Religious follies among American Christian tribes

Of course I've been following with some combination of horror and amusement Donald Trump's foray into demeaning Pope Leo while play acting Jesus. The President is outmatched. 

But hey, this is a political blog, mostly, so I thought I'd pass along two contradictory interpretations of whether the needy Orange Toddler might derive electoral benefit among Catholics from his latest round of religious posturing.

First off, JVL from The Bulwark. He looks at the electoral record and brings receipts: 

... It looks to me like Trump is accelerating the move of Christian nationalists away from Christianity and towards pure Trumpist nationalism—even among Catholics. ... I have said for several years now that my general sense is that American Catholics are walking down the same path that evangelicals trod in the 1990s when they consolidated behind the Republican party and became more of a political bloc than a religious movement.

... Catholic voters have become more Republican over the last eighteen years and this trend accelerated when Donald Trump—the least Christian presidential candidate in history—appeared on the scene.

During that period we saw something similar happen with white evangelical voters, who were +50 R in 2008 but grew to +66 R in 2024.

That 16-point swing looks pretty big. But during the same period, Catholics swung even harder. Catholics went from -9 R in 2008 to +12 R in 2024—a 21-point shift.

A decent and intelligent Catholic himself, he hates what he sees happening in his tribe.

This is what I mean when I say that Catholics look to be on the kind of curve that white evangelicals went on in the ’90s. 

Maybe Catholics will turn away from this road, but I’m not optimistic. If anything, Trump’s open blasphemy seems likely to accelerate the trend by forcing these people to make a choice between the teachings of the Church and the demands of a nationalist political cult. 

From where we sit in 2026, I’ll be surprised if most Trumpist Catholics end up choosing Catholicism in such a showdown. 

At the Tesla Takedown, San Francisco

To my slightly jaundiced eye, JVL is a classic American Catholic of the white sort who used to define Catholic culture in this country and no longer do. 

Aside from the Irish and some Germans who came even earlier, white Catholic immigrants from Europe of the late 19th and 20th were hard working folk who crossed the ocean for a better life. They were often exploited by longer established and richer white mainline Protestants (my tribe) who didn't much want to share. This set of Catholics retained considerable cultural distance from Protestant Americanism; in particular, often had their own schools, sometimes in home country languages, up through World War I. The closing off of immigration between 1922 and 1945, followed by national mobilization in World War II, finally enabled this wave of white migrants to assume a place in the political and cultural center. 

It was time ... some cultural distinctions remained where large white Catholic populations still lived -- fish sticks for school lunch on Friday, anyone? -- but white Catholic America became more and more just ordinary America.

Obviously JVL's got a point about the rather horrible political trajectory of this, most visible, segment of white Catholics -- but these folks are not the only Catholics. 

The sociologist Robert P. Jones thinks the Orange Toddler is too dumb to understand the implications of his religious antics in nationalized elections.

What’s the Political Risk of Trump’s Fight with Pope Leo?

I don’t believe President Trump understands the political risk of picking a fight with Pope Leo XIV. My best guess is that he believes that the unquestioning submission demonstrated by his fawning white evangelical followers exists among all of his Christian followers. But Catholics are not white evangelical Protestants.

While white evangelicals have voted more than 80% for Trump every time he has been on the ballot and have held strongly favorable views of Trump through every controversy and outrage over the last decade, Catholics have been more measured in their support. 

Most notably, there is a strong racial and ethnic divide among Catholics: six in ten white Catholics supporting Trump each time he has been on the ballot, but six in ten Latino Catholics have supported his Democratic opponents.

... If his support falls further, it could be game over for Republican candidates in competitive midterm elections and for the next Republican presidential candidate. While Trump and Republican candidates might be able to weather a 5-10 point drop in support among white evangelical Protestants, given that they largely live in safe deep red districts and states, the GOP would not survive such losses among Catholics—both because of their size and their location. Overall, Catholics comprise 22% of Americans, nearly double the size of white evangelical Protestants (13%). Most importantly, Catholics are much more numerous in swing states ...

In the midterms elections, there are only a handful of competitive races, and they are nearly all in states with significant Catholic populations. For example, the competitive House races are largely confined to Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, New York, New Jersey, and Texas. Competitive Senate races are confined to Michigan, Maine, North Caroline, Georgia, Ohio, Alaska, and New Hampshire. ...

