriotism with “country over party” rhetoric will benefit them strategically—but what does it say about the broader vision that it was accompanied by chants of “USA! USA!” and a “tough on crime” stance embodied by a sheriff who once worked with right-wing wackos on their (at best) morally dubious anti-trafficking missions? Once again, Democrats cede moral ground by uncritically adopting GOP framing instead of trying to shift the conversation to something that represents the party’s inclusive and progressive vision.
That brings us to religion. While the Democrats are currently winning on messaging in several areas once dominated by the GOP, they’re still not winning on this one—though not for lack of effort. Much of the commentary around this issue focuses on ways to win over “voters of faith,” which de facto means Christians (especially White and socially conservative ones). Both RD senior correspondent Daniel Schultz, a United Church of Christ minister, and myself, an atheist, have argued time and again here at RD why this path leads to the erosion of the values they claim to hold.
Meanwhile Republicans continue to sling accusations of “godlessness” at Democrats, to which many liberal Christians and the Religious Industrial Complex respond with a collective nuh-uh before rattling off all the examples of faith they see in the Democratic Party; conceding that Democrats have “a problem with religion” while insisting that they’re starting to do better because they let pastors preach sermons at the DNC; or, hilariously, assuring the Catholic public that Catholics won’t go to hell for voting for Democrats. (Note: once you’re associating hell with Democratic support you’re just reinforcing the right-wing Christian frame.)
The point is, asserting that “religion is of major importance to many Democrats,” no matter how much evidence you muster (and the evidence is aggravatingly copious), never has and never will convince a majority of Americans that the Democratic Party is more friendly to “religion” (read: Christianity) than the Republican Party—whatever that even means. More importantly, attempts to convince Americans of Democrats’ religious bonafides lead once again to the erosion of the party’s stated values. After all, “religious” or “friendly to religion” is essentially code for deference to the conservative Christian values of exclusion and exceptionalism.
If Democrats wish to embody their espoused values of inclusion and freedom for all Americans, they ought to ignore the Republican framing of the question entirely and instead find a better story to tell. Christianity remains hegemonic in American discourse, and that’s a key reason Democrats display such a lack of imagination in this area. At best, they give a nod to other religions while leaving Christianity front and center.
The Christian privilege that permeates American society and politics needs to be dismantled just as much as White privilege, male privilege, and cis-het privilege in the pursuit of a genuinely democratic future. If Democrats hope to be the more inclusive party they can do so precisely by decentering Christianity as they focus on articulating a kind of pluralism that not only religious minorities but also actually godless folks can feel truly comfortable with. Instead of expanding the “big tent” of the party to appeal to anti-Trump Republicans and as many socially conservative White Christians as possible, why not focus on appealing to the people who turn up to vote for you in far greater numbers?
Of course, it made perfect sense for Democrats to give space to Georgia Senator and Baptist preacher Raphael Warnock to deliver what essentially amounted to a sermon at the DNC. After all, Black Christians remain the backbone of the Democratic coalition. But just as the DNC would have come off as more inclusive by featuring Palestinian American and transgender speakers (most LGBTQ+ Americans are, incidentally, nonreligious), secular Americans could have been included too. Representing about a third of the country’s population, nonreligious Americans vote overwhelmingly Democratic, but you still don’t see the Democratic Party adopting targeted messaging or inviting representatives to the stage in order to appeal to them. (And no, Maryland Representative and Congressional Freethought Caucus member Jamie Raskin doesn’t count since he didn’t even mention his secularism in his speech.)
In recognizing and welcoming the secular constituency as an important part of the Democratic coalition, some Democrats could voluntarily temper or revise their god talk to be more inclusive and less particularistic—i.e., less Christian-centered.
But fervent religiosity representing diverse traditions and secularism can coexist in the Democratic big tent, with neither being relegated to second-class status. It would certainly be a better strategy than constantly trying to prove that Democrats are as religious as Republicans. All the Democratic leadership needs to do to pursue it is to find the imagination to think beyond Republican framing, and the courage to tell a new kind of story about American pluralism.
