Reclaiming the “War on Faith” Narrative

Photo via Reuters

STEPHEN BLINDER: Whether emanating from Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, or, yes, Donald Trump, the charge that liberal America is pursuing a “war on faith” predates the rise of Trumpism but has proliferated exponentially since 2016. While stated emphatically and often to much applause, the narrative obfuscates the reality beneath. 

The supposed “war on faith” has been spearheaded at least as much, if not more so, by the very conservatives who criticize it and, moreover, the “war on faith” that makes the headlines concerns not faith in general but almost exclusively Christianity and often a corrupted, politicized version of Christianity at that.

Unfortunately, the extreme wing of the Republican Party has increasingly sought to weaponize Christianity against the so-called “woke left” and their supposed allies. It was Newt Gingrich, himself the architect of the “Republican Revolution,” who compared the contemporary “fight for religious liberty” to the American Revolution. It was the conservative sector of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that voted overwhelmingly to draft new guidance denying holy communion to those, chiefly then-President Biden, who support abortion rights. 

It is now-President Donald Trump who promises to ban immigrants who “don’t like our religion” and who infamously used the Bible as the centerpiece of a photo-op in Lafayette Square in the backdrop of nonviolent protests against police brutality. What exactly is the charge against liberals? Is it that they believe in both the Constitution’s Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause? 

The silence is deafening.

The other key problem with the “war on faith” narrative: Those championing it have only one faith in mind – Christianity. If they believed that liberals were targeting “faith,” why would Trump declare on national television that “Islam hates us”? Why would he sign an executive order, defended by his conservative allies, barring citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States? Why would he call on Jewish Americans to “get their act together” and support his pro-Israel policies “before it is too late”? Why would his final advertisement in the 2016 election feature images of three prominent Jewish people – George Soros, Janet Yellen and Lloyd Blankfein – alongside an unexplained suggestion that a “global power structure” had “robbed our working class” and “stripped our country of its wealth”? 

When extreme conservatives employ the word “faith” in the alleged “war on faith,” it seems they really mean Christianity and their version of Christianity alone.

As is so often at the root of tensions today, the “war on faith” narrative suffers from a glaring lack of humility. It lacks humility in that it does not see religious pluralism as a strength but a weakness. It lacks humility in that it seeks to co-opt and weaponize religion rather than respect its sacred unifying potential. It lacks humility in that it places faith in the hands of a privileged few over the many. It lacks humility in that it sows the seeds of division between religious and secular spaces. 

The answer to the “war on faith” is not retaliatory mythmaking and aggression. The answer is to be found in one of the universal religious values: humility. Humility today, tomorrow and every day represents our collective path to salvation. As a former president famously made a habit of saying: “This is the United States of America. There’s nothing we can’t do if we do it together.”

Let’s start by reclaiming the war on faith narrative.

Stephen Blinder is a staff writer for On the Record. He is a senior studying government and philosophy in the College of Arts & Sciences.