In these competitive states for the midterm elections, the Catholic vote looms large... In California and Texas, Hispanic Catholics (reminder: Trump favorability at 25%) outnumber white Catholics by around four to one. ...

Jones, an escapee from a white southern evangelical background, thinks alienating a few white Catholics and a lot of non-white Catholics could be devastating to Republican prospects. Trump's attacks on the pope will exacerbate anti-Trump trends. His analysis is plausible. I guess we'll see.

• • • 

Click to enlarge

Kevin Jones, an ex-evangelical, pastor, and author, writes a truly delicious takedown of current Trump pretensions from within a Bible-centric frame. Do enjoy: 

Meet the original Trump: Herod the Great  ...

... Herod ruled Judea from 37 to 4 BCE. He was not Jewish by lineage; his family was forcibly converted to Judaism not long before Herod’s birth. He held his throne not by popular mandate or ancestral right, but because the Roman Senate appointed him. He was, in every sense, an outsider. Herod was a man whose claim to power was conferred by an empire, not earned by belonging.

Sound like anyone?

To compensate for this legitimacy deficit, Herod did two things simultaneously. First, he built. Relentlessly. Obsessively. He constructed the harbor city of Caesarea from scratch. He erected palace-fortresses across the desert. He raised an artificial mountain (Herodium) and built a palace on top of it to serve as his own monument. And in the ultimate power move, he rebuilt the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem on a scale so staggering that the rabbis later said, “He who has not seen Herod’s Temple has never seen a beautiful building.”

Herod put his name on everything. Caesarea. Herodium. Towers named after his brother, his friend, his wife.

If Herod had access to gold leaf lettering, you’d better believe it would have been on the front of every building.

Second, and this is the part that should make every American Christian sit up straight, Herod weaponized religion. Not because he believed in it, but because he understood that in Judea, religious legitimacy was political legitimacy. You couldn’t rule the Jewish people without the blessing of the religious establishment. And so Herod set out to acquire that blessing … by any means necessary....

There's much more. Don't miss it.

• • •

Have to say as an Episcopalian, it was nice to see the Archbishop of Canterbury sticking up for the Pope in this kerfuffle, even though he may not quite know what to do with support from a girl.

Archbishop of Canterbury backs pope’s calls for peace amid Trump feud 

We must not accept that the Trump's regime is as good as it gets

Let's have a little delight. Sometimes things still work.

Glover and his crewmates — NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — were the first people to launch aboard NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule. Tensions were especially high during their final descent because the spacecraft had a known design flaw in its heat shield; NASA is still investigating the details of the shield’s performance.

“I could tell we were in a fireball,” Glover said, describing the plasma outside the spacecraft during atmospheric re-entry. He admitted his first thought was, “Is it supposed to be that big?”

When the hatch opened after they splashed down, Koch said, “I was completely overcome.”

“I just screamed. I was so happy,” she said. “It was just pure elation and just a visceral, emotional reaction to not only being home, but people there coming to us and bringing us out — just unspeakable joy.” NBC News

The time of demented Don has robbed us of much simple pleasure in the realization of what human beings can do when we work together. Artemis reminded us of all of that potential.

Jay Kuo described this well:

... Americans watching Artemis II carry four astronauts around the Moon feel something they didn’t expect: the deep satisfaction of watching something difficult done well. The same could be said for the compelling educational success story unfolding in the Deep South, driven by disciplined and evidence-based methods rather than ideology. And it could be said about a 34-year-old democratic socialist mayor of New York City, who is governing by filling potholes while securing child care funding, elevating it all into a political philosophy.

This hunger for competence is something newer and more demanding than just nostalgia. It’s a refusal to accept that this is as good as it gets. It’s also a rejection of the pre-Trump order that failed too many for too long. There is a growing recognition that government can actually work, that planning and expertise and execution are not elitist but democratic, and that when systems fail, ordinary people suffer most.

What we owe ourselves, and each other, is an insistence on holding leaders to a standard of competence. This standard can and must replace the current, destructive emphasis on performative loyalty, disruption, entertainment and optics.

It’s the standard that demands showing up, doing the work, and delivering real results — with the bonhomie and camaraderie of a shared mission, while trusting that the experts have prepared well so we don’t burn up when we plunge back down to Earth.

I admit to not being a devoted NASA fan. I watched the first moon landing in 1969 with small-minded horror; damned if the first thing astronauts did when they got there was discard some no longer needed equipment. That is, we humans thoughtlessly littered a pristine environment. 

But I've since come to appreciate our capacity to work in groups, most especially to organize ourselves in support of humane values. At our better moments, together, we can do the work and create great things.

Friday cat blogging

 

I don't know whether Mr. Mio has any idea how silly his twenty pound body looks when he rolls over and plays charming like this. Obviously he's confident in his safety and I'm glad of that. For a monster cat, he came to us a little timid.

Meanwhile, Ms. Janeway explores any available box. She had never been timid about exploring.

Boycott Target: let them know where San Francisco stands

 

Nobody could say these women leafleting a downtown Target store on a sunny Thursday afternoon are paid protesters. They are there because they care. 

Bay Resistance explains the choice to boycott this national retailer:

Target: Target has rolled over and capitulated to the Trump regime. They rolled back their DEI initiatives, which included ending programs that help Black employees, cutting financial support for Black-owned businesses, and removing LGBTQ+ products from their stores.  

Target's headquarters is in Minneapolis and the ongoing call to denounce the corporation comes from the community there, according to Minnesota Public Radio in March.

Minneapolis racial justice group leaders [including] Dr. Nekima Levy Armstrong, Monique Cullars-Doty and Jaylani Hussein ... called for a national boycott of Target last year after the retailer announced that it would end its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and investments. The initiatives include a program it established aimed at helping Black employees build meaningful careers, improving the experience of Black shoppers and promoting Black-owned businesses, following the police killing of George Floyd in 2020.

Hussein said the retailer has [apparently] backtracked on those decisions.

“What we have just learned today is that Target has said they have not made a single concession,” said Hussein. “They have not made a single demand or change to their policies, and they are staying the course on their plan to continue to deny diversity and equity inclusion in this company.”

Mounting a national boycott of a big corporation is long, patient work.  It takes a long time for shoppers to change their habits. The danger to Target is that a large segment of the people they market to just might choose to go elsewhere. And once these shoppers have gone away, it's hard to get them back. 

In Richfield, Minn., in January ICE agents invaded a Target store and seized two employees, which increased the backlash against the company. Target is giving itself a bad name in Minnesota and activists here are spreading the word. ICE OUT!

Popes and the big tent

Day in and day out, I continue to be astonished and pleased by how much unity the big tent, anti-Trump and anti-oligarchic forces in our country are managing to achieve. 

Before the arrival of Donald Trump clarified much for many, I found Jennifer Rubin, then writing at the Washington Post, a loathsome Republican-excusing right wing pundit. She has been through some changes. The horror of the moment moves all of us in novel directions. Today Rubin writes prolifically at The Contrarian, using her sharp wit daily to skewer our aspiring dictator and his friends. 

I'll applaud this version of Rubin. Here is a bit from today exploring what for her is likely improbable religious terrain taken up by leaders opposing the inhuman global authoritarian project.

Autocrats Don’t Fare Well Against Faith Leaders

... Pope Leo is as much a problem for Trump as Pope John Paul II was for communist Poland. When a native son (Leo of America, John Paul II of Poland) expresses affection for and understanding of his countrymen in their native language during a time of the oppressive rule, the Pope can form an emotional bond that rises above politics. His message of faith, peace, and love reaches far beyond Catholic churches and compels people to focus on matters and values more profound and compelling than partisanship. A Pope in tune with his flock who promotes a values-based worldview can illuminate an autocrat’s smallness, meanness, and desperation.  ...

... As Catholics recall nearly fifty years later, Pope John Paul II’s visit to Poland in June 1979 helped ignite a movement that would upend the communist regime. ... A year later, Solidarity formed in the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk to spearhead the anti-communist political movement.

The Polish example reminds us that autocrats resort to bullying, violence, and fear because they cannot obtain people’s affection. Through personal experience with a despotic regime, regular people (whether in Poland in the 1980s or Hungary and the U.S. today) eventually recognize the regime as exploitive, corrupt, and cruel.

... The democracy movement is not a religious community, although faith motivates many in their opposition to ICE, racism, and neglect of the poor. Nevertheless, the pro-democracy movement can and should stay grounded in positive ideals — patriotism, decency, fairness, and empathy. Whether those values emanate from religious faith or humanistic values, once people rediscover a sense of obligation to something higher than themselves, they are more likely to lose fear of the regime, forge a community with other inspired democracy defenders, challenge authority, and view vulgar, crazed leaders as weak and transitory figures.

Democracy advocates should unabashedly denounce Trump in moral terms. Launching a war of choice and threatening genocide is evil. Taking away healthcare and food from the poor to enrich billionaires is wrong. Deporting grandmothers and children is cruel.

When the argument becomes right vs. wrong rather than right vs. left, an amoral, corrupt autocrat is cooked. ...

I might not be so generous toward an institutional church which still fails to appreciate the humanity of women and queers, but I too applaud when the generous and inclusive strain in Catholicism rises to the fore.  And Rubin's frame seems very correct in this moment. The autocrat is just in the wrong for us all.

It's Katie Porter time

Until Eric Swalwell's implosion (good riddance to another abuser of women), I hadn't paid much attention to the California governor's race. Any of the candidates might do...

Now I'm forced to dig in a bit -- and a very little reflection makes me realize what an odd contest this is.

• California has enjoyed extraordinary stability in the governor's office for the last 16 years. That's amazing to recognize. First we elected a used governor who had matured  and already knew the ropes (Jerry Brown 2011-2019), then his ambitious understudy who had cooled his jets watching Brown for eight years as Lieutenant Governor (Gavin Newsom 2019-2026). Love 'em or hate 'em, that experience mattered.

• Disposing of Swalwell helps, but there are still too damn many non-viable Dem also-rans on the June primary ballot. (Any who drop out will still appear at this point.) Sacramento denizens Tony Thurmond and Betty Yee never took flight. Xavier Becerra had a Sacramento background, but had been out of state for four years. Antonio Villaraigosa has been out of sight for longer. The tech bros got a late candidate in San Jose's Matt Mahan, but who is he? Can money elevate any of these non-starters?

• None of the three original contenders (now two) came out of experience with California government. California has a huge government, not easily mastered by any pol; ask Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sacramento is its own world, far removed from the daily lives of people, especially in the southern part of this huge state. But here we are left with Tom Steyer and Katie Porter who've never worked in state government. (Neither had Swalwell.)

• I think we can hope the combination of Trump endorsing one of the GOP cranks and getting rid of one of the genuine Dem contenders will ensure we will have some Democrat to vote for in November. But the Democratic Party circus sure doesn't inspire confidence.

So, out of Steyer and Porter, who am I for? 

To be blunt, Steyer has excellent issue positions, but this is no year to elect a billionaire to anything. It's a year to reject billionaires across the board; we need to stoke the populist backlash to the criminals in the national GOP, not default to a money guy in a Democratic stronghold. Steyer is a very good donor wanting to be a real player -- but that doesn't qualify him for me. 

That means I'm continuing to throw down for Katie Porter. I think she is getting the dismissive treatment from a lot of the punditocracy because she's a sharp woman. Her detractors brush her off with what amounts to "nice fat lady; should stay in her place." She made it abundantly clear in her service in Congress that she understands how money works in the lives of working Americans. That should matter in a governor. Yes, she's apparently abrasive; women who succeed in a power job tend to be tough cookies. Can we, finally, get to where women of ambition no longer have to present a charming public face that soothes egos? 

I'll vote in November for any Democrat who survives this shit show. But it is hard to be impressed with the politics of my state.

Strange times we live in

A friend sent me the original "Trump as Jesus raising the dead among the demons" image which you've probably seen. Yes, he posted it. Apparently even Trump's evangelical supporters blew a gasket and he's taken it down. 

But another friend posted an "improved" version which I share here:

Quite a cast of characters. Seems emotionally right. The guy is losing the few marbles he had.

History goes on ...

So Victor Orbán and his illiberal government have gone down to overwhelming electoral defeat in the Hungarian election. 

If most of us notice Hungary at all here in the USofA, it's as some little eastern European country that buddies up to Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, keeping other European Union countries from fully getting on board with Ukraine against Russian invasion. Or something like that. Oh, and that all our domestic American fascists seem to dote on this Orbán guy who just got beat by popular vote

That student of Eastern Europe Timothy Snyder published some philosophical ruminations on the Hungarian story -- and on us -- before today's vote:

... although Hungary might be a small country, we can draw some larger conclusions. The world has been plagued for a century by various “ends of history,” and those ends of history have arisen disproportionately in central and eastern Europe, in Hungary in particular.

The fascists of the 1930s, in Hungary and elsewhere, said that history was over, that all that remained was a biological struggle directed by a party elite. The communists, who came to power in Hungary after 1945 and elsewhere, said that history was over, replaced by scientific administration directed by a party elite. After the end of communism, speaking about Hungary and other post-communist states, too many of us declared that history was now indeed over, since fascism and communism have exhausted themselves, and all that remained was the imperturbable triad of liberalism, democracy, and capitalism.

From Hungary, Orbán showed that this was not true: capitalism could be corrupted; liberalism could be replaced by illiberalism (his word); and democracy could be turned into a ritual. Seduced by Hungary’s success, many on the far right came to see the Hungarian alternative as the next end of history, the way that things would be, the way that things had to be.

And they are wrong; history goes on. Just as Hungary once offered the international oligarchical far right the confidence that a formula had been found, it now offers to men such as Vance and Trump the anxiety that voting might actually make a difference, that democracy might actually turn out to be more than a slogan, that unpredictable change is still possible, that the future is open.

It's interesting to remember how my generation first become aware of Hungary. In 1957, when I was ten, there was a new girl in my small school who had arrived with her parents from somewhere far away. She was skinny and different. I learned she was from a country called Hungary where Russian tanks had put down a revolution and many educated people had fled. We were supposed to feel bad for her. I remember her as bright, speaking pretty good English, mostly notable because her parents made her go after our school day to language school to learn Chinese -- they feared the family would have to flee once again. Refugees learn caution. 

And, as Snyder reminds us, the future is open -- and we have some power to decide what direction it moves in.

Instructions for interpreting our Orange Toddler monster

Is he serious -- or is he bluffing? Journalist and activist Parker Molloy has some suggestions for navigating that question while Trump continues to bark and weave while threatening genocide.

She's insightful in describing how most of our media play Trump's game, falling for his lying feints over and over again.

By Tuesday, Operation Epic Fury had been running for six weeks. The whole time, Trump had been telling anyone listening exactly what he planned to do. He said Iran could be “taken out in one night,” and named the bridges and power plants that would come down. Each of those threats was parsed by the political press. Each was processed as leverage or theater. Each was written off as Trump being Trump.

Then the bombs started falling. On Kharg Island. On power plants. On bridges.

The ["take him seriously, but not literally] frame has a near-perfect track record of being wrong in one direction. It rarely overestimates how far Trump will go. It only underestimates him. A prediction that’s always wrong in the same direction stops being analysis and starts being an alibi.

[Newsweek senior editor-at-large Josh] Hammer reached for the ... line on the day Trump posted that a whole civilization would die that night. That’s the tell. That’s what “seriously, not literally” is actually for. The frame comes out when the sentence is so plainly monstrous that the only defense left is to tell the reader not to read. 

That's the pattern we are caught in by this decompensating madman. If JD cannot pull a rabbit out of an empty hat to cover up the United States' strategic defeat by the mullahs, she predicts we'll see some variant again:

... Since the war began, Trump has repeatedly backed off his own deadlines at the last possible hour. The sequence is always the same: threat, deadline, airstrike, walkback, a news cycle crediting him with dealmaking, the original threat filed away. The walkback itself becomes retroactive evidence that the morning post was never serious. And the next morning, he can say something worse.

By Wednesday morning, the headlines were about the Hormuz ceasefire. The genocide post was yesterday’s news. The laundering was happening in real time. 

Trump is failing at home. Even Melania is undermining his defenses. How about a little genocide in the one arena where his power is still apparently unfettered?  

Friday cat blogging

 

You might say Mio is putting his best face forward. You'd be right. Actually, he's a softy, but in this slightly wary posture, it is hard to tell.

 

Janeway, on the other hand, looks sweet and loving -- until she decides to explore her surroundings with teeth and occasional claws. I have the scars to prove it